A train derails in Tamaroa

[jaybird210]

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TAMAROA (IL)— A freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in the middle of town Sunday morning, and authorities evacuated as many as 1,000 people in a three-mile area.

Officials expected residents would be out of their homes until at least today, while cleanup crews worked to stabilize the chemicals and then right the derailed cars.

One resident taking shelter in a local community center said emergency workers told her it could be as many as three days before she and her family would be allowed to return home.

"There's nothing you can do about it, so it's not worth getting upset about," Elizabeth Stein said.

No injuries were reported after 16 cars of the northbound train derailed shortly after 9 a.m. in this town of 800 in southern Illinois about 28 miles north of Carbondale.

The derailment, which sparked a fire that was out by Sunday afternoon, also caused some delays for Amtrak trains. Some trains were detoured and passengers were bused along the route, which is popular with students from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

The Illinois Central-Canadian National train was carrying chemicals that included vinyl chloride, formaldehyde and hydrochloric acid, Perry County Sheriff Keith Kellerman said.

All three chemicals are hazardous to breathe and could cause death in high concentrations, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many emergency workers were kept away from the trains because of the danger, Kellerman said.

The vinyl chloride leaked from one or two cars and caught fire, said Kellerman and Canadian National spokesman Jack Burke.

Tamaroa village trustee William Place said methanol also was being carried by the train and caught fire.

Air tests conducted upwind of the site indicated no air pollution caused by the derailment, said Chris Cahnovsky, an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency field worker.

Crews were checking for possible soil and groundwater contamination, said Dave Searby, operations officer for the DuQuoin Emergency Services and Disaster Agency.

The train, operated by a two-person crew, likely had 100 or more cars, Burke said. He said chemical-hauling trains typically roll north from Louisiana to Chicago or to a switching point in Effingham for movement elsewhere.

Each car carried 24,000 pounds of chemicals, Kellerman said.

-----------------------------
Anybody got any more insight on this mess? Jack, isn't this near your neck of the woods?

We've got a BN-SF rail running through our town and I see vinyl chloride all time. From what I've read about it, it is truly nasty stuff.

[ChiefReason]

Jay:
We have a BNSF hub in Galesburg, just 15 miles east of us. There is also BNSF tracks that travel through a village west of us by four miles. It splits their village in half; much like many communities through out the state. Fortunately, we do not have tracks going through our village; but we do have Interstate 74. I'll take railroad over interstate anytime. Lord knows how many CDL licenses made their way into the wrong hands, if you know what I mean(Wink-wink). But something in your piece really caught my eye:
"There's nothing you can do about it, so it's not worth getting upset about," Elizabeth Stein said.
Give this lady all my love. God bless her. We need more like her.
By the way; our regional training site in Galesburg has a chemical railcar on site for training for such occasions.
You must join us August 23rd for Fall Fire School. It's a hoot.
CR

[jboczek]

