(The following story by Kim North Shine, Chastity Pratt, and Hugh McDiarmid Jr. appeared on the Detroid Free Press website on Octobere 26.)
DETROIT — Evacuees of an east-side Detroit neighborhood where a train derailed Monday morning were back home by Monday night, but the removal of the cars that toppled off the track is expected to continue today, a railroad spokesperson said.
In addition, one of two tracks blocked by the accident was expected to open overnight, CN railroad spokeswoman Gloria Combe said Monday.
The reopening of the track will allow other freight trains and Amtrak to resume service. Amtrak rerouted six of its trains Monday and bused passengers to their destinations, Combe said.
There were no injuries to residents living just west of I-75 between McNichols and 7 Mile roads. The engineer and conductor — the only people on the train — were also unharmed but were transported to a hospital for an examination, Combe said. The train was headed from Chicago to Detroit.
The cause of the accident is unknown, but a black box may give clues as to what happened, Combe said.
The derailment of nine cars on the 79-car train was initially thought to be far more threatening to the neighborhood because four of the derailed cars were tankers carrying the flammable chemical methanol.
Methanol is commonly used in antifreeze, as a fuel additive, and as an industrial solvent.
It is a fire hazard, exploding when exposed to heat or flame. Exposure to high concentrations can cause permanent blindness and ailments ranging from nausea to liver damage, according to the National Safety Council’s analysis of the chemical.
The first fire and police crews to arrive at the site of the derailment about 10 a.m. believed the threat to public safety was extremely high, Detroit Fire Commissioner Tyrone Scott said. Believing that, fire and police officials decided to evacuate a 1-square mile area, twice the usual area for what was rated a Level 3 hazardous materials scene, Scott said. “We were concerned that one spark could cause a massive fire,” Scott said.
Hundreds of people were asked to leave their homes. Greenfield Park and Greenfield Union elementary schools were closed after students were evacuated. Students were driven by school and city buses to Pershing High School. The schools were to reopen today.
“We wanted to err on the high side of caution until we knew exactly what we were dealing with,” he said.
Friends and family searched for evacuees. Parents tried to maneuver past barricades, to get to their schoolchildren. One family had to go back to a house a few blocks from the derailment to get their grandmother, who has difficulty hearing and didn’t know police had come to her door.
Inspection of the train cars found that only one of the tankers was leaking, and at a rate of eight drops per minute, police, fire and railroad officials said.
By 2:30 p.m. barricades started coming down, reopening streets to residents. A gas station at 7 Mile and I-75 reopened.
The derailment was at least the sixth Michigan railroad accident involving rail cars carrying hazardous materials this year, and the first to involve leakage and evacuation, according to data from the Federal Railroad Administration.
For the past three years, 34 such accidents were recorded in Michigan, including one chemical release and four evacuations.
Nationally, 773 hazardous materials accidents were recorded on the nation’s rail lines in 2003. Twenty-seven involved leaking chemicals and nearby residents were evacuated 15 times.