(The Goshen News posted the following article on its website on February 22.)
GOSHEN, Ind. — Two freight trains derailed in Goshen Wednesday afternoon slightly injuring a crew member and closing down the tracks and crossings.
Eastbound and westbound trains collided for some reason near the Indiana Avenue crossing on the north side of the city. The location is the same as a derailment of a single freight train in April 2006.
An eastbound train struck a westbound train Wednesday and 14 cars were derailed, said Rudy Husband, a spokesman for Norfolk Southern at Philadelphia.
He said railroad officials were piecing the incident together and planned to bring equipment to the scene to take care of the derailed cars.
Goshen paramedics took one Norfolk Southern employee to Goshen General Hospital for treatment of minor injuries after the accident. Railroad officials did not disclose the employee’s name.
Goshen officials called the Elkhart HAZMAT team to the scene, as well as alerting county health and Environmental Management officials.
Goshen Street Department workers also assisted at the scene, working to capture diesel fuel that was spilling from the upset engine.
No hazardous chemicals were located on either trains, according to Assistant Fire Chief Jim Ramer. However, diesel fuel leaked into a sewer line and reached the Goshen water treatment plant located within a half-mile of the wreck.
The fuel was absorbed at the plant with special absorbing equipment, according to the environmental compliance administrator at the plant, Dave Bates. He said the treatment plant is functioning normally. Hypothetically, a harmful excess of diesel fuel would kill bacteria used to treat wastewater, hampering the plant’s operation, he said.
Bates was told by fire officials that possibly 500 gallons of diesel fuel leaked into the sewer line. Ramer was told by Norfolk officials the locomotives could hold any amount of fuel between 3,500 and 1,000 gallons.
Firefighters responded to the derailment at 12:40 p.m. and had the fuel leak contained by roughly 2:10 p.m. A backhoe was used to dig a trench near a manhole to divert the flow of the fuel away from the septic line.
Fuel was also stopped from flowing into nearby Elkhart River, just south of the wreck, which was a major concern of Ramer’s.
With the second derailment in the same location, both without a hazardous material spill, Ramer said, “We are very lucky.”
The derailment shook the nerves of Peggy Whitworth who lives at 803 N. Indiana Ave., just north of the tracks. She remembers the noise and vibrations from the previous derailment.
“This one was awful … I was in an earthquake in 1968 in Alaska, and the house shook just like this,” she said. “One of these times it’s going to come right through the house — it’s been happening too many times.”