An eastbound Metro-North train derailed on Friday, striking a westbound train near Fairfield, Conn., halting service.
Metro-North and Amtrak service through Connecticut will be suspended into the beginning of the week, the authorities said Saturday, as investigators continue to seek the cause of a train derailment and collision on Friday evening that injured at least 70 people, 5 of them critically.
Both the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Amtrak said they could not say when service would resume. The investigation at the scene of the crash, near Fairfield, Conn., would take a day and a half, according to Earl F. Weener, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation.
Officials at a press conference offered a few clues as to what caused the derailment of an eastbound train just east of the Fairfield Metro Station and the collision with a westbound train on an adjacent track.
After the investigators collect evidence, the tracks will be handed back to rail authorities to make repairs, Mr. Weener said. The M.T.A. said Saturday that it could not yet estimate how long those repairs might take. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut said that the state’s Department of Transportation would also need time to remove debris.
And Neither Amtrak nor the M.T.A. offered any immediate transportation alternatives for travelers.
The two trains collided after a derailment at the height of the evening rush on Friday, snarling transit corridors in the Northeast.
An eastbound train heading toward New Haven derailed at the Bridgeport-Fairfield border, just east of Fairfield Metro Station at about 6:10 p.m., careening into a westbound train on an adjacent track, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
“I thought there was a bombing,” said Natalie Sepulveda, 23, who had been aboard the westbound train with her 2-year-old son.
“I smelled smoke and looked outside the window and saw a whole bunch of dust, and I grabbed my son.”
It was not immediately clear what caused the derailment, but the authority said that the police were investigating “as though it were a crime scene.” The National Transportation Safety Board said that it was dispatching a team to investigate the derailment.
The crash also obstructed operations for Amtrak, which suspended service between New York and Boston. The transportation authority said Metro-North service was suspended between South Norwalk and Bridgeport.
After arriving at the scene on Friday night, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut said that of the five serious injuries, one person was in “very critical” condition. He added that he had inspected the trains, and saw that the siding of one car had been ripped off. Mr. Malloy estimated that train service would return on Monday at the earliest.
The authority said the collision occurred in an area where two of the four tracks were already out of service for work on overhead wires, suggesting that service disruptions could persist.
Passengers recalled a chaotic scene after the collision, as riders tried to help one another out of the train.
With no platform for riders to step onto, fire personnel placed stepladders beneath the train doors to allow passengers to exit.
Andrea Turner, 26, said she was on the eastbound train, which appeared to be moving without incident until the derailment.
“We were just riding along fine,” she said. “We felt like the brakes were pumping, and we felt a crash.”
St. Vincent’s Medical Center’s emergency department admitted 27 people from the derailment, said Dianne Auger, a senior vice president.
“Most had minor injuries but there was one with a more serious head and neck injury,” she said. None of the injuries were considered life-threatening. Bridgeport Hospital was also admitting patients from the accident, she said.
Lt. Ron Rolfe of the Bridgeport Fire Department said that one woman had a fracture in her leg, and one man had “significant lacerations” in his leg.
The eastbound car left Grand Central Terminal around 4:40 p.m., the authority said, bound for New Haven with roughly 300 passengers. Traveling on the southernmost track when it derailed, the train swung to the left, striking a westbound train with about 400 passengers on a neighboring track. That train left New Haven around 5:30 p.m. and was scheduled to arrive at Grand Central at 7:18.
“The train leaned to the left and in so doing, clipped the train coming in the opposite direction,” said Marjorie Anders, an authority spokeswoman.
The crash, about 50 miles from Midtown Manhattan, caused seven out of eight cars on the eastbound train to derail, as well as the first car on the westbound train, Ms. Anders said, but both trains remained upright.
She added that there was significant track and equipment damage, including to the track bed, running rails and overhead wire. She said the train itself would need to be removed “car by car,” with the use of a crane.
Ms. Anders said the crash was the most serious on the Metro-North Railroad since at least 1988, when an engineer was killed after his train, which did not have passengers, plowed into another in Mount Vernon, N.Y.
