(The following story by Dave Gustafson appeared on the Charleston Gazette website on April 5. CSX’s call to 911 is available here: http://webad.cnpapers.com/trainderail)
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A set of train tracks in western Kanawha County might reopen as soon as today after a mudslide and a massive boulder sent a locomotive careening into the Coal River on Wednesday morning.
The two CSX crewmembers came around a curve in the track and saw that their path was blocked.
“They saw this boulder big as a house so they got as far back in the engine as they could,” said Dale Petry, director of emergency services for Kanawha County.
The crew scrambled out of the train after the two locomotives and about 10 cars derailed, but one person went back to shut off the locomotives. That probably kept the train from pumping more fuel into the river, Petry said.
CSX spokesman Bob Sullivan said the coal train encountered a mudslide and boulder about 5:15 a.m. The locomotives were pulling 149 cars loaded with coal from Elk Run in Boone County to Newport News, Va.
The mudslide probably occurred shortly before the train rounded the bend because another CSX train made it through the area shortly before, he said.
A CSX employee called Kanawha County emergency dispatchers at 5:53 a.m. about the derailment at Jo Ann Lane, according to a recorded call released by Metro 911. He told the dispatcher that the crew was not hurt, some diesel fuel was leaking and that he learned about the wreck at 5:46 a.m.
More than a dozen residents of Jo Ann Lane were blocked in for hours until another train pulled away the cars that didn’t derail. Last year, they were blocked in by another derailment in nearly the same spot.
Some people ventured to gawk at the spectacular debris field of rocks, coal, tracks and train parts that stretched for hundreds of yards. One coal car was bent into an L-shape around another car. A length of track twisted into a question mark.
Train enthusiast Dave Zimmerman made a morning trip, then brought his 5-year-old grandson, Chase Norris, when he got out of preschool in the afternoon.
Chase snapped away with his camera, and said he wanted to reconstruct the wreck with his HO-scale toy train at home.
A small army of contractors from R.J. Corman Derailment Services and other companies hauled heavy equipment into the remote wreck site Wednesday afternoon and began the massive cleanup effort. As the smell of diesel fuel hung in the air, a pumper truck from Kentucky sucked up fuel from the derailed locomotives.
Cleanup crews were planning to use explosives to demolish the immense rock that caused the wreck, Petry said.
Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper said the county sent a “limited response” to the scene once officials determined there was no hazardous materials threat.
Carper said he wants to know exactly when the wreck occurred to see whether CSX delayed calling 911 again.
“It sounds like the response was really good, but I’m checking the numbers,” he said.
When another CSX train hauling chemicals derailed in Handley on Feb. 6, the company waited more than an hour to notify Metro 911. Some of the derailed cars contained propane and chlorine residue. CSX paid $100 to Handley residents who were affected by the evacuation prompted by that wreck.
Jean Melton, chief operator at the St. Albans Municipal Utility Commission water plant, said they were notified of the diesel fuel upstream from their water intake about 6:15 a.m.
Melton said the train company’s environmental crews installed two booms across the Coal River to absorb the spilled fuel.
“Even though there’s just a little getting to [the boom she inspected], hardly anything is getting past it,” she said. “We’re mostly certain we’re not going to see anything get into our water intake.”
The utility will keep a boom in place at its intake to divert any fuel that might trickle downriver.
“It was a normal day except for the excitement,” she said. “It wasn’t as bad as it could have been.”