Small fires continued to burn for a third day at the site of the latest crude oil train derailment, more than 100 people remain locked out of their homes and investigators trying to determine the cause endured work in subzero temperatures.
Only one resident was treated for minor injuries after 29 cars of a 109-car CSX train derailed Monday. Nineteen of those cars carrying crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken shale region caught fire, with several exploding into massive fireballs.
A unified command post for the derailment was established on Wednesday in this town of about 1,600, about 30 miles southeast of Charleston, the state capital. The post combines several federal agencies and their state counterparts involved in the accident cleanup and investigation.
“The top priorities for response personnel remain the safety of the community and responders, and mitigating the impact to the environment,” said Coast Guard Capt. Lee Boone, the federal on-scene coordinator.
As 1 to 3 inches of additional snow fell on top of several of the derailed tank cars, workers began re-railing and moving some of the ones still loaded with oil. Officials from the Federal Railroad Administration got a closer look at the derailment site Wednesday morning and were able to review video footage from cameras on the train’s locomotives.
But 48 hours after the derailment, conditions were not safe enough for CSX to begin transferring the oil from the damaged tank cars to trucks.
More than 100 evacuated residents remain in area hotels, and Rob Doolittle, a CSX spokesman, said they will be able to return to their homes “as soon as it’s safe.”
“That is the first priority,” he said.
Water service was restored Wednesday morning to some area residents who had been without it since Monday. Though no oil has been detected in the nearby Kanawha River, which supplies drinking water for the area, intake pumps were turned off as a precaution. Residents were still advised to boil their water.
About 500 feet of oil containment boom was deployed in the river as a precaution, according to officials. The derailment site is just downstream from the New River Gorge, a national park and popular recreation area.
Even as the scent of burning oil permeated the frigid air Wednesday, residents who evacuated Monday night were trying to get their lives back in order, stocking up on groceries and shoveling their snow-covered driveways.
Brandon Truman, 32, who lives in Boomer, across the river from the wreck site and had worked in the North Dakota oilfields, where the cargo originated, said he and others felt the explosions, then the heat from the fire.
“It shook the whole (river) bottom,” he said.
Environmental groups, meanwhile, sounded the alarm about the threat to public safety and the environment from fiery oil train derailments. Only a day before the West Virginia incident, another oil train derailed and caught fire in northern Ontario.
Last April, a train carrying crude oil also from North Dakota’s Bakken shale region derailed in Lynchburg, Va., spilling 30,000 gallons. Some of the oil burned, but some also spilled into the James River, a water supply for many nearby towns.
Pat Calvert, a river conservationist whose office overlooks the site of April’s derailment, called for increased inspections of the rail lines used to move oil.
“This is an alarming reminder that our rivers and communities continue to be at risk every day without stronger safety requirements for Bakken crude oil transport,” he said.
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