Ohio: Explosion fears loom as train continues to burn days after derailment – IOTW Report

Ohio: Explosion fears loom as train continues to burn days after derailment

WaEx:

Residents of a small Ohio village are being urged to evacuate their homes as a massive train continues to burn days after its derailment and authorities work to prevent a massive explosion.

About 50 cars derailed in East Palestine at about 9 p.m. Friday. As the cars continue to burn Monday morning, officials said teams at the crash site are trying to prevent a “catastrophic tanker failure” and explosion that could shoot deadly shrapnel up to a mile away.

The train was carrying a variety of products from Madison, Illinois, to Conway, Pennsylvania, rail operator Norfolk Southern said Saturday. Twenty of the more than 100 cars were carrying hazardous materials, defined as cargo that could pose any kind of danger, “including flammables, combustibles, or environmental risks,” according to Norfolk Southern.

Fourteen cars carrying vinyl chloride were involved in the derailment “and have been exposed to fire,” and at least one “is intermittently releasing the contents of the car through a pressure release device as designed,” Michael Graham, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said Saturday. MORE

7 Comments on Ohio: Explosion fears loom as train continues to burn days after derailment

  1. The biggest risk here other than breathing toxic fumes is a BLEVE, or Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion. This is when you trap volitile chemicals in a container that can’t release them as they boil until they hit a flash point, then they apruptly and explosively rupture the container and kill with overpressure and heat with very little warning. The only way to deal with this if the fire can’t be immediately extinguished (and sometimes with toxic/flammable chemicals you *WANT* them to burn off, its safer that waY) is to directly cool the containers the flames are impinging on with high volume, high flow copious amounts of water from a large hose line, minimum 2 1/2″, and in an incident like this you’re going to need multiples of them. You also have to send your crews very close to the flames in order to be at all effective, so they are in a very real sense placing their lives in very high risk as the BLEVE happens generally all at once, and the first you know about it is when you wake up on the other side for your Judgement.

    This is a very small villiage crammed up in NE OH and probably doesn’t have a lot of resourses or manpower, and very probably relying on voulenteer labor and not with a great hydranted water supply, so tanker shuttles and ponds are the order of the day.

    Pray for those men and women that they are successful in protecting their community and return safely to their families at the end of a long, hard, dangerous day.

    Dear Lord, we come before you imploring on Your Mercy in this matter, that You hold Your protective Hand over all these that battle this blaze, that they may extinguish this conflaguration without loss of life and limb and that none of Your creations are taken from their families by this. The fire is large but Your Hand is larger, and we ask that You reach through these men and women, strenghthen them to their task, guide their hands, cool their brows, and allow them to fulfil their Oath to You and to their community. It is to Your Mercy and Your Glory we pray,

    Amen.

    God Bless,
    SNS

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