(The Associated Press circulated the following article by Jacob Jordan on January 6.)
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The trains that usually rumble along the railroad tracks through the tiny mill town of Graniteville will be silent this morning, a memorial to the derailment one year ago that released a toxic chlorine cloud, awakened panicked residents and sent mill workers scrambling to rooftops to avoid the choking greenish-yellow gas.
Nine people died, 250 were injured and 5,400 residents evacuated Jan. 6, 2005, in the nation’s deadliest train wreck involving hazardous material in nearly three decades.
In the days after the wreck, the Federal Railroad Administration issued additional safety measures and months later more recommendations were made – but some have worried it’s taken too long to act.
“It won’t be helpful if they don’t put it into action now,” said Rebecca Schmidt, the mother of 27-year-old engineer Chris Seeling, who was killed in the wreck. “It just takes such a long time. The railroads don’t want to spend the money on making it more safe.”
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board said the crew rushing to finish its work late the night before the derailment neglected to realign a hand-operated switch, causing a Norfolk Southern train to slam into railroad cars parked on a spur.
FRA spokesman Steve Kulm said the agency has been aggressively working on a regulation governing misaligned switches and issued an emergency order in October to improve manual switching procedures.
The agency also has funded a test of a system that electrically monitors switch positions. He said the most recent figures show fewer overall train accidents in the past year compared with a year ago.
One sticking point has been train speeds. Safety officials who investigated the Graniteville crash recommended trains carrying poisonous gases should be required to travel slowly through populated areas.
Norfolk Southern slowed speeds through Graniteville to 25 mph.
The company said it will suspend operations Friday from 2 to 10 a.m. to memorialize the early morning wreck.
The railroad also said it is conducting tests in South Carolina using new technology.
Positioning systems and onboard computers tied to the train’s braking system could help “prevent collisions and other accidents by automatically engaging a train’s brakes,” Norfolk Southern spokeswoman Susan Terpay said.
While that technology and other recommendations wait for implementation, those closer to the accident planned to remember the victims today during a sunrise candlelight vigil at the crash site, in the heart of town.
Later, a second memorial will be held at the nearby University of South Carolina-Aiken.