Three years ago on December 18, a speeding Amtrak Cascades train bound for Portland derailed near DuPont, Washington, and tumbled onto Interstate 5. The crash killed three passengers and injured scores of others. An Olympia woman marked the anniversary Friday by going back to her local blood donation center to achieve a related, but happier milestone.
On the morning of the Amtrak Cascades 501 derailment, Kaitlan Vasquez was getting ready to commute up I-5 to the therapist job she had at the time in Pierce County. She soon realized work would be a no-go when she flipped on the news, which was filled with reports about train cars dangling precariously over the freeway, rescue efforts and traffic gridlock.
Vasquez decided what she could do to help would be to give blood.
“So, I came down here because I wasn’t going to be able to go anywhere else that day,” Vasquez recollected in an interview Friday outside the Bloodworks Northwest Olympia Donor Center. “As soon as I got here, there were lines of people out the door. I’m pretty sure it was raining like this. Nobody cared. They had their coats and they just waited.”
Bloodworks Northwest rushed blood to area hospitals that day in 2017, but it was fortunately not needed much by disaster victims. More than 60 people were injured in the train wreck and three people died. Their concussions, shock, contusions and broken bones weren’t the kind of things that required blood transfusions.
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