(The following story by Robert Kelly appeared on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website on December 28.)
PEVELY, Mo. — Workers continued to clean up a derailment of six rail cars in Pevely throughout the day Thursday.
Six tanker cars on a Union Pacific train left the tracks Wednesday night and rolled into a ravine. But the cars, four of which carried sulfuric acid, did not leak and no evacuations were ordered, authorities said.
The other two derailed cars contained no chemicals.
The emergency response team of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources was dispatched to the scene after the derailment, about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday. They worked with local emergency officials and Union Pacific employees to drain the derailed cars of the sulfuric acid and to remove the cars from the area.
The cause of the accident was under investigation. It happened behind the Dow Chemical plant on Riverside Drive.
No one was injured in the derailment, said Mark Davis, a spokesman for Union Pacific.
Davis said there was no spill because of the train cars’ sturdy construction.
Sulfuric acid has many industrial uses, including ore processing, fertilizer manufacturing, oil refining, wastewater processing and chemical synthesis. Extensive exposure to sulfuric acid has been linked to various cancers.