(The following story by Dan Huntley, Henry Eichel & Scott Dodd appeared on the Charlotte Observer website on January 11.)
AIKEN, S.C. — Frustration deepened among the evacuated residents of Graniteville on Monday, even as emergency officials warned that it could still be days before people can return to their homes — or much longer in the worst cases.
“I’ve got my wife and three kids trying to live with our in-laws in a one-bedroom trailer,” said Charles Fueewell, 29, who couldn’t find a vacant hotel room for his family. “You better believe I’m frustrated.”
Even when residents do go back, they’ll be met with questions about the safety of their homes, yards and drinking water. Officials said Monday that hundreds of fish in nearby creeks are dead, and soil and water sources near the crash site may have been contaminated.
“We can’t have people returning to their homes until it’s safe,” Aiken County Sheriff’s Lt. Michael Frank told the Observer, “and I just can’t tell you — nor do I know anyone else who can tell you — when that will be.”
That’s not what the residents of Graniteville want to hear. More than 5,000 people were driven from their homes and jobs Thursday morning by a yellow-green cloud that spewed from a ripped railcar. The crash killed nine people, including six workers at a nearby textile mill, and made hundreds ill.
Federal investigators say a switch on the Norfolk Southern main line was left open, sending a 42-car freight train hurtling off the main track and into a parked local train.
Investigators haven’t placed blame, but Monday they said the crew of the local train, which was responsible for making sure the switch was reset correctly, had come on duty at 7 a.m. Wednesday and wasn’t off until 7:54 p.m., nearly 13 hours later.
Federal law says crews can work no more than 12 hours at a time. “All of these issues are important to us,” said National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman. “Fatigue is on our most-wanted list.”
Hersman wouldn’t say whether crew members told investigators they had reset the switch before going off duty.
Cleanup crews finally plugged the chlorine leak Sunday, but not before 60 tons of gas had escaped, officials said. Thirty tons remain in the tanker, and must be slowly pumped out to ensure no further leaks. Two other tanks that didn’t rupture must be emptied, as well. Each will take 16 to 24 hours.
Crews had to lay 100 feet of temporary track to bring in empty tanker cars, so they could siphon off gas from the wrecked train.
In the meantime, police continue to enforce a one-mile evacuation zone around the spot where the Norfolk Southern train slammed into parked railcars early Thursday. Those who’ve been inside the zone invariably call it a “ghost town.”
Aiken County Public Safety Sgt. David Turno described cars that had been abandoned in the middle of streets. He entered the town Friday wearing a protective suit, to help look for a missing mill worker. He had to open a gate, and saw the metal lock turning green and corroded in his hands.
“It looked like copper,” Turno said, “only it was steel.”
Officials have avoided giving a set timeline for when they expect people to move back into their homes. They continue to say it will be Wednesday at the earliest, and suggested Monday that it could be much longer.
“We’re just not going to rush it,” Aiken County Sheriff Mike Hunt said. “I can’t afford any more fatalities.”
Police say they’ve had few problems so far with residents trying to sneak in or violate the town’s 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew, but they’re hearing more complaints and frustration from people who want to get to their homes.
Roxanne Martinez, 21, works as a weaver at Avondale Mills. She and six other family members from El Salvador were evacuated from their rented house, and — with the last shelters closed Sunday and all the hotels in Aiken full — as of 5 p.m. Monday, they had nowhere to stay for the night.
“I have no idea when I can go back to work, or when we can even get into our house,” Martinez said, near tears. “And now we can’t even find a hotel to stay in. … There are too many of us who can’t go home.”
Emergency workers who first responded to the disaster describe the devastation as enormous.
“That cloud killed about everything within it’s path, and we can’t take the chance of anything else being killed,” said Phil Napier, chief of the Graniteville area volunteer fire department.
Napier said the metal building that holds his fire trucks is corroded green, with flaking pieces. Trees and animals died in the chlorine fog’s wake, he said.
Within 300 yards of the accident, there are about five churches and numerous homes, Napier said. Avondale Mills, the town’s biggest employer, is also in the contaminated area, as well as the city post office, hardware store and magistrate’s office.
State Sen. Tom Moore, D-Aiken, said he knows that many of his constituents are frustrated.
“People are ticked off,” he said. “I don’t blame them. Who wouldn’t be?”
They want to go home, he said — but they also want to know how they can be sure their homes are safe when they get there.
He said the experts are telling him that air and water monitors will be installed, and that residents will be given a checklist of things to do to make sure their homes are decontaminated and won’t make them sick again.
Twenty-nine people remained hospitalized from the wreck at six area hospitals Monday evening. Four were in critical condition.
Norfolk Southern continues to distribute expense checks to evacuees to help cover food, lodging and lost wages. By Monday evening, the company had aided more than 2,000 people who lined up at its crisis center at a church in downtown Aiken.
The checks had been a source of concern, as well, because of a statement printed on the back that said endorsing one “constitutes a full, final and complete release of all claims” growing out of Thursday’s accident.
The company removed the statement Sunday, after numerous complaints from people who feared the railroad was trying to ward off future lawsuits.
A company spokesman told the Observer on Saturday that the checks had the statement printed on the back before they were even brought to Aiken. But he said Monday that he was mistaken — the statement was actually printed as the checks were being distributed at the church.
Norfolk Southern needed time to alter its software to take the statement off, spokesman Robin Chapman said, and doing so would have meant a delay in distributing checks. The company waited until Sunday because the center didn’t open until after church services ended.
Because of the questions raised last week, company executives will consider whether to continue printing the statement on the back of expense checks in the future, Chapman said.