(The following article by Charles McChesney was posted on the Syracuse Post-Standard website on November 22.)
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The emergency at the CSX train derailment near Central Square is over, according to Terry Bennett, emergency services coordinator for Oswego County.
The rail cars with chlorine tanks have been picked up and put back on the tracks. Route 11 was to be reopened overnight, she said.
The Central Square Fire Department has left the scene, as have the rest of the emergency workers, Bennett said.
CSX workers will remain on the scene and will be responsible for the cleanup.
A CSX spokesman said the track would be rebuilt and the area restored and cleaned up.
He didn’t say how long it would take.
The first priority, said CSX’s Robert Sullivan, was getting the cars out of the area. By Monday morning, workers had removed two cars that contained sodium hydroxide, a corrosive chemical used in drain cleaner. One car had leaked, but Sullivan said he did not know how much had been spilled.
Tracked backhoes and other heavy equipment grappled and pushed wreckage Monday from the gully where trains had run. The equipment’s tracks turned the rail bed into chocolate-colored mud, as they cleared hundreds of tons of cars from the track area to nearby land to the west.
After clearing the cars, Sullivan said, “the second step is getting the track rebuilt. That will be done in the next day or so. Then you focus on restoring the site.”
Sullivan declined to offer a timeline but said that, depending on the circumstances, such work can take a couple of weeks or a couple of months.
As the afternoon wore on, workers focused on four tanker cars full of chlorine.
Sullivan said the process required that the tankers be checked and their
safety reassessed before they were moved.
Route 11 had remained closed Monday between Dry Bridge Road and Gildner Road.
The closed bridge made for a quiet day at many local businesses. Nancy, Ron and Dave Hunt passed the time watching television at C&N Auto Sales, and the lights were out at a nearby diner. At another car lot, Serio’s Service Center, the lot was full, but not with customers. Emergency vehicles had set up camp in front of the business.
Inside, owner Tom Serio was talking to a customer on the phone about front-end problems as fire officials came in to tell him that while he did not have to evacuate, they did want him to know that workers were preparing to move one of the chlorine tankers.
They passed along reassurances they had been given by railroad workers. However, they added that if a problem developed, a horn would sound. “If you hear an air horn, drop what you’re doing and run,” a fire official said.
Serio said he would fix the one car still in one of his service bays. “We’ll finish the car and probably leave,” he said.
The Central Square school district canceled classes Monday because of the derailment, said Superintendent Walter Doherty.
“We plan to have classes (today), but we’ll make that decision (Monday evening) or in the morning,” he said. The middle school, Paul V. Moore High School and Millard Hawk Primary School are all within a mile of the derailment.
In the subdivision to the west of the derailment, neighbors walked about and surveyed the work, staying clear of yellow tape marking the scene.
Al English, who lives at the end of the Dry Bridge Road, near the derailment, said the accident sounded like an earthquake at a little before 3 p.m. Saturday. “It woke both my kids,” he said. “They’re teenagers.”
As he looked across the scene, English noted a worker in a roped-off area examining, and then photographing, a broken piece of track.
“They’re awful interested in that piece of track,” said English.
The worker, who identified himself as being with Sperry Rail Systems, said he was doing analysis.
Neighbor Emile Godard, who once worked on the railroad in Canada, said he thought trains traveled the route too fast.