Small fires burned for a fourth day as recovery crews and federal investigators made progress at the site of an oil train derailment in West Virginia with the goal of getting evacuated residents back into their homes.
Monday’s derailment of a CSX train produced fires and explosions and forced hundreds from their homes, although most had been allowed to return by Thursday.
Temperatures hovered in the single digits as crews worked to rerail cars not affected by the fire. CSX also began transferring crude oil from the damaged cars.
The derailment happened a few miles east of Montgomery, a town of about 1,600 on the Kanawha River southeast of Charleston.
“The safety of the residents of Montgomery and our response personnel remain the top priority,” said Dennis Matlock, the Environmental Protection Agency on-scene coordinator. “We also continue efforts to contain, treat and recover product from the derailment scene.”
The Federal Railroad Administration said Thursday that the 109-car train was traveling 33 mph when it derailed Monday, well below the maximum authorized speed of 50 mph.
The train, bound from North Dakota to Yorktown, Va., carried 3.1 million gallons of oil. Though it wasn’t known how much oil was spilled, officials said that more than 6,800 gallons of oil and water mixture was recovered from the site.
Monday’s derailment was the latest in a series of accidents involving crude oil. On Sunday, a 100-car Canadian National train derailed in northern Ontario, igniting large fires. Service was restored to the route on Wednesday.
Monday’s derailment took place on the same route as another oil train derailment in downtown Lynchburg, Va., last April. That incident spilled 30,000 gallons of oil into the James River.
Other derailments in Quebec, Alabama, North Dakota and New Brunswick have raised concerns across North America about the large volumes of crude oil moving in a fleet of tank cars with well-documented deficiencies.
The White House Office of Management and Budget is reviewing new regulations to improve oil train safety, including sturdier tank cars, but that task won’t be completed until mid-May.