Feds say derailed oil train was not speeding

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Speed doesn’t appear to have been a factor in an oil-train derailment in southern West Virginia, a federal transportation official said Thursday.

The CSX train was going 33 mph at the time of Monday’s crash in the town of Mount Carbon. The speed limit was 50 mph, said Federal Railroad Administration acting administrator Sarah Feinberg.

“We can see from event recorders that the train was traveling below speed limit and starting to accelerate at time of derailment,” Feinberg said.

The train had gone through the town of Montgomery minutes earlier where the speed limit was 30 mph, she said.

The derailment shot fireballs into the sky, destroyed a house, leaked oil into a Kanawha River tributary and forced nearby water treatment plants to temporarily shut down. The owner of the destroyed home was treated for smoke inhalation. No other injuries were reported.

The cause remains unknown.

Twenty-seven of the 107 tank cars derailed, and 19 of those were involved in the fires, which continued smoldering Thursday.

The small fires have prevented investigators from gaining full access to the crash scene. Feinberg said it might be necessary to use a dry chemical to douse the fires, out of worry that using water or spray foam would wash oil into the river.

Robert C. Lauby, the railroad agency’s chief safety officer, said oil must first be pumped out of damaged tank cars before they can be removed – a process slowed by weather-frozen hoses and pumps. The removal of the damaged cars is likely to start today, he said.

No rail cars entered the river and no oil has been detected in river water samples, according to a joint statement from several agencies that have responded to the derailment. Water treatment systems were brought back online Tuesday, and a boil-water advisory for area residents expired Thursday.

A road leading to the derailment site remained closed, preventing about 225 people from returning to 100 homes, said Coast Guard Lt. Scott McBride, speaking on behalf of the agencies.

Amtrak, whose Chicago-to-New York Cardinal route travels along the same tracks where the derailment occurred, has been told by CSX that the tracks won’t reopen until early next week, said Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari in Chicago.

The CSX train was bound for an oil-shipping depot in Yorktown, Virginia, along the same route where three tank cars plunged into the James River in Lynchburg, Virginia, last year, prompting an evacuation.