ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — A CSX train hauling coal derailed and fell from a bridge in Ellicott City outside Baltimore, killing two young women who were on the tracks and crushing vehicles in a parking lot, authorities said.

Twenty-one of the train’s 80 cars flipped over around midnight Monday, Howard County officials said. Some of the train cars crushed parked vehicles in a county-owned lot, County Executive Ken Ulman said. Cranes were brought in this morning to remove train cars from the vehicles so they can be searched for other potential victims.

“Many of those train cars fell onto automobiles, literally fell onto automobiles with the coal,” said Ulman. “So you have massive piles of coal and heavy train cars on top of automobiles.”

The two people who were killed were on the rail bridge and were not railroad employees. The victims’ identities were not immediately released, but a spokesman for CSX described them as “young women.”

Two train operators were not harmed, officials said.