Hey, yeah, this is in my neck of the woods. Actually we were one of the first mutual aid depts. called. Tamaroa is 5 miles South of our district line. We were only standing by for the big boom and then putting out the fires after it blew up. Luckily it didn't so we just moved around a lot. The first evacuation was for 1/2 mile, and that went to 1 mile pretty quick. We were staged on the North end of Tamaroa for several hours, then something must have happened that made them move the evacuation area to 3 miles. We relocated about 3 miles North for about another hour and then we moved again, this time another 3 miles. That got us to my home town of DuBois. The whole thing started about 9 AM and all FFs were released about 7 PM when CN RR crews and Hulcher Emergency Services Haz Mat team decided the danger of explosion and fire was over. They are now in the process of trying to clean up some of the 16 cars that derailed. I've heard on the news this morning that the vinyl chloride car is still leaking but that they may allow people back in their homes late today. The danger appears to be over, except for the VC fumes which IEMA and EPA are monitoring pretty close. Fortunately the temperature has been hovering around 30 all night, and its supposed to be about 40 today. We did get 2" of snow overnight to make the cleanup a little more difficult.
At one time, the higher-ups started looking for foam. They ended up with about 80 buckets at our staging area but decided not to use it. Another plan was to get purple-k from Mid America airport, about 50 miles to the west. In the end, the fire burned itself out and now the only problem is the VC. I've heard one car burning was some form of alcohol. Don't know what for sure.
Communications was a problem for us. Depts south of use use "coal belt, 154.07) as their primary frequency. Tamaroa itself has its own freq. but also use coal belt. We use 154.430 and our truck radios don't have coal belt in them. Command was using IREACH, but there again, our trucks don't have that freq. either. Our portables have both, but when the command center moved from Tamaroa to DuQuoin, which is 12 miles farther South, those were pretty well useless as well. So, we depended on the cops to keep us informed and they didn't do a real good job of that. And the Perry Co. Sheriff uses their own freq., too. Communications was probably the biggest problem I could identify.
This really bothers me since I live only 6 miles North of the incident and the train was going North, headed for my town. Won't have any trains going through town for a couple of days, anyway.

[jaybird210]

Chief- I'll come down if the date doesn't conflict with Monroe. Now THAT'S a hoot!

[jaybird210]

Thanks for the insight, Jack. I thought that looked pretty close to you.

Have youse guys ever had a call of this magnitude before, where these kind of communications problems happened? Has there been any movement in the past to improve things out your way? Maybe you could use this as ammo in a FEMA grant to get newer radios with greater freq. capacity. Nothing much worse than not being able to talk or know what's going on....

We're pretty lucky up this way. There's basically only three dispatch centers around. The worst problem we have is that the neighbors to the south (Sandwich, Plano, Bristol-Kendall) are all UHF. One more radio to carry.

BTW, this much have been a HUGE pain in the ass with your breakfast the day before! How'd that go?

[jboczek]

CR, talking about the residents, they really did seem to be great. Tamaroa has a population of 800, and the surrounding area in the 3 mile evacuation is sparse, with only maybe another 200. From what I saw this morning on the news, there was only a handful of people that stayed in the shelter. The shelter was moved from Tamaroa to DuQuoin about half way through the day yesterday. I think people were concerned but not overly upset. It was ironic, the Tamaroa chief told me that they had just talked about just this type of incident last week at a training. I suppose that no matter if you know it's going to happen, you're never really ready for the actual event. The did OK, nobody got hurt and the people will get back to normal in a day or so.
By the way, we've got a railroad AND an interstate running through or district. About 20 miles of RR total and 8 miles of interstate. You can have both of them if you want them.

[jboczek]

Jay, thanks for the concern about our breakfast. We did OK. "My" crew cooks sausage in DuBois and the breakfast is in Radom, 3 miles to the North. We just got done cooking and finished cleaning up when we got paged. One guy took the 3 roasters full of sausage to the breakfast and the rest of us (6) took a rescue and a pumper to Tamaroa. We had enough people in Radom to take care of everything. If we had gotten another call, we may have had a problem. We have had calls during this before and the townspeople have been really great. Hey, we're mostly Catholic with grade schools so we know all about fundraisers.
We haven't had to work with the depts. to the South before. We have only even helped them twice in the past 25 years that I can remember. Their "coal belt association" is their mutual aid and they don't get as far north as us. Tamaroa is about it. We've not had any major incidents in our own area, other than traffic accidents with maybe 4 different agencies involved. The county has come up with a plan to help with communications in those situations. We use 4 channel radios, and those are all filled up with our county's freqs. We have a couple of service/rescue trucks with 8 channel radios that cover pretty well everything in our area. We would be OK with comms in our own area, but when we have to go South it's a problem we'll have to work with.
Can't believe I let you Northern people beat me to the post on this incident. We were kind of busy yesterday, though. Kind of amazing how tired you can get just waiting around and directing a little traffic. I ended up opening up the community center in DuBois (I did have a key) and the FDs finished up there. We were only there about 1/2 hour when we got released. The Tamaroa crews stayed for some leftover sausage and mac and cheese and hot dogs. We don't have a fast food joint for 20 miles. By the time we got that cleaned up and trucks back where they belonged, it was about 8:30. Made it to bed by 10:30 and got a call to a wreck at 11. Back to bed by 11:30 and slept like a baby till 6:30 this morning.

