Coincidentally, on Sunday, a Canadian Pacific train derailed in Eastern Wisconsin. On Saturday, 25 BNSF train cars including tankers derailed, spilling more than 18,000 gallons of ethanol along the shores on the Mississippi River near Alma in western Wisconsin.
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As of Monday morning, evacuations were still in place, the FRA, which is investigating the derailment, tweeted.
Crews worked Monday to clear freight cars from rail tracks and contain spilled crude oil, ethanol and coal after two trains derailed in Wisconsin over the weekend and another derailed in Iowa on Monday.
While the company is still calculating the exact quantity of the spill, estimates suggest that the figure could be around 1,000 gallons. Lawmakers have sought widespread reforms since a pair of 2013 accidents in Casselton, N.D., and Quebec, Canada, spilled thousands of gallons of oil and caused explosions.
Billings says most railroad crashes are blamed on track issues – and with faster and heavier trains passing through, she says the state needs to make sure everything’s safe.
There were no reports of fire or injuries, according to a release from the Watertown Fire Department.
Residents of about 35 homes were asked to evacuate around 4 p.m., said Donna Haugom, director of the Jefferson County Office of Emergency Management. The railroad will excavate any contaminated soil, clean it and put it back or replace it. All of the rail cars were damaged in the derailment and need to be fixed before being used again.
It was the third derailment on the Upper Mississippi River Wildlife Refuge in the last nine months, according to Citizens Acting for Rail Safety, a group focusing on rail safety and traffic.
Schmid said train engineers must have a manifest on board that details what products or materials the train is hauling and in which rail vehicle it is located. That is equivalent to as many as 42 mile-long tank auto “unit trains” passing through Chicago and the suburbs each week.
“BNSF is continuing to monitor for environmental impacts and to work on scene with the multiple federal and state agencies involved”, company officials said in a written statement. BNSF Railway said no one was hurt and it expected service to return by Monday morning.
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“I wanna give my kudos to the fire department”, said Mike Beslow with the Environmental Protection Agency. As a precaution, they dispatched Alma firefighters door-to-door, asking almost 150 residents to temporarily evacuate.
