For family of Amtrak crash victims, derailment a different kind of ordeal

There's going to be a lot of Amtrak news coming in the next week. Thursday is the one year anniversary of Train 188's crash in Philadelphia. And next Tuesday, the 17th, we're expecting the National Transportation Safety Board to release their final report on that crash. That, hopefully, will answer questions about how it happened and what can be done to prevent disasters like it. If you missed the story from this weekend about the survivors of Train 188's first car please give it a look. I would have liked to have included in that story more from the families of the people profiled there, and thought this space would be a good place to do that. People who experience something that traumatic rarely do it alone. Their parents, spouses and children are going through it with them, and the families of these folks went through hell, and are still facing hard times.

Two of them, Fred Berman, of Gwynedd Valley, and Nicole Armyn, of Babylon, Long Island, had the good fortune to hear from their loved ones before hearing about the derailment on the news. Berman's daughter Blair, 24, and Armyn's husband Daniel, 43, were both in the first car on that train.

Fred Berman gave his daughter a ride to 30^th Street Station the night of May 12, 2015, and drove home after dropping her off.

"I had just gotten home probably 15 minutes prior to the call, I think it's around 9:30 at night," he said. "I'm watching basketball with my two sons. I thought it was either a customer or a solicitor. I had no reason not to answer it but thank God I did."

The call from his daughter came, it turns out, from a cell phone belonging to Brandon Bostian, the train's engineer. On the drive to the crash site Berman heard from a police officer who was with Blair. He said she had broken bones but would be okay. By the time he made it to the crash site at Frankford Curve, Berman ran through crowds of injured only to receive another call telling him his daughter had been taken to Frankford Torresdale Hospital. When he arrived at the emergency room there, he was told she had been moved to Einstein Medical Center. He rushed there, and then had to wait more than a half hour before he could see Blair. When he finally did, he was shocked by her appearance.

"The best analogy I can make is when you go to a spa and they put that green stuff on your face," he said. "Unfortunately it was blood."

Blair Berman suffered a broken right arm and a crushed right heel, and she is looking ahead to another foot surgery this summer.

Berman was impressed that Blair kept her head about her at the scene of the crash, contacted him and let him know where she was, and has been so tenacious about her recovery.

"She showed tremendous fortitude and strength," he said. "I'm very proud of her."

Nicole Armyn, 38, rushed to Philadelphia her husband Daniel, called her from a police officer's phone but her trip began on Long Island.  Her brother-in-law drove, she said.

"He literally flew me there," she said. "I think we made it there in two hours."

She was shocked by Daniel's appearance when she arrived.

"He was laying on this little bed in the corner of the ER and he was a mess, a mess," she recalled. "He was literally covered in soot."

Her reaction brought the extent of his injuries home, Armyn said.

"That's when I realized I wasn't in that good shape when I saw her face," he said.

Daniel Armyn's physical recovery was trying, the couple said. The petite Nicole Armyn had to wash her 240 pound husband, she said. He's the kind of person who is going from the minute he wakes up to the end of his day, she said, and he suddenly found himself immobilized for weeks. The transition wasn't easy. They remembered the first time she tried to get him to go to physical therapy he was in so much pain he refused. The argument that followed included him throwing a television remote control, which put a hole in a wall. And Armyn is still coping with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms, they said.

"Just the anxiety is just crazy," she said. "His anxiety, which of course leads to my anxiety."

The crash and his subsequent recovery put pressures they never anticipated on their marriage, the parents of two children said.

"It's been hard," Nicole Armyn said. "Obviously he's here, thank God, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse."

Geralyn Ritter's husband Jon experienced a spouse's worst nightmare that night. From the time he learned of the crash until almost 6 a.m. the next day he didn't know whether his wife was alive or dead. She was also in the first car and was grievously injured. She was found unconscious without any identification.

He was home in Whitehouse Station, NJ, with their three sons when he heard about the crash on the news, he said.

"I call her and I don't get any answer," he recalled. "I call her a couple more times."

When he couldn't reach her, he used the Find My iPhone function. The app located her phone about 25 feet off the train tracks at the site of the crash.

Jon Ritter had a babysitter come over to watch his sons and about 11 p.m. he drove with a friend to Philadelphia. He brought a charger for his phone, he said, and he from the car, and his son from home, began calling, texting and emailing Amtrak and area hospitals, looking for Geralyn Ritter.

"One of the worst parts was the sense that my son was sharing some of the same panic I was going through," Jon Ritter said.

Ritter kept asking his friend to speed up, even after being told they were already well over the speed limit.

"I now know what shock is," Ritter said. "It feels like this sense of hyper purpose."

Arriving in Philadelphia at 12:15 a.m. began a six hour odyssey for Ritter. Driving through the city night he visited a church and a school being used as staging areas. At the school his composure cracked.

"I just totally lost it, I said very loud, 'I can't find my wife, what's going on,'" he said. "I said, 'I can't take this.' I sat and I cried for about 5 minutes."

A Red Cross worker, a stranger, sat beside him and comforted him.

"The people of Philadelphia were so amazing that night," he said. "In the midst of all the chaos the Philadelphians just did some amazing things."

Eventually he realized that if his wife was alive she must be a Jane Doe, so he visited hospitals, asking if a 5-foot-8-inch blonde was among their patients and showing staff at the ERs pictures of Geralyn on his cell phone. No one could identify her. By about 4 a.m. he arrived at Jefferson University Hospital. A moment that has stuck with him, seeing two men playing basketball on an outdoor court near the hospital as though it was midday.

At that hospital a nurse approached Ritter and said, "you look like someone who could use some help."

She helped him call area hospitals asking for someone who matched his wife's description. They finally found a match at Penn Presbyterian Hospital.

"When you go in to identify your wife who's been in a big accident, she's covered from neck to toe and is intubated," he said. "She doesn't look like my wife."

Jewelry and a pedicure helped him confirm the identification. At 6:54 a.m. he texted his son Austin, "we found her. She's alive."