[jboczek]

News Flash ----
Just got a phone call from one of my ACs. He says a co-worker's wife tried to get back to her house, outside of the original evacuation area, and she was told that another tank has ruptured during the clean up and that they were expanding the evac. area and she wasn't going home. Haven't been able to confirm this and it is 3rd hand information. More as it becomes available.

[jaybird210]

Yikes. Thanks for the updates, Jack. I am watching this clsoely to see how it plays out. I am very concerned about this kinda thing happening around here. We haven't had a derailment in over 20 years, and I think we're due.....

Can't believe I let you Northern people beat me to the post on this incident.

Gotta be quick around here.:p

[jboczek]

Haven't heard anything else about the evacuation extension. I did hear the Tamaroa FD looking for some foam again. Don't know what that was all about. Sounded like they were trying to find something to put out an alcohol fire. There's hydrochloric acid leaking from a car yet. The crews have spread lime around the cars to neutralize that. There is a vapor cloud yet, but the wind is blowing enough to dissipate it. A news update on TV had the RR spokesman saying they are going to offload the vinyl chloride car to trucks and once they got that done they would consider shrinking the evac area and possibly letting everyone back in if everything looked good. They seem to be mostly concerned about the VC.
Our county just sent an ambulance to a tavern in our district for a woman possibly having a heart attack. I was getting ready to go, knowing our 1st responders would also get paged. Then dispatch canceled the ambulance and said the lady was going in a car to the hospital and they had already left the tavern. Don't ask me.

[jboczek]

IEMA has a couple of pictures and stories on their web site http://www.state.il.us/iema/train.htm

[jboczek]

Here's what I know this morning. About 0315 a neighboring dept. was paged to go to Tamaroa because of 2 explosions. Perry County dispatched an ambulance. Later they said the situation was not serious, so it apparently was nothing too bad. Nobody was being allowed in the 1 mile zone while the crews purged some lines connecting the rail cars while transferring product. There are a couple of tank trucks sitting by DuBois this morning. They aren't being allowed in the area yet, either. I understood them to say they have been hauling methanol from another car on the site. They are supposed to have the vinyl chloride car offloaded to another rail car and are assessing the situation as to when they can shrink the evacuation area. Still no serious injuries, only a couple of citizens taken to the hospital and released.

[80FIRE]

Jack
Sounds like things are begining to slowly improve. Looks like lots of damage but at least no serious injuries. How is the RR personel to deal with?
we also have RR tracks spliting two towns in our district. About a year ago we had a derailment. The 16th car was off the rails all the way through town until they stopped. Luckily the cars stayed upright and on the rails. The car ahead and behind the 16th had haz-mat. They carry a lot of nasty materials. got to go maybe more later.

[ChiefReason]

Jack:
After reading your superb accounts of the events surrounding this incident, it sounds like a MABAS system is desperately needed in your neck of the woods.
It will improve everything from accountability to communications to knowing exactly what to expect in a response. You can add ambulances to your MABAS box.
The state is pushing for state wide MABAS. Those who don't already have it will get the state's version pushed upon them. Don't know if that's good or bad. Haven't seen the state's plan.
The other thing that MABAS does, is that it opens the money door. That's where IEMA went with all their money a couple of months ago. They put it at the MABAS level. I know of a MABAS district not far from me who was given $110,000 for improving biological/terrorist response.
If you would like more about MABAS, email me your mailing address and I'll put enough information into a packet to get you started. I'm sure MIKEY and Jay could also contribute.
Thanks for keeping us up on the RR spill.
CR

[jboczek]

