(The following article by L.L. Brasier and Matt Helms appeared in the Detroit Free Press on May 8.)
DETROIT — Cleanup could take another day or two following a nine-car train derailment in Holly Township — caused early Wednesday morning perhaps by a failed beaver dam unleashing a rain-swollen 25-acre pond that washed out the rail bed.
Officials said the flood waters raced downstream, forcing 25 area homes to be evacuated briefly.
The waters also washed out at least one road and may have weakened another.
In the derailment, seven cars packed with automobiles and auto parts, and two locomotives in the 22-car CSX Railroad train tumbled from the tracks several hundred yards off North Holly Road north of Grange Hall Road about 1:15 a.m. Wednesday.
Officials said the train’s engineer and conductor suffered minor injuries. Both men — whom the railroad declined to identify — were treated at Genesys Regional Medical Center near Flint. One of the men was kept overnight for observation.
No cause has been established for the crash or flood, but the possible failure of one of the area’s numerous beaver dams is being explored.
Police and firefighters responded to a call from CSX minutes after the derailment of the train bound for Toledo from Saginaw.
“A firefighter told me the engineer bent down to get his coffee, and when he looked back up, the track was gone,” said Dave Gray, a nearby resident who heard the crash while watching television.
Gray, accustomed to the sound of trains screeching to a halt on the tracks, went to bed assuming that a train had merely stopped. But when he got up about 3 a.m. his small subdivision was swarming with rescue personnel.
Contractors had to cut roads through the fields of a former horse farm to reach the crash site. Bulldozers leveled the ground and giant cranes were brought in to hoist the toppled cars.
CSX spokesman David Hall said a train traveled that stretch of rails around 3 p.m. Monday and reported nothing unusual. He said an inspection of the track Monday also found nothing wrong.
Hall said the two-man crew on the early Wednesday morning train sensed something was amiss with the tracks while braking for a lower speed limit through the village of Holly. They tried stopping the train, but it quickly derailed.
Officials from the state Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it was too early to tell how many gallons of diesel fuel spilled when the two locomotives fell on opposite sides of the tracks. But the leakage appeared to have been contained to the immediate area, said DEQ analyst Earl Friese Jr.
Friese said he believed no more than 800 gallons of fuel may have spilled; and environmental officials may eventually require CSX to install monitoring wells to make sure residential water wells aren’t contaminated.
No other hazardous materials were spilled, officials said.
Officials also were assessing damage to nearby roads. A part of Elliott Road near North Holly Road was wiped out, and Road Commission for Oakland County crews were repairing it. For several hours, at least a foot of water rushed over a stretch of North Holly that remained closed throughout the afternoon, said Capt. Brian Dennison of the North Oakland County Fire Authority.
“It was nothing you wanted to cross a car in,” Dennison said.
Residents said heavy rains fell in the area Monday. National Weather Service statistics show more than an inch of rain fell in the area in the first week of this month.
Warren Flatau, spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration, said the agency is investigating the wreck.
Holly Township Clerk Karin Winchester said the area is heavily populated with beavers that build dams on Swartz Creek, which runs through the property.
“Experience tells us that’s an explanation that would make sense, but at this point we don’t know,” she said.
Hall said CSX, based in Jacksonville, Fla., could reopen the tracks as early as today but its investigation could take days or weeks.