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 Homes and businesses were evacuated following the derailment
around midnight Wednesday of the CSX Corp <CSX.N> train in Blount
County, near Maryville, the officials they said.
CSX and U.S. regulators are investigating the derailment's cause.
Local officials said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was
monitoring air quality in the area.
Twenty-five people were admitted to Blount Memorial Hospital with
respiratory issues as of 5:30 p.m. EDT, while another 27 were held
for observation in the emergency room at various times, hospital
spokesman Josh West said.
Matt Farr, his brother and their parents woke up to the news in
Maryville and grabbed a change of clothes at about 8:30 a.m. before
heading to a nearby animal center to drop off their Yorkie dog,
Rosie.
Farr, 21, said his family planned to stay at a nearby hotel until
the evacuation is lifted.
"We didn't think we'd be there that long, but now it's starting to
look like we may be there for a couple days," he said from the
animal center. "We've had trains derail before, but not with
chemicals, so it's pretty bad."
Firefighters were allowing the blaze to burn itself out on the
advice of specialists, as attempts to extinguish it could be
hazardous, Blount County firefighter Kermit Easterling said. CSX
said at 3:30 p.m. that the tank car continued to burn, making it
unsafe to establish any transfer operations.
Blount County has urban and rural areas and is home to part of the
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Easterling said.
Of the 52 people sent to the hospital, 10 officers - five each from
the Blount County Sheriff's Office and the Alcoa Police Department -
were exposed to chemical-laden fumes, sheriff's spokeswoman Marian
O'Briant said.
HAZARDOUS
CSX said a tank car loaded with about 24,000 gallons of
acrylonitrile, a hazardous material used in manufacturing plastics
and other industrial processes, derailed on the train, which was
headed to Waycross, Georgia, from Cincinnati, Ohio. It said no one
was injured in the derailment.
The substance is flammable and presents an inhalation risk, CSX
said. The 57-car train included 27 carrying hazardous materials,
including cars carrying acrylonitrile on either side of the burning
rail car, it said.
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Nine of the cars, with thicker shells, were carrying the
acrylonitrile, but there was no crude oil among the 57 cars, CSX
said.
The incident comes on the heels of other U.S. derailments.
In May, a train carrying crude oil derailed and caught fire in Wells
County, North Dakota, forcing the evacuation of a nearby town,
according to local media.
In March, a freight train with cars carrying methanol derailed in
central Texas. In February, 11 railway cars carrying ethanol fuel
derailed in Iowa. Officials said there were no injuries in these
incidents.
EVACUATION
Maryville residents could be forced from their homes for up to two
days and the Red Cross has set up a shelter in a nearby high school,
officials said.
About 100 people were sheltered at Heritage High School in Maryville
early Thursday, while many others opted to stay with friends and
family, O'Briant said.
CSX said it was offering displaced residents assistance, including
lodging and drinking water.
"People are coming in left and right now," Peter O'Neill, volunteer
director at the Blount County Red Cross, said in a telephone
interview. "We have food set up. Cots. And we sent games for the
kids."
Residents within a two-mile radius were evacuated initially,
according to the Federal Railroad Administration. The zone was
changed to 1-1/2 miles later on Thursday, O'Briant said.
(Reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago and Ben Klayman in
Detroit,; Additional reporting by Tim Ghianni in Nashville and
Vijaykumar Vedala in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernadette Baum and
Leslie Adler)
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