(The Tallahassee Democrat posted the following article by Gerald Ensley on its website on February 12.)
CYPRESS — Nineteen CSX freight cars — none carrying hazardous material — derailed early Tuesday morning in the rural Florida Panhandle.
The derailment occurred one-quarter mile east of the section of track where CSX suffered a 34-car derailment June 4, 1997, spilling a small amount of hydrogen peroxide.
Both derailments were in the rural community of Cypress, four miles west of the town of Grand Ridge, which is about 60 miles west of Tallahassee.
No one was hurt in Tuesday’s derailment, which occurred at 4:55 a.m. (EST), as the train headed west from Chattahoochee to Pensacola. A CSX spokesman said the cause of the accident won’t be determined until the cars are removed and the track examined.
“It’s completely ’cause unknown’ at this time,” said CSX spokesman Gary Sease, in Jacksonville. “We’ve got to get those cars removed, so we can see what’s underneath.”
In the early afternoon, crews were bulldozing a clear zone around the cars, to allow cranes to work in the area. Sease said CSX expects the tracks to be repaired and operating by late this morning. As of Tuesday evening, CSX had re-routed two freight trains north through Montgomery, Ala., and had put 10 other trains on hold.
Sease said Amtrak passenger train service would also be disrupted until the tracks were repaired, but he referred specific questions to Amtrak. Phone messages for Amtrak officials were not returned Tuesday.
The 19 derailed cars were in the middle of a 58-car train pulled by three locomotives. The majority of the derailed cars were empty boxcars, many of which were certified for carrying hazardous materials but were not carrying any such materials Tuesday. Three of the cars were carrying automobiles, including one that turned on its side beside the tracks but still held all its automobiles. One car that derailed but did not overturn or leak was carrying vegetable oil.
Sease would not estimate how long it would take to determine the cause of Tuesday’s derailment. After the 1997 derailment, the hydrogen peroxide was cleaned up without incident – but no cause was ever determined for the derailment.
“That is fairly unusual; our investigators don’t see that very often,” Sease said. “But sometimes, the force of a derailment is such that material is so damaged that no cause can be established.”
William Pratt, a registered nurse at Chattahoochee State Hospital, lives in the only home near the derailment with his 20-year-old son. Pratt had just reported for work when he was notified at the hospital about the crash, which was about 100 yards behind his home near a pen with a bull, two cows and two goats. He returned home to check on his son.
“He was asleep and never even woke up,” Pratt said.