(The following article by Steve Lannen And Andy Mead was posted on the Lexington Herald-Leader website on January 16.)
IRVINE, Ky. — It sounded like something from a movie, but it was real: Four runaway train cars rolled from near Winchester almost to Irvine yesterday, covering 20 miles before they hit two engines and caused a spectacular explosion.
Authorities evacuated some homes and businesses in Estill County, and tensions were high because one of the cars was carrying a dangerous chemical. But there were no reports of fatalities or injuries.
There also were no answers yesterday on why the cars started their wild ride, and confusion on how they came to hit the engines.
Police at the scene originally said the engines were moved into the path of the runaway cars to stop them.
Chris Lanham of the Kentucky State Police said that after the cars started moving, the railroad contacted a station near Irvine and had engineers pull the engines away from the station and into the line of the breakaway cars. The engines were then abandoned, he said.
“CSX actually sent that engine to stop those cars. They did not want that collision to occur in Irvine itself because of the populace,” Lanham said.
Gery Williams, a CSX official who spoke at a late-afternoon press conference, could not confirm that account and said it was not standard operating procedure. “We don’t know if there was really a conscious decision” to place the engines in the path of the wayward cars, Williams said. “At one point the crew was taking action to do that. We told them no, they had to get off … .”
Gary Sease, a CSX spokesman in Jacksonville, Fla., said the engines were part of a northbound train that was abandoned when word arrived that the runaway cars were coming.
According to CSX and Kentucky State Police, the four cars started their odyssey at the Patio community just southeast of Winchester. Sease said the cars rolled out of a side track at the Patio community. They were first reported at 11:05 a.m.
The cars reached the collision point just outside of Irvine at 11:12 a.m. The stretch of track the cars were on apparently runs downhill.
One of the cars was carrying 30,000 gallons of Butyl acetate, a flammable solvent used in the manufacture of lacquers, photographic films and plastics. The other three cars carried plastic pellets.
The collision near the Kentucky River destroyed the four cars and the engines, and sent up a thick plume of black smoke.
Lanham said that according to firefighters on the scene, the collision sent some fuel or other chemicals into the river, which was on fire for a while.
“A firefighter told me he was one of the first on the scene and that the Kentucky River was actually on fire, the surface was on fire,” Lanham said.
However, state emergency management officials said the river wasn’t affected. Fred Rogers, Estill County’s emergency management director, also said the river was not harmed.
Estill County Judge-executive Wallace Taylor said it had not been determined whether the chemical got into the river. “There was conflicting stories on that,” Taylor said. “Utility companies downstream have been notified of that possibility.”
Susan Lancho, a spokeswoman for Kentucky American Water, which supplies Lexington, said the company was monitoring the water it draws from the river, but was not expecting problems.
“We do not believe it will have any impact on the water here,” Lancho said, adding that state environmental officials concurred with that assessment. The point of the collision is 35 to 40 miles upriver from the company’s withdrawal pipe in southern Fayette County, she said.
Police evacuated about 20 nearby homes and two businesses — a coal tipple and a Carhartt factory. About 3,000 people, including most of Irvine, were told to stay in their homes for a while and to close vents that could bring in outside air.
By 4:30 p.m., the fire was out and all but three homes had been reoccupied.
Hazardous-materials crews from the railroad were on their way to the scene late yesterday.