July 28, 2004
Shortly after 11:00 Tuesday night, people in Balaton Minnesota heard a train sound they've never heard before. The sound was a loud screeching of a train derailment.
Twelve to fourteen cars in a 75-car train are on their sides. To make matters worse, at least four of them are leaking either soy oil or ethanol.
The picture tells the story. Train cars are derailed, wrecked and strewn about in Balaton, Minnesota.
Balaton Fire Chief Greg Erickson says, "Approximately 12 to 14 cars have derailed. Five of them have soy oil in them, six to eight have ethanol."
One of the soy cars and three ethanol tanks are leaking. And if you take a walk through the town, you can smell the fumes. Officials immediately evacuated a two-block area of the town, and now they're working on keeping the leaked chemicals out of Lake Yankton.
Erickson says, "It's running down toward the lake and we have diked off the ditches so this stuff can't get into the lake."
But the firefighters efforts may not be enough if Mother Nature doesn't cooperate.
Erickson says, "We are monitoring the storm because some of the storm run off from the rain will actually rundown into that area and basically what we're worried about is that it will raise it up and go over the dike."
Crews are also working on emptying the rail cars.
Erickson says, "Getting trucks line up so we can start pumping the product off the trucks, off the train cars and out of the ditches."
But it won't be until the sun shines brightly that people in Balaton will have a better idea of what happened.
"Once it gets lighter we will be able to access the situation a bit more, but at this time we just don't want to get too close."
Officials still aren't sure what caused the derailment. The train was heading East and the drivers were not hurt.
Since it is still so dangerous in Balaton, Erickson is asking that no one come to the town unless it is absolutely necessary. The smallest spark could ignite the alcohol fumes.
We will have much more on this story later today on KELOLAND.com and KELOLAND News.
Amanda Spicer
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