(The following article by Amanda Iacone was posted on the Journal Gazette website on July 25.)
FORT WAYNE, Ind. — A train that derailed in Paulding County, Ohio, on Sunday morning spilled about 6 gallons of auto products that require special disposal into a harvested farm field.
No hazardous materials were reported to have been onboard the Norfolk Southern freight train that was traveling from Sandusky, Ohio, to Fort Wayne. The train derailed about 2:30 a.m. Sunday between Paulding County Road 151 and Ohio 637 just south of Ohio 613, uncoupling 27 of the 61 cars.
However, when Emergency Management Director Randy Shaffer arrived to the field filled with crumpled cargo containers he found that one of the cars held boxes of bottles of Armor All wheel cleaner, STP fuel injector cleaner and STP power steering fluid. Some of those products, which he considered to be hazardous, spilled onto the farm field, Shaffer said.
But Norfolk Southern had already called in Environmental Remediation Services out of Fort Wayne to clean up the small spill, Shaffer said. He described the threat as minor and that even if all of the bottles had leaked, it would not have posed a major threat.
Norfolk Southern spokesman Rudy Husband said that the U.S. Department of Transportation does not consider those consumer-ready products to be hazardous materials. And therefore the container holding the bottles was not marked for hazardous materials transport.
However, the products are required to be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way. And the small spill has been cleaned, Husband said.
Other products on the derailed train included ketchup, kitchen cabinets, washers and dryers, Shaffer said. Some of the wreckage remained in the field Monday, he said.
But the single rail line was back open for business, Husband said. Investigators with the rail company are still looking into what caused the derailment. No one was hurt.
Shaffer said three trains have come off their tracks in Paulding County in the past 11 years.