Mass evacuation ordered as railroad crews continue to burn off chemical 3 days after accident
\n Ohio
\nNearly 2,000 residents of eastern Ohio remained under evacuation orders on Monday as railroad crews drained and burned off a toxic chemical from five tanker cars of a freight train that derailed in a fiery wreck three days earlier, officials said.
\nThe venting of pressurized vinyl chloride, a highly flammable and carcinogenic gas, began with a single explosion, as was anticipated, followed by a steady incineration of the remaining cargo, said Sandy Mackey, a spokesperson for the Ohio Emergency Management Agency.
\n\u201cThat controlled release was the one explosion,\u201d she told Reuters by telephone. \u201cIt went as planned. It seemed to be a successful incident.\u201d
\nNo injuries were reported, either from Monday\u2019s operation or the accident on Friday night, authorities said.
\nLive video on Monday showed a towering column of thick, black smoke rising from the accident site in East Palestine, Ohio, a town close to the Pennsylvania border northwest of Pittsburgh.
\nThe train, operated by Norfolk Southern Railroad and consisting of three locomotives and 150 freight cars, was headed from Illinois to Pennsylvania when it derailed shortly before 9 p.m. EST on Friday, setting off a massive fire that forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes in the immediate vicinity.
\nAbout 50 cars actually left the tracks, 20 of which carried hazardous materials, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
\nPublic safety concerns deepened after the railroad said pressure-relief devices on some tankers were found on Sunday to have stopped working, which the company said could \u201cresult in a catastrophic failure.\u201d
\nOhio Governor Mike DeWine said in a statement the chemical contents of the five rail cars in question were \u201cunstable and could potentially explode, causing deadly disbursement of shrapnel and toxic fumes.\u201d
\nWorking with state and local emergency officials, Norfolk Southern said on Monday it devised a plan to manually vent the cars, allowing the contents to \u201cbe drained in a controlled fashion\u201d under supervision of \u201cexperts and first responders.\u201d
\nAs part of the plan, DeWine and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro ordered evacuations expanded on Monday to encompass all homes within a 1- to 2-mile area around the derailment site on both sides of the state line.
\nPeggy Clark, a spokesperson for the Columbiana County Emergency Management Agency, said the mandatory evacuation covered an estimated 1,900 people on the Ohio side alone.
\nDeWine\u2019s office warned that fumes released into the air from the venting operation could be deadly if inhaled, while also posing the risk of skin burns and serious lung damage.
\nVinyl chloride is a colorless, industrially produced gas that burns easily and is used primarily in the manufacture of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe and other products, according to the National Cancer Institute. It also is a byproduct of cigarette smoke.
\nThe precise means by which crews vented the gas was not explained. But the railroad said workers had prepared drainage pits and embankments, apparently to contain residue from the release. State environmental officials monitored air quality, it said.
\nNearly two hours after the operation began, the company said the \u201ccontrolled breach\u201d had been \u201ccompleted successfully.\u201d
\nThe cause of the derailment was under investigation by the NTSB, but board member Michael Graham said on Sunday that video footage of the accident pointed to possible \u201cmechanical issues on one of the rail car axles.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mass evacuation ordered as railroad crews continue to burn off chemical 3 days after accident Ohio Nearly 2,000 residents of eastern Ohio remained under evacuation orders on Monday as railroad crews drained and burned off a toxic chemical from five tanker cars of a freight train that derailed in a fiery wreck three days earlier, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-312360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n