Passenger Critically Hurt Had Just Visited Family in Anaheim, Brother Says

A man identified as the only passenger critically injured in Saturday’s Amtrak train derailment is from the Philippines and had been visiting his family in Anaheim, a brother said Saturday night.

Francis Bendicion, 50, was traveling on Amtrak’s Southwest Chief with four family members en route to St. Louis and Chicago, said the brother, Joseph Bendicion of Anaheim. He had begun the journey Friday night at the Fullerton train station.

Joseph Bendicion said he was notified Saturday morning that Francis Bendicion had been taken to a Phoenix hospital with a critical back injury after the train derailed in a desert area 13 miles northeast of Kingman, Ariz.

However, Joseph Bendicion said, the family had been told the injury was “probably not” life-threatening.

“Something shattered in his back,” Joseph Bendicion said by telephone from his Anaheim home. “Right now it’s kind of sketchy. Doctors say he’s going to be operated on.”

A spokeswoman at John C. Lincoln North Mountain Hospital in Phoenix, where Francis Bendicion was being treated, said he suffered a lower-back fracture with possible bone fragments in the spinal canal.

Carla Malvick, the spokeswoman, said he had been flown to Phoenix after initial treatment at a medical center in Kingman, a town of about 13,000 people.

Medical officials said 154 people were treated for injuries, about half the total number of passengers. Of those, 14 were admitted to hospitals, but only Francis Bendicion was in critical condition.

Joseph Bendicion said his brother-in-law, Bienvenido Tan, apparently suffered a sprained back in the accident. But other family members were unhurt, he said, including a young niece.

Joseph Bendicion said his brother Francis frequently visits his family in Orange County.

The derailment occurred about 5 a.m. as the Chicago-bound train was crossing a bridge that apparently had been damaged by a flash flood.

The train was reportedly traveling 88 mph, a typical speed in that area, when it jumped the tracks.

An Orange County passenger on the train, Mae Hoffman of Costa Mesa, told the Associated Press: “It was such a screeching, bumping feeling. I felt we were going to topple over.”

Neither Hoffman nor family members could be reached for comment Saturday.