One of the passengers was 18-year-old Gaby Rudy, a student at George Washington University who had been sleeping in the last car when she felt it verge off the tracks and then flip over.
The car immediately began to fill with smoke, she said. She called 911. And then she saw another young woman on the floor. Her back was injured. Rudy said she helped her out of the train.
Rescuers told them they had to run across another set of tracks in case another train approached.
They walked into some woods while helicopters circled above.
Rudy, who had been on her way home to Livingston, N.J., called her dad. He was at Temple Hospital 90 minutes later to pick her up.
“She was very panicked and screaming,” Daniel Rudy said. “It was the most traumatic thing imaginable.”