80fire, I don't know how the RR is to work with. We didn't have to deal with them in this incident. We did have a derailment in our district a few years ago. No haz mat involved. They pretty well took over the cleanup themselves. But now this is a whole new ball game since the Canadians took over the Illinois Central. Their spokesman on TV has a definite Canadian accent. I do know that they have their haz mat people in there, as well as a team from Hulcher, the clean up people. Seems they're doing as well as can be expected. They want to get the tracks open again as soon as possible.
NEWS FLASH
Just heard that they've moved the evacuation area in to a one mile radius. It's been 3 miles. That's good news.
Chief, I think I'm going to push our county emergency services association to get serious about MABAS. I've looked up quite a bit of information about it about a year ago when it was first brought up but it never did get very far. St. Clair County, to the West of us, got a division started that I think includes Madison County and also goes across the river to get some St. Louis area involvement. I know our county isn't big enough to do it alone, but 3 or 4 of us would make a good division. Have to get the ball rolling again.

[jboczek]

Things are going well at the wreck. I heard on the scanner this morning that they are working at unloading the last 1 1/2 cars of product. There's a strong west wind blowing so nobody is being allowed east of the tracks while this is going on. I gathered they're digging up some contaminated dirt and hauling in some fresh. The last press conference I saw they were hoping to have just about everybody back in their homes tomorrow (Thursday).
The explosion yesterday was actually a "burp" in a methanol tank car. It resulted in a fire that was extinguished without any problems. The rumors about injuries in this fire were just rumors. No injuries.
Maybe it's just about over.

[jaybird210]

Sheesh. What a friggin mess.

Does anybody know anything about vinyl chloride? What's it used for? Is it a liquid? Or a gas? I 'spose I could do a search on it, but I'm pretty lazy.

Glad to hear this is almost over down there. I'd hate to be out of my house for a week.

[80FIRE]

Jay it apears to be nasty stuff. I think it is used to make PVC pipe and vinyl siding



General
Synonyms: vinyl chloride monomer, monochloroethylene, ethylene monochloride, monochloroethene, VC, VCM, chloroethene
Molecular formula: C2H3Cl
CAS No: 75-01-4
EINECS No: 200-831-0
Physical data
Appearance: colourless gas
Melting point: -153.7 C
Boiling point: -13.9 C
Vapour density: 2.2 (air = 1)
Vapour pressure: 2580 mm Hg at 20 C
Density (g cm-3): 0.9106
Flash point: 42 C
Explosion limits:
Autoignition temperature:
Water solubility: 0.11 g 100 cm-3 at 25 C
Critical temperature: 156.5 C

Stability
Stable. Incompatible with strong oxidizing agents. Highly flammable.

Toxicology
This material is a known human carcinogen. Harmful if inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Typical TWA 1 ppm.
Toxicity data
(The meaning of any abbreviations which appear in this section is given here.)
ORL-RAT LD50 500 mg kg-1

[pcfdcap1]

How is the RR to work with.[QUOTE]
We have the East-West main of the CN-IC disecting Stephenson County, Their people have become an important player-both before and after the merger-in disaster planning. The RR provided equipment and personnel to us for a disaster exercise a couple of years ago in which produced a hazmat leak. The leak just happened to be vinyl chloride and sulfuric acid. Much was learned from the exercise. For you guys that have RR going through your districts, talk to your county ESDA/EMA about doing an exercise involving the railroad. Under the IEMA Act, each county has to do a full scale exercise once every 4 years, with table top or similar each year. An exercise like this is also a good test for MABAS response.

