COAHOMA, Texas — Authorities kept watch Tuesday night on hydrochloric acid escaping from a derailed tanker car on railroad tracks just east of Coahoma, the Associated Press reported.
The material leaked from a tanker car holding 126 tons of the chemical. When hazardous material experts from Big Spring arrived, a vapor cloud was hovering above the derailment site, officials said.
No injuries were reported from the accident just east of Coahoma, which is 10 miles northeast of Big Spring and 90 miles west of Abilene.
Several cars in the middle of the 16-car Union Pacific train overturned. Most of the derailed cars were empty, officials said. Some cars ahead and behind the derailed cars stayed on the track.
“Where the acid leaked, it reacted to the moisture in the ground and created a vapor cloud. The heat from the vapor dried up the ground and contained the cloud,” incident commander Tommy Sullivan of the Howard County HazMat team told the Big Spring Herald for its Wednesday editions.
A hydrochloric vapor cloud can be highly flammable and cause respiratory problems. Although the derailment occurred in a remote area, Interstate 20 is only about one-half mile away.
Winds pushed the vapor away from the interstate, but dark clouds loomed with a threat of rain.
Also, runoff from a 1-inch rain could send chemical-tainted water into nearby Lake Spence, Sullivan said.
He said contingency plans were in place with the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Department of Transportation to close both directions of Interstate 20 if the winds shifted, blowing the vapor cloud toward the highway.
Howard County sheriff’s deputies set out to evacuate residents living nearby, but found none, officials said.