(The following article by Susan Lakes was posted on the Hattiesburg American website on March 22.)
NEW AUGUSTA, Miss. — It could take weeks to determine why two locomotives and 26 rail cars jumped the tracks in Perry County and spilled their loads, officials said.
Wednesday’s derailment occurred two weeks after another train derailed in south Forrest County, forcing dozens of homes to be evacuated due to the spilling of hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide.
No chemicals were spilled in Wednesday’s derailment, officials said, and no evacuations were ordered.
The two locomotives were pulling 126 train cars in all.
Within hours of the derailment, CN Railways, a U.S. subsidiary of Canadian National Railways, brought in heavy equipment to clear a path to the wrecked train cars, some stacked three-high.
The cleanup effort closed one lane of a near mile-long stretch of U.S. 98 between New Augusta and Beaumont as workers tried to clear the wreckage.
“The federal railroad administration will come in and look and Canadian National will too,” said Daniel Johnson, a rail inspector with the Mississippi Department of Transportation. “It’s a mess,” he said, adding because the wreck didn’t involve hazardous materials, cleanup shouldn’t take as long to complete as it did for the March 8 derailment.
“They have to move all this out and salvage it,” said Perry County Sheriff Carlos Herring, pointing down the tracks past the broken and splintered rail ties to one of the cars filled with rolls of paper.
According to Herring, coal is what’s hauled mostly on the tracks. But Wednesday’s derailed loads were carrying pulp and wood.
Leo Gillie, a worker for the New Old Augusta Railroad Co. in New Augusta, drove his motorcycle to the cleanup area and started a search after he heard about the derailment from some talk at a local service station.
“I’m trying to see if any of our cars we got loaded out got on the ground,” he said.
Gillie said his boss had sent him over to see if any of the freight – big rolls of fluff pulp – they had loaded that morning were spilled.
“I’m crossing my fingers none of ours went off the rail,” he said.
He didn’t get his answer. Company officials sent Gillie and others away from the cleanup site, located about a football field’s length to the side of U.S. 98.
Although the cleanup and investigation could take weeks, the track could be open to rail traffic much earlier.
“My guess is in 24 hours we’ll have an opening to be operating trains by then,” said Rich Miller, a CN superintendent.
Besides MDOT and company officials, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency officials and county emergency personnel were standing by to lend assistance.
County officials set up a roadside command post in the new Perry County Emergency Response Command Center, a vehicle recently bought with federal Homeland Security dollars, according to Herring.
It was a debut run for the $40,000 command vehicle.
“It’s going to be here 24 hours around the clock,” Herring said. “It’s the first time it’s went into use.”