(The following article by Leah Thorsen was posted on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website on June 29.)
ST. JACOB, Mo. — Roughly 25 hours after being evacuated because of a train derailment, residents of nearby houses got to go home Wednesday.
“Thank goodness,” said Kelly Malone, who slept on the floor of her daughter’s house in Collinsville on Tuesday night.
The cause of the derailment of 21 cars of the 131-car CSX Transportation train remained under investigation Wednesday.
Although chemicals leaked from a few cars, the derailment did not cause major environmental damage, said Maggie Carson, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.
Workers from the agency were at the derailment scene monitoring the air. The agency also asked CSX to test nearby wells to make sure the water supply isn’t contaminated, Carson said.
The spill prompted the evacuation of 21 people from 12 homes, said Gary Sease, a CSX spokesman.
Hydrogen peroxide, a bleaching agent, and the fertilizer ammonium nitrate leaked from the cars.
The hydrogen peroxide mostly was contained in a depression in the ground around the crash site near Triad Middle School, he said, and crews were moving the ammonium nitrate to a nearby soybean field, Sease said.
He did not know how much of each chemical had spilled, but he said it was a substantial amount.
Some of the cars had to be scrapped, but most will be salvaged and moved when the tracks are repaired, Sease said.
Local officials did not know how long it will take to clean up the mess nor what the cost would be.
Once the cost is tallied, the railroad company will meet with local officials to determine how much it will pay toward expenses such as overtime for emergency workers, Sease said.
The tracks reopened about 7:40 p.m. Wednesday, Sease said, and the first freight train since the derailment had begun running west toward St. Louis.