Kankakee, IL: two hospitals; a middle-of-the-night train crash; 114 injured--how their disaster plans played out.

Abstract

The emergency disaster plans of two Illinois hospitals were recently put to the test after an Amtrak train crash that occurred on the night of March 15 when a passenger train traveling from Chicago to New Orleans collided with a semi-trailer truck, causing the train to derail about 50 miles south of Chicago in the city of Bourbonnais, IL. The injured were taken to Riverside Medical Center and Provena St. Mary's Hospital, Kankakee, IL--a city of 30,000. Out of the 216 passengers on Amtrak's City of New Orleans, 11 people, all located in the sleeper car, were killed and 114 were injured. The accident was the largest that the two area hospitals had ever dealt with. Here's how they handled it.