[jboczek]

Things are getting closer. Last night the RR said they needed to finish up some dirt work & lay some track so they could get the rest of the cars out. That's supposed to be done sometime today. But I heard on the scanner this morning that a car vented something again last night. The cops are back at the roadblock on 51 this morning. They haven't been there for the past 2 days. The wind is blowing this way and if something vented, they may be taking some extra precautions. I heard some of the residents on TV last night. They are being patient and understand, but they want to go home. Don't blame them. The post office here, some 6 miles north of Tamaroa, is sorting their mail and they can come here to pick it up. There's a produce distributor there that claims he has $50,000 worth of stuff in his warehouse and can't go to it. Not to mention, the taverns have been closed for 5 days now. That's been good for business at our 1 bar, though. I miss going to Casey's for their day old donuts in the morning. $2/dozen. There was supposed to be a funeral at their Catholic Church on Tuesday. That got moved somewhere else. 4 or 5 days of shutting down a town has a lot of effect that I've never even thought of.
Jay, the vinyl chloride is what they were most concerned with. It is some nasty stuff.
Cap, I'll have to get with our ESDA director and tell him to do something with the RR. We really haven't done a drill like that before. Might be a real good idea.
More news as it becomes available.

[ChiefReason]

Jack:
Glad to hear that progress is being made. I don't know; maybe it's just me, but in the last 5 years, there seems to be alot of train derailments across this country. I'm sure that there are a number of reasons for it, but you have to wonder if cutbacks are affecting the rail industry also.
Jack; I hope that the businesses there in Tamaroa have "business disruption" insurance. That way, the economic impact won't be as severe.
So, were family pets left at the houses or were they evacuated also?
I was just curious.
Take care.
CR

[jboczek]

CR,
They tried to do what they could for the pets. I know that after a coule of days people were allowed to go back in with an escort and either get them or take care of them as best they could. The same with farm animals. My daughter did say that a friend of her knew of a family that lived real close to the tracks and they lost a couple of dogs and a bird or two. I would guess the fumes got to them. Sheriff dept. people were also going in and feeding pets if they could find some that were't being taken care of. I'm sure they tried their best.
I kind of forgot that the mayor of Tamaroa lives about 1/2 block west of the tracks. He saw firsthand what happened, he was home, and is trying his best to get everything back to normal.
There is going to be a lot of discussion between the RR and business owners. Hopefully the RR will compensate businesses for their losses.
As far as the no. of train wrecks, I know of 3 that happened in Illinois alone in the past week. The Illinois Central took one track out a few years ago because they said it cost them too much to maintain 2. They do seem to be working on the tracks quite a bit. Guess they're getting old like everything else.
We don't even know if our trash will get picked up this week. Our trash man lives close to the wreck and I just heard that they won't let him get his truck and use it until it is decontaminated. That's probably not a high priority for the clean up people right now. Oh, well, at least it doesn't smell too bad in the winter.

[jboczek]

Here's the latest from the Tamaroa area. The vinyl chloride car which was thought to have been completly emptied started venting again last night. That has put a damper in the plans to let everybody back to their houses. There's a press conference scheduled for 4 today to let everybody know if it's today or tomorrow to get home.
Think the VC isn't bad stuff? They're removing from 4 - 8 ft. of dirt from a 30' radius of the ruptured car. And the stuff is a gas, not even a liquid. It is heavier than air though. So far, IEMA says there's been no contamination found in any homes. That's the good news.

[jboczek]

This will probably be the final report on the Tamaroa train wreck. Almost everybody got to go home at 8 PM last night. They kept a 3-4 block radius evacuated until this morning so they could get everything finished up. This morning the trains are rolling. I happened to wake up this morning to hear the RR crews let the first train through at about 4:15. Several have gone through DuBois this morning. I'd forgotten how much noise they make. They got it all done with only a couple of minor injuries.
It's been a long 5 days for the residents there. They can only be glad to get home and get their lives back to normal.

[jaybird210]

Jack, it's good to hear everything is getting back to normal. Just in time for the snow (Or is it going to be too far north for youse guys?).

Anyway, thanks for your updates. All very interesting news....

[jboczek]

They did get done just in time. It's been raining most of the morning today and it's supposed to get heavier later in the day. They're talking like 1.5" and change to sleet/freezing rain/snow tomorrow with 2-3" before it's all done.