(The following article by Brandon Keat and Karen Roebuck was posted on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review website on January 18.)
PITTSBURGH, Pa. — A CSX Transportation freight train derailed Tuesday in Lawrence County, dumping 10,000 gallons of sulfuric acid into a company rail yard.
Seven freight cars overturned about 10:30 a.m. at the yard in Taylor, about two miles south of New Castle. Emergency workers using lime and a vacuum had the spill contained about noon. Nobody was injured, said authorities.
Favorable weather conditions and the spot of the spill kept the situation from becoming serious, officials said. Winds blew away from buildings where others were working, and the acid was dumped between two sets of tracks that kept the material from spreading.
“We were very lucky in that the lay of the land in that area allowed it to contain itself,” said Lawrence County Public Safety Director Brian Melcer.
When mixed with water, sulfuric acid creates toxic fumes that can irritate the respiratory system. A light rain was falling yesterday morning, but it was not enough to create a problem, said fire Chief Dave Allegro of Taylor Volunteer Fire Department.
Two of the seven derailed cars were carrying sulfuric acid, but only one — containing 10,000 to 13,000 gallons of the material — leaked, Melcer said. That tanker was gashed by the coupling on another derailed car, said Brian Hunt, a deputy regional administrator for the Federal Railroad Administration. The other five cars carried non-hazardous freight.
The cars were being moved in the yard when they derailed, CSX spokesman Bob Sullivan said.
Officials expected the site to be cleaned up and the wrecked cars cleared from the tracks by last night, Hunt said.
“We consider this a major incident,” said Steve Kulm, spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration, which investigates train accidents. “These types of incidents are rare.”
Federal Railroad Administration inspectors are investigating the incident. A final report should be released in about three months, he said.
Train accidents nationwide resulted in hazardous releases 30 times between January and October 2005, Kulm said.
With 21,000 miles of train routes east of the Mississippi, CSX transports about 500,000 carloads of hazardous chemicals a year, Sullivan said.
Of the 30 million carloads of freight shipped by rail annually in the United States, 1.7 million carloads contain hazardous materials, according to Tom White, spokesman for the Association of American Railroads, a Washington D.C.-based trade organization.
More than 99 percent of the loads are delivered without incident, White said.