CONTROLLED BURN DEEMED A SUCCESS
Beaver County watches a ‘strange’ spectacle after the release of chemicals from the Ohio train derailment
Authorities released a toxic chemical gas into the air Monday after it sat in train cars for days following a fiery Ohio derailment, sending a gray column of smoke into the air that darkened the skies as residents just across the Pennsylvania border in Beaver County watched warily.
The planned controlled release of the industrial chemical vinyl chloride occurred late in the afternoon. Officials in both states had spent the day urging residents to leave an area of 1-2 miles around the small Ohio village of East Palestine, about 50 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, where the 50-car derailment Friday left the scene burning for days and sparked concerns about whether the air was safe to breathe.
“If you are in this red zone that is on the map, and you refuse to evacuate, you are risking death,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said earlier Monday, displaying a map with red and orange blobs stretching from the derailment site into Beaver County. “If you are within the orange area on this map you risk permanent lung damage within a matter of hours or days.”
In the minutes after the gas was released, Dan Potts, who had left his hometown of Darlington Township in Beaver County because of the evacuation order, saw the column of smoke reach into the sky. Over the next hour, he watched the sky grow darker as the smoke spread. He described the spectacle before him simply as “strange, not something I’ve ever seen before.”
By about 5:30 p.m., much of the sky near Chippewa Township was covered in dark clouds of smoke.
The early-evening winds appeared light and it wasn’t yet clear if or how much they would blow the smoke into Beaver County.
Mr. Shapiro held a short briefing at 8 p.m. where he stressed that the dramatic images notwithstanding, the controlled release was going as planned and should be wrapping up soon. He said the state is continuing to monitor the air quality around the burn and that “thus far no concerning readings have been detected.”
“Out of an abundance of caution,” Mr. Shapiro asked that Pennsylvania residents who live within a 2-mile radius of the train derailment continue to shelter in place, keeping windows and doors closed.
“We will learn from this,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said the contents of five rail cars containing vinyl chloride were unstable and could explode, which would have risked the deadly spread of both toxic fumes and shrapnel. The controlled release of the gas would help alleviate the risk of shrapnel, which could fly up to a mile in an explosion, he said.
“We had to weigh different risks with no great choices,” Mr. DeWine said.
Shortly after 5 p.m., Norfolk Southern, the rail operator, said that “the controlled breach of several rail cars has been completed successfully.”
“Some of the material is now burning off consistent with expectations from the earlier models, and is expected to drain for a short number of hours,” the company said. “We have been, and will continue, monitoring air quality with the Ohio EPA.”
Around the same time, almost a dozen cars pulled over at the intersection of Route 51 and Route 168 in Chippewa to watch the aftermath. Route 51 stretches into Darlington and was one of the roads closed after the town was evacuated. A South Beaver Township police officer said the road would be closed at least “until this time tomorrow,” or about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Mr. Potts, who had been on vacation in Utah last week, was among those gathered to take in the scene. His family had updated him on the train derailment over the weekend, but he said he “didn’t know how severe it was” until he returned to Pennsylvania to find he wasn’t allowed to go home.
Scott Deutsch, a Norfolk Southern regional manager, said earlier that a controlled burn of the vinyl chloride was the “safest way” forward. He said workers would create a hole about 2½ to 3 inches wide in each tank car and allow the gas to pass through.
“If we don’t do that, the car could continue to polymerize and the entire car will break apart,” Mr. Deutsch said. “We can’t control where that goes, so that’s the reason for doing this.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has set up real-time air monitoring equipment at 12 locations and has had roaming air monitoring teams doing localized measurements. It has also taken air samples that are being sent to a lab for detailed analysis, with the first results expected on Wednesday.
The monitors are tracking the concentrations of volatile organic
compounds, which include vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate, both of which were being carried in the train. It is also monitoring “levels of carbon monoxide, oxygen, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen cyanide, phosgene, and hydrogen chloride, as well as measuring the flammability of gases in the perimeter.”
The derailment sent about 50 train cars, some of which were carrying hazardous materials, off the tracks in East Palestine late Friday, sparking a massive fire.
Mr. DeWine on Sunday asked residents living within a mile of the site to immediately leave their homes because of the potential of a “major explosion.”
Before Monday’s controlled release, Mr. DeWine said he sent Ohio State Highway Patrol sheriffs and other law enforcement officers to the area to urge any remaining residents to leave. And on Sunday night, he deployed the Ohio National Guard to assist local authorities with the evacuation.
East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway had ordered an evacuation
early Saturday of a 1-mile area surrounding the derailment site.
About half the staff of the Rainbow Veterinary Hospital in Chippewa went home Monday to prepare for the evacuation, said Savannah Riili, a vet tech there. She later joined the other cars at the intersection of Route 51 and Route 168 to watch the smoke.
“I feel like they probably should’ve evacuated a little further out,” she said.
In Midland, about 15 miles southeast of the derailment, longtime resident Chris Johnson was also concerned.
“I’m just worried about if the wind blows any chemical smells this way,” she said.
As the sun set close to 6 p.m., the dark plume of smoke could still be seen from just outside of Chippewa — although there wasn’t a chemical odor yet.