DERAILMENT
Cars carrying hazardous materials jump tracks in Newburgh after train strikes piece of heavy equipment
A CSX freight train carrying hazardous materiels derailed Tuesday afternoon when it struck a piece of heavy equipment on the tracks near the Newburgh waterfront and the New Windsor town line.
About 20 of the train’s 77 cars derailed in the 3:30 p.m. accident, and seven of them contained hazardous materials, CSX said. Four had sulfuric acid, two had sodium hydroxide, and one had aqueous bisul-fites. A small amount of sulfuric acid spilled.
The other derailed cars contained a variety of freight, including food, corn oil, bulk salt, cardboard and glass products, the railroad said.
There were no major spills, CSX said, but diesel leaked from some of the locomotives’ fuel tanks, and haz-mat and environmental cleanup teams responded to the scene.
There were no fires and apparently no serious injuries.
Three CSX maintenance employees who were working in the area were taken to area hospitals for treatment of what were believed to be non-lifethreatening injuries, said railroad spokesman Rob Doolittle. He said the two crew members who were operating the train were not injured.
All three locomotives also derailed, and the lead locomotive ended up blocking a road crossing when it came to a stop.
State police said the train
derailed after striking an equipment loader that was crossing the tracks.
Doolittle said the railroad would work “as quickly as safety allows to remove the derailed cars and restore the area of the derailment.”
The train was traveling south from Selkirk, near Albany, to Waycross, Ga. It comprised 38 cars carry freight and 39 that were empty, he said.
U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney issued an angry statement after learning about the derailment.
“I am getting sick and tired of issuing statements about dangerous train derailments — this time only blocks from my office in Newburgh,” said Maloney, D-Cold Spring. “I’m glad to hear reports that no one was killed, but even one injury is too many. It’s got to stop.
“While we don’t yet know why the train derailed,
we do know that outdated train cars barreling down the Hudson River carrying hazardous materials are literally a train wreck waiting to happen,” the congressman added. “We have to get smarter about how we transport crude oil, and invest in installing ‘positive train control’ on all our trains. The longer we fail to prioritize investing in rail safety infrastructure and technology, the more innocent lives we put in jeopardy.”
The office of U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, long an outspoken critic of aging tanker cars being used to transport volatile materials, issued a statement that said Schumer “will work closely with ... federal safety organizations to quickly get to the bottom of what caused this dangerous accident.”