• Home
  • News
    • Politics & Government
    • Business & Economy
    • Crime / Courts
    • Health / Medicine
  • Sports
    • High School Sports
    • Radio Iowa Poll
  • Affiliates
    • Affiliate Support Page
  • Contact Us
    • Reporters

Radio Iowa

Iowa's Radio News Network

You are here: Home / Fires/Accidents/Disasters / Falling rock causes oil spill in Mississippi

Falling rock causes oil spill in Mississippi

March 26, 2004 By admin

A petroleum spill into the Mississippi River’s being cleaned up after a train hit a boulder being described as about the size of a Volkswagen bug. The Department of Natural Resource’s Joe Sanfilippo says the train was on a track carved out of steep limestone bluffs on the river’s bank about six miles south of Guttenberg.During the winter there are freeze-thaw cycles that loosen the rock and then in rainy times like this past week there are rock slides. The railroad inspects the track daily, but the chunk of rock apparently fell after the inspection was done…and before the train came by. Sanfilippo says it was about ten last (Thursday) night when the engineer spotted the boulder but wasn’t able to stop the locomotive in time. He says “it takes quite a while to stop a train,” but the boulder was up against one rail of the tracks, and gave a glancing blow to the engine and ripped open the fuel tanks as the train passed by. The tanks carry diesel for the train’s locomotive, and Sanfilippo says about two-thousand gallons spilled. Linn County HAZMAT responded to the spill and put booms in the river along the shore to contain the fuel, part of the remediation that’ll be done to clean the site. There was no fishkill or harm to wildlife, and he says the crushed-rock “ballast” that the tracks are built on is porous and absorbed a lot of the fuel, so it’ll slowly seep out with time. The track’s been in place for a hundred years, and Sanfilippo says in his quarter-century on the job they’ve never had anything like this happen.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters

Featured Stories

Speakers at trooper’s funeral describe Sgt. Smith as selfless, man of faith

Iowa unlikely to join 26 states with hands-free driving laws

Reynolds says Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause manageable

Iowa State Patrol tactical team leader killed in Grundy Center stand-off

Finalists chosen for the state’s top burger

TwitterFacebook
Tweets by RadioIowa

High school sports and activities to pause for one week in July

Hawkeyes add post player

UNI’s Warren agrees to contract extension

Iowa State signs Kansas transfer

Drake elevates Pohlman to head women’s basketball coach

More Sports

eNews and Updates

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Archives

Copyright © 2021 ยท Learfield News & Ag, LLC