(The following article by Lolita Harper was posted on the San Bernardino County Sun website on April 7.)
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — Neither deadlines nor noxious clouds of deadly gas loomed overhead Wednesday as crews took their time cleaning up a potentially dangerous, but thus far benign, train derailment.
About 500 residents still waited to return to their homes because cleanup efforts of a derailed train, carrying 60 tons of potentially deadly liquid chlorine, have taken longer than expected.
The hours and days drag on but it’s a small price to pay for safety, San Bernardino fire Capt. Luke Terry said. Nobody was hurt in the derailment and no injuries have been reported in the cleanup efforts.
“You can’t hurry stuff like this,’ Terry said. “We want to erase any potential for danger and to do that, we have to make sure that even the most fractional problem is eliminated.’
A Union Pacific train of 79 cars derailed about 8:21 p.m. Monday just south of Foothill Boulevard and east of Meridian Avenue. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
Five cars remained on the track Wednesday morning: two contained liquid chlorine, one carried a fuel additive, another paint thinner and the last was filled with little white pellets of recycled plastic used to stuff Beanie Babies and the like.
Chlorine is a burning, deadly compound shipped and stored in a pressurized, liquid form. Sixty tons of liquid chlorine were on the train when it derailed.
When released into the air, it creates a thick, greenish-yellow fog that can choke people to death. The gas, used by German troops in 1915 against the French at Ypres, slowly destroys the respiratory organs when inhaled.
Terry, the incident commander, said chlorine has an expansion ratio of 400 to 1, meaning 60 tons of liquid chlorine would turn into 24,000 tons of gas.
“That is something we don’t even want to think about,’ Terry said. “So, yes, we are taking our time.’
None of the chlorine leaked, but the tankers’ outer shells suffered hair-line fractures that experts worried could compromise the strength of the containers if they were lifted while full, Fire Department spokesman Kevinn Whitaker said.
Instead, the liquid is being moved into other tankers through stainless steel hoses one inch in diameter.
Two plastic kiddie pools one adorned with pink mermaids, the other a basic blue were kept just feet away from the accident site in the event that anyone came in contact with hazardous materials.
Residents were kept farther away.
Mobile home residents were invited to stay at the Hilton on Hospitality Lane on Union Pacific’s dime. A claim center was established in the lobby so that anyone who was displaced could check in, get a room, or be reimbursed for expenses they incurred from the emergency evacuation.
“This includes hotel costs, food, even clothes, if they had to run out and buy something,’ Davis said.
Claims representatives will also consider compensation for lost wages if residents provide a pay stub or some sort of proof. Evacuees must also provide proof of their address to receive a free room.
The first chlorine tanker was being emptied Wednesday evening. Once empty crews planned to blast nitrogen inside to freeze any residual, Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis said. They expected to finish draining the chlorine from the tanker sometime late Wednesday.
The empty tank would then be towed from the site, giving experts ample room to evaluate the second tanker filled with chlorine. If no fractures were found, it would be uprighted and towed, Davis said.
If a problem was found, crews would repeat the tedious routine used for the first tanker.
Once the chlorine is removed from the site, the rest of the cleanup could take anywhere from four to 10 hours, Davis said. Union Pacific would then begin to rebuild about 650 feet of track damaged in the derailment.
No lasting environmental damage will occur, Terry said.
“They’ll scrape things off, throw tracks down and roll trains through here, no problem,’ he said.