(The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published the following story by Ken Leiser on its website on March 24.)
ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Federal accident investigators are focusing even more closely on a recently installed section of rail recovered from the scene of a Feb. 9 train derailment in Southern Illinois that forced the evacuation of 1,000 residents.
Pieces of the insulated rail joint were examined last week at the National Transportation Safety Board materials laboratory in Washington. The section was installed 2 1/2 weeks before the accident, just about where the first of 21 rail cars derailed.
Toxic hydrochloric acid and vinyl chloride escaped from some of the ruptured tanker cars, forcing the evacuation of 1,000 people living in and around the small town of Tamaroa. The derailment also ignited a methanol fire that burned for several hours. No one was injured in the accident.
“Now I can say we are looking at the rail,” said Ron Hynes, the lead safety board investigator assigned to the case. “We do have information that the rail broke under the train.”
Hynes said it could take until summer to determine why the northbound Illinois Central-Canadian National train derailed in the middle of the small town 75 miles southeast of St. Louis.
Despite the safety board’s focus on the rail, the board is still gathering information, and nothing has been formally ruled out.
Investigators began focusing on the rail joint after a railroad worker found a piece of broken rail at the accident scene. Installed Jan. 23, it provides a section of track that electricity won’t pass through, to aid the train signal system, Hynes said.
Pieces of the recently installed track were among those that broke in the derailment. Investigators are focusing on marks they believe were made by railroad wheels passing over the recently installed track before the derailment. The rail fragments they are focusing on range in length from 19 to 74 inches.
Jack Burke, spokesman for the Canadian National Railway Co., said the railroad had not completed its required accident report to the Federal Railroad Administration. The deadline to file that report is March 31.
He wouldn’t comment on the safety board inquiry.
Burke said the railroad was working with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to come up with a long-term soil monitoring program. Under terms of a consent decree, the railroad and the state of Illinois will be back in court this week to finalize the plan.
Meanwhile, he said, the railroad has settled claims collectively approaching $400,000 with residents and business owners affected by the derailment and evacuation. He said that represented 1,000 people, or more than 90 percent of those eligible to file claims.
Burke said the railroad had agreed to pay for hotel bills, food, clothing and lost wages – as well as the inconvenience to residents of being forced from their homes for up to four days.
The evacuation dragged on for days while cleanup crews painstakingly removed the damaged tanker cars from the middle of town.