GREENFIELD — Last week, emergency responders gathered to plan how they’d handle a fiery train derailment.
Wednesday morning (9/24), responders found themselves
faced with something less dangerous but real — when a freight train
derailed on a stretch of tracks just near Hope Street.
But this time, in real life, there was no fire, no hazard and no injuries.
According to Cynthia Scarano, the executive vice
president of Pan Am Railways, the derailment occurred around 7:45 a.m.
By 9 a.m., railroad workers were on the scene assessing the situation.
Scarano said nine of the train’s 56 cars derailed and two of the locomotives had “wheels off the tracks.” None fell over.
Greenfield Fire Lieutenant Peter McIver said two
of the cars involved had ended up sitting sideways across the tracks and
the rest had only gone off the rails. All of the cars remained upright,
he said.
Scarano said the cars were carrying paper manufacturing products and lumber.
According to McIver and Scarano, none of the cargo spilled, and none of the cars contained any hazardous materials.
“There were no liquids, no hazardous materials.
It was all paper and cardboard products,” said McIver. “There were small
fires reported off the tracks, but none were found.”
As of noon, Scarano said Pan Am employees were
still analyzing the situation and would be devising a plan to re-rail
the cars as soon as possible. She estimated it would take about a day to
complete the task.
Scarano said Pan Am has not determined the cause
of the accident, but would be downloading the “black box” data recorders
and looking at the cars and tracks.
According to Scarano, the tracks that the
derailment occurred on are only used for freight, and will not be part
of a series of upgrades that are being carried out on other area tracks
to accommodate Amtrak’s new high-speed passenger trains.
Though no hazardous materials were released in
this particular incident, trains regularly transport all types of
products along area railways, from regular household products to heating
oil, ethanol, propane.
“It’s one of the largest methods of shipping in
the United States,” said Turners Falls Fire Chief and Montague Emergency
Management Director Robert J. Escott, who participated in the training
exercise last week and noted the coincidence.
Escott said local emergency service organizations
are constantly training and preparing to deal with any situation where a
derailment could release toxic materials.
To alert the public to a dangerous incident
or order an evacuation, Montague and Greenfield, as well as other county
towns, use an auto-dialing phone system to send recorded messages to
people living in a targeted geographic area. The systems send the
messages primarily to house phones, but residents can sign up for deeper
alerts in the form of text messages and emails.
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