The 1985 Chemical Tanker Derailment
On June 9, 1985, Extra 4835 North, a Cotton Belt freight train carrying toxic chemicals derailed about 3.3 miles southwest of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The next morning, the burning wreckage sparked an explosion that “hurled debris hundreds of feet and shook buildings five miles away."
Image Credit: www.nytimes.com
On June 9, 1985, at 1:33 p.m., Extra 4835 North, the St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company (also known as the Cotton Belt Railway Company) freight train, derailed about 3.3 miles southwest of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Earlier that morning, the train, which consisted of 6 locomotive units, 93 cars, and a caboose, had departed from Eagle, Arkansas, to traverse the 55 miles.
A few miles outside of Pine Bluff, the train’s fireman noticed a lateral “kink” (a sudden sharp sideways bend) in the train tracks as they crossed a bridge. The fireman estimated that “kink” was 2 to 2.5 feet long, causing the train tracks to be 10 inches to a foot to the left of their normal alignment. So, he quickly applied the brakes and alerted the conductor. The locomotive units and the first 25 cars passed safely over the kink. Unfortunately, the train’s brakes went into emergency mode ¼ mile north of the bridge, and the train cars began to derail. Train cars 26 through 56 derailed, causing cars 15 to 25, which had already safely crossed the bridge, to derail as well.
Cars 15 to 25 included 2 cars loaded with hazardous chemicals. Fortunately, none of these were ruptured or punctured during the derailment. Conversely, cars 26 to 56, which contained a combustible liquid, butyl acrylate, were ruptured and burst into flames. As the butyl acrylate spread, it engulfed many of the derailed cars, including insulated cars containing ethylene oxide, a flammable liquid. Fortunately, though the cars containing a flammable gas, vinyl chloride, and a dangerous corrosive chemical, hydrogen fluoride anhydrous, were not ruptured when the train derailed.
According to the LA Times, the fire sparked an explosion the next morning that “hurled debris hundreds of feet and shook buildings five miles away." Though no one was injured, everyone within a 1-mile radius of the explosion was evacuated. In total, 2,000 to 4,000 people were evacuated and temporarily moved to Watson Chapel High School.
Firefighters and city officials used binoculars to monitor the burning wreckage from a viaduct more than a mile away. They decided to let the fire burn itself out because “explosions often 'work in our favor' because they destroy any toxic fumes that might escape if the fire burned more slowly.”
Governor Bill Clinton even declared an emergency, allowing the National Guard to patrol the evacuated area to ensure everyone’s continued safety.
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Written by: Ninfa O. Barnard
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The detail about the fireman spotting the kink before the bridge raises a question about track inspection. If a lateral misalignment of two feet was visible from the locomotive, could routine patrols have caught it earlier? The decision to let the fire burn out also seems like a calculated trade-off between destroying toxic fumes and risking a larger blast. I wonder how that reasoning would hold up under today's hazmat response standards.
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