FELA Lawyer News Blog

IMPERIAL, MO. — A BNSF train bound for Memphis derailed on Friday, Jan. 11, in Imperial, Missouri prompting authorities to evacuate nineteen homes on Churchill Court as a precaution due to residual chemicals inside two rail cars. Residents were allowed to return to their homes that evening.

Nine rail cars of a 92 car BNSF train derailed in Imperial, MO along a section of track running between cemetery plots on one side and residential homes on the other.

The accident happened at about 2 p.m. south of a crossing on Main Street in Imperial near a grocery store and a lumberyard behind Churchill Court, shutting down a portion of Main Street, according to Ron Harder, a spokesman for Rock Community Fire Protection District.

Map showing location of BNSF train derailment in Imperial, MO on Jamuary 11, 2013 near West Main St and U.S. Highway 67/61 very close to residential homes on Churchill Court.

ST. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

Andy Williams, a spokesman for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, said nine of the 92 cars on the freight train jumped the tracks, but said the cause was unknown.

Two of the derailed cars were empty but had previously contained hazardous materials — potassium hydroxide and ethylene glycol, Harder said. Hazardous materials teams from Rock Coummunity and Burlington Northern Santa Fe were on the scene.

Williams said only one of the derailed cars had a leak and that car was carrying plastic pellets. He said vacuum trucks were at the scene clearing up the pellets.

“If this train would have jumped the tracks there, we would have had mass casualties,” Harder said.

The incident remains under investigation at this time.

Posted by Gordon &amp Elias, a FELA lawyer and Missouri railroad injury lawyer who publishes train accidents and FELA legal news from across the United States.

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