(The following column by Mike Ellis appeared on the Indianapolis Star website on January 16.)
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — As I write this, I can look out of my office window and see the CSX rail yards in Avon. The Star’s West Bureau office, where we write stories for the Hendricks County Star and West Indy Star, is within a two-iron shot of the tracks.
For that reason, we fully understand the concern that many area residents had about last weekend’s train crash.
You can get used to all the noise — the roar of the diesel engines, the bang of cars coupling, the wail of the train horns — but you can never quite get over the nagging worry about what the half million cars that pass through the yards every year are carrying.
This time, the crash was relatively minor. Only two CSX employees were injured — company officials won’t give their names or release the extent of those injuries — and nothing was spilled that required evacuation.
Things could be much worse. Just to cite a few terrible examples, a 2005 train crash in South Carolina caused eight deaths and injured more than 200 when deadly chlorine gas escaped, and a derailment in Louisville last year set off a fiery crash and a mile-wide evacuation.
As many readers have pointed out, the track and train yards have been here long before homes and businesses started moving into Hendricks County and the Far Westside of Indianapolis. When the old New York Central Railroad built the Big Four Yards in the 1950s, most of the surrounding area was farm fields.
But the development has come, and it’s important for CSX, which took over the yards in 1999, to be a good neighbor. The Jacksonville-based company needs to place a priority on safety and to keep residents informed about what’s happening in the event of an accident.
To its credit, CSX has taken responsibility for last weekend’s crash and is paying for the cleanup and to repair damage. Let’s take that as a hopeful sign that the company will follow through to the satisfaction of local officials and area residents.
And let’s also hope that CSX will learn from this incident to never forget the worries and fears held by those of us who live and work along the tracks.