Brooks derailment | |
---|---|
Details | |
Date | January 16, 2007 8:46 am |
Location | Bullitt County, Kentucky |
Coordinates | 38°04′05″N85°42′40″W / 38.068°N 85.711°W |
Country | United States |
Operator | CSX Transportation |
Incident type | Derailment |
Statistics | |
Deaths | 0 |
Injured | 0 |
The Brooks derailment was a rail accident that occurred in Brooks, Bullitt County, Kentucky, United States, about 15 miles south of Louisville. [1]
At 08:43 EST on January 16, 2007, a CSX Transportation train pulling 80 cars from Birmingham, Alabama, to Louisville, Kentucky, derailed. [1] [2] The accident caused a fireball to explode over 1,000 feet into the sky. The cars were carrying several hazardous materials that resulted in an evacuation of the immediate area. The derailment was determined to be the largest in Kentucky's history.
The responders to the accident were Zoneton Fire Protection District and several Louisville fire districts.
The residents affected by the accident reached a settlement with the rail company. [3]
On March 30, 2012, the National Transportation Safety Board released their conclusion regarding the probable cause:
CSX Transportation, known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad company operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Operating about 21,000 route miles (34,000 km) of track, it is the leading subsidiary of CSX Corporation, a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida.
The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States. Headquartered in Atlanta, the company was formed in 1982 with the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. The company operates 19,420 route miles (31,250 km) in 22 eastern states, the District of Columbia, and has rights in Canada over the Albany to Montreal route of the Canadian Pacific Kansas City. Norfolk Southern Railway is the leading subsidiary of the Norfolk Southern Corporation.
The Howard Street Tunnel fire was a 60-car CSX Transportation freight train derailment that occurred in the Howard Street Tunnel, a freight through-route tunnel under Howard Street in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 18, 2001. The derailment sparked a chemical fire that raged for five or six days and virtually shut down the downtown area. In the evening of the first day, a water main ruptured causing significant flooding in the streets above. The accident disrupted Northeast Corridor rail service. It also slowed Internet service in the US for several hours due to the destruction of a cable passing through the tunnel.
A tank car or tanker is a type of railroad car or rolling stock designed to transport liquid and gaseous commodities.
The Graniteville train crash was an American rail disaster that occurred on January 6, 2005, in Graniteville, South Carolina. At roughly 2:40 am EST, two Norfolk Southern trains collided near the Avondale Mills plant in Graniteville. Nine people were killed and over 250 people were treated for toxic chlorine exposure. The crash was determined to be caused by a misaligned railroad switch.
The Weyauwega derailment was a railroad accident that occurred in Weyauwega, Wisconsin, United States, in the early morning hours of March 4, 1996. The derailed train was carrying a large quantity of hazardous material, which immediately caught fire. The fire, which involved the train cars and an adjacent feed mill, burned for more than two weeks after the actual derailment, resulting in the emergency evacuation of 2,300 people for 18 days, including the entire city of Weyauwega, with about 1,700 evacuees.
The Mississauga train derailment, also known as the Mississauga Miracle, occurred on November 10, 1979, in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, when a CP Rail freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed and caught fire. More than 200,000 people were evacuated in the largest peacetime evacuation in North America until Hurricane Katrina. The fire was caused by a failure of the lubricating system. No deaths resulted from the incident.
The Waverly, Tennessee tank car explosion killed 16 people and injured 43 others on February 24, 1978, in Waverly, Tennessee. Following a train derailment a two days earlier, a cleanup crew had been sent into the area. At approximately 2:58 in the afternoon, a tank car containing 30,161 US gallons of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) exploded after an action taken during the cleanup related to the derailment.
The Helena Train Wreck occurred in the early morning on February 2, 1989, in Helena, Montana, United States, when 49 cars of a Montana Rail Link freight train that had been decoupled from their locomotives by a train crew on Mullan Pass rolled backwards down the pass, traveling nine miles back into the city of Helena and colliding with a work train at a railway crossing near the center of the community. The collision resulted in a fire and explosion that damaged Carroll College and other nearby structures, knocked out power to most of the town, and led to the evacuation of residents within an area of 2 square miles (5.2 km2) due to concerns of possible toxic chemical release. The event occurred during a severe cold snap, with temperatures below −30 °F (−34 °C) that morning and with a wind chill factor of as much as −75 °F (−59 °C), which froze the water that firefighters used to attempt to extinguish the fire.
In rail transport, the U.S. DOT-111 tank car, also known as the TC-111 in Canada, is a type of unpressurized general service tank car in common use in North America. Tank cars built to this specification must be circular in cross section, with elliptical, formed heads set convex outward. They have a minimum plate thickness of 7⁄16 inch (11.1 mm) and a maximum capacity of 34,500 US gallons. Tanks may be constructed from carbon steel, aluminum alloy, high alloy steel, or nickel plate steel by fusion welding.
The 2002 Farragut derailment occurred on the morning of Sunday, September 15, in Farragut, Tennessee. Norfolk Southern freight train 15T derailed 27 cars, resulting in the release of oleum or fuming sulfuric acid. Roughly 2,600 residents were evacuated from nearby homes for three days until hazardous materials crews were able to mitigate the scene. No fatalities or major injuries were reported as a result of the derailment, but property damage and losses were calculated at US$1.02 million. Seventeen people were injured.
The 2015 Mount Carbon train derailment refers to a derailment in Mount Carbon, West Virginia, on February 16, 2015, which involved a CSX Transportation train hauling 107 tank cars of crude oil from North Dakota to Virginia. It resulted in a large oil spill that caught fire with several subsequent large, violent fireball eruptions. The spill, fire, and eruptions destroyed one home, forced the evacuation of hundreds of families and caused the temporary shut down of two nearby water treatment plants. Eventually, 19 railcars carrying crude oil caught fire with each car carrying up to 30,000 US gallons of crude oil.
The 2015 Oxnard train derailment occurred on February 24, 2015, at 5:44 a.m. local time when a Metrolink passenger train collided with a truck that a driver had mistakenly turned from Rice Avenue onto the tracks and became stuck. After impact, the train derailed at Oxnard, California, United States. As a result of the crash, the train engineer died from his injuries a week later and 32 passengers and crew members were injured. The truck driver exited his vehicle and ran from the scene prior to the crash; he sustained minor injuries that were unrelated to the crash sequence.
The 2015 Tennessee train derailment occurred on July 2, 2015. A CSX Transportation train derailed at Maryville, Tennessee. The train was carrying toxic chemicals, leading to an evacuation of over 5,000 people.
At 4:25 pm on July 8, 1986, a 44 car Baltimore and Ohio railroad freight train, traveling at 45 miles per hour, bound south to Cincinnati, derailed near Miamisburg, Ohio, a small city with an industrial history in Montgomery County, southwest of Dayton. Fifteen of the cars derailed on a bridge; these were tank cars containing yellow phosphorus, molten sulfur and tallow. Carrying a chemical used to make rat poison, fireworks and luminescent coatings, one tank car caught fire. This resulted in emission of an estimated 1,000 foot (300 m) high cloud of phosphorus. A subsequent incident caused the largest train accident-triggered evacuation at the time in the United States. The accident was the second major rail disaster in Miamisburg within an eight-year period. On September 10, 1978, 15 cars of a Conrail train derailed.