For more than a month, the residents of Money have had to cope with the aftermath of a fiery train collision.
Johnny Jones, whose house is located with 30 feet of the railroad line and two-tenths of a mile from the site of the fire, said April 30 started off the same as any other Sunday.
Then the crash between two southbound CN freight trains interrupted the peace, produced a scary blaze and dumped an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 gallons of crude oil onto the ground.
No one was injured in the collision or subsequent fire.
“It was raining that day. I thought it was thundering,” said Jones, a production line manager at Viking Range.
Before he knew it, Jones said, “the sheriff rang the doorbell and said we had to evacuate, so I just put my clothes on and left.”
Fortunately, Jones said his wife, Virginia, was not at home that morning.
Annie Hill, who lives across the road from Jones, said the collision and subsequent fire caught her, her husband, Willie, and their son, Tavaris, off guard.
“We were sitting out and a train went by and there was a noise. In a few minutes, somebody knocked on the door and told us we got to go,” she said.
Hill said she immediately left her home. “I grabbed my sleeping clothes. We jumped out, and it was pouring down rain.”
The site of the collision is now largely clear of the heavy machinery and associated workers who cut up and removed the damaged cars, repaired the rails and dug up the contaminated soil.
“They’ve gone from the emergency phase to a maintenance phase that will be smaller,” said Ernie Shirley, environmental administrator for the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality.
He said the agency has required CN to do soil sampling at the crash site to be certain all the contaminated soil has been removed.
“All the samples I’ve seen are pretty good,” he said.
Crude oil is made up of “fairly decent-size molecules,” which prevents quick absorption into the ground, Shirley said.
He said there is little risk of groundwater contamination, adding, “The only time we really get concerned is if there is a subsurface release,” such as from a pipeline.
Patrick Waldron, a CN spokesman, declined to comment on the situation Tuesday.
Jones said the railroad seems to be doing a good job of getting things back to normal. The only drawback is the odor from oily water that has accumulated inside the railroad’s right of way.
Hill said since the train wreck, her husband has kept a close eye on the cleanup and recovery teams that have come to town.
She said that he’s pleased with the workers’ dedication to their jobs.
• Contact Bob Darden at 581-7239 or bdarden@gwcommonwealth.com.
