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(The following article by Matthew Rink was posted on the Massillon Independent website on October 27.)

MASSILLON, Ohio — Hazardous material crews spent Thursday cleaning up a flammable chemical following a train derailment in Perry Township.

Eight cars in the middle of a 56-car train traveling from the Brewster yards to Akron derailed around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday on the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway tracks just south of the Kemary Avenue overpass.

“Eight cars derailed and one 30,000-gallon tanker carrying approximately 25,000-gallons of acetone was leaking,” said Perry Police Sgt. Frank Hamilton. “The leak has been stopped and the cleanup has just begun.”

Acetone, which is a colorless liquid with a distinct smell, is a manufactured chemical that occurs naturally in the environment, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Acetone evaporates easily and dissolves in water. It is used to make plastic, fibers and other chemicals, according to the agency. It is also found in rubber cement, some glues and fingernail polish remover.

“Acetone is a highly flammable substance, fortunately there was no ignition,” Hamilton said.

“It just happened at a place that was to our advantage.”

Don Snyder, 47, heard the train’s brakes scream Wednesday night shortly after 10 p.m.
“We heard the brakes of the train and we saw it stop,” Snyder said. “We didn’t think too much about it. It was pretty much a screech. He put the breaks on hard.”

Snyder spent most of the day questioning workers about concerns he had for his 180-cattle dairy farm, which has been in the family for more than 50 years.

“My initial concerns were for the pasteur, for the cows,” he said. “I’m glad it happened here instead of in town.”

The tracks run through the middle of Snyder’s property, he said. The fumes from the acetone were thick enough to smell late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, but couldn’t be recognized by noon, Snyder added.

Snyder’s farm and a neighboring farm were not required to evacuate and no threat was posed to him or his livestock.

“It was pretty well contained just by the topography of where the spill occurred,” Hamilton said.

Commotion from dozens of emergency vehicles slowed the farmer’s daily work. Crews from the Stark County Hazardous Materials unit, the Federal Railroad Administration, Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway, R.J. Corman Railroad, Canton City Health Department, the air pollution control division of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Sunpro Environmental were on scene, as well as fire departments from several area agencies, according to Tim Warstler of the county’s Emergency Management Agency.
Warstler said REACT steered traffic away from Kemary at the Fohl and Klick street intersections. The Red Cross also provided food and portable bathrooms for cleanup crews.

The Stark County Hazardous Materials unit used a vacuum-removal procedure to clean the substance.

The cause of the derailment cannot be determined until crews are able to fully examine the cars and the tracks, which won’t happen until the chemical is removed, according to an official with the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway.

“We can’t make a full assessment until the rerailing occurs,” said Bill Callison, vice president of law and government relations for railway. “There are a series of possibilities at this point. It could be car-related or it could be track-related.”

The valve of the tanker transporting the acetone was “sheered” during the derailment, Callison said. “We’ve hired a heavy-equipment operator to rerail them but the Perry fire chief won’t let us rerail them until the acetone is removed.”

By 6 p.m., three cars had been uprighted and moved. Hamilton said the remaining cars would be uprighted and taken from the tracks today. At midnight, crews were expected to transfer the acetone from the leaky tanker to another railroad car.

The damaged rails will be fixed by this weekend, when travel on the Wheeling & Lake Erie tracks will resume, he said.

“We want to make sure the material released from the car is being and will get cleaned up properly,” said Bart Ray, on-scene coordinator for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. “We’ve been checking streams to make sure they have not been affected and at this point they have not.”

The major health risk of the substance is its vapors, Ray said. Breathing the vapors could be hazardous, he said, but they pose little threat given that the chemical was confined to a small area.

Ray also said dry wells in the area are safe.

“There doesn’t seem to be enough of the product released for us to be concerned about neighboring well water,” Ray said. “We are 400 or 500 yards from the nearest residence and we’re at a low spot so the water would have to travel uphill to reach such wells.”
Ray said 700 gallons of the chemical had been cleaned up by Thursday afternoon.
“There are some acetone remains in the soil and that will have to be taken care of, but we have to wait to get the cars out of there first,” he said.

Warstler noted that the location of the accident, as well as Thursday’s weather conditions – cooler temperatures, high humidity and low wind speeds – benefited the cleanup efforts.

“Most of the acetone collected in a natural depression,” Warstler said. “If you have to have this happen in your county or in your area, you want it to happen in a low populated area.”