POTTERVILLE, Mich. — Most local businesses opened Saturday for the first time since a train carrying propane derailed nearby on Memorial Day, a wire service reported.
Eaton County Sheriff Rick Jones allowed the town’s 2,200 residents to return home Friday after cleanup crews removed four damaged tank cars filled with highly explosive liquid propane, authorities said. Jones had limited access to the town and its residents until Sunday to deter looters.
Within an hour of Friday’s 5 p.m. all-clear for the town’s residents, streams of cars lined up at six checkpoints police set up to keep nonresidents out.
People headed home with bags of clothes they’d grabbed during brief trips back during the week, pets by their sides and smiles on their faces.
“We’re just glad to be home – we’ve been cooped up for almost a week,” said Glenn Van Epps, with his wife, Julie, and daughter Kelsey, who turned 6 on Friday. The family stayed at the Super 8 Hotel in Charlotte with their dog, Dakota.
“The kids are bored — everybody’s bored,” Van Epps told the Lansing State Journal. “Sitting in a hotel room, there’s not much you can do.”
The railroad tracks were still off limits and being patrolled by law enforcement. Workers from Canadian National Railway Co. continued the cleanup and reinstalled a section of track, railroad spokesman Ian Thomson said. Contractors were hired to cut up the cars on scene that could not be recovered, he said. That process would take at least two weeks.
Canadian National had been paying for food and hotel rooms for displaced residents. Officials at the company have not said how much the derailment has cost the company. The U.S. Federal Railroad Administration also had five investigators at the scene. Potterville is about 12 miles southwest of Lansing and 90 miles west of Detroit.