Foiled attempts to extinguish the blaze spurred frustrated federal and local officials to call in help yesterday from derailment specialists and a Coast Guard chemical strike force, but the fire continued to stymie workers and leave uncertain when the downtown crisis will end.
Firefighters got a glimpse of hope last night, when they used three locomotives to pull out 22 smoldering cars from the north end of the tunnel.
Altogether, 28 of the train’s 60 cars had been removed as of 1 a.m., and five of the eight containing hazardous chemicals were expected to be pulled out early this morning.
What caused the derailment – and the subsequent fire – remains unclear. But fire officials say they believe the blaze started in train Car 52, which was hauling tripropylene, a caustic and flammable chemical used in making detergents and plastic.
Investigators say tripropylene might have leaked from the car as a result of the derailment and a spark ignited the chemical. Officials are considering whether the spark was caused by the braking of the train.
As the investigation and clean-up continued yesterday, officials described the work as slow and precarious.
Among the latest setbacks was yesterday’s discovery that a break in a century-old water main – which so far has spilled more than 60 million gallons – could cause structural instability in the tunnel’s smoke-blackened roof. After dire warnings from firefighters, work on the water main was suspended because of fears that the tunnel roof might collapse.
Intense heat stopped firefighters last night from entering some parts of the 1.7-mile tunnel, where many of the freight train’s cars have been glowing red-hot since Wednesday’s accident. At least one of two cars carrying hydrochloric acid has leaked.
“It’s a little bit of hell,” said Baltimore Fire Lt. Bill Hall, who with a team of other firefighters braved the heat and smoke after descending into the Howard Street Tunnel through a manhole yesterday.
The worst case scenario
The accident has left city officials reeling, as they struggle to contain an incident with far-reaching ramifications.
“This is the disaster that [emergency planners] and the Fire Department always knew they couldn’t quite deal with,” said Terry Harris of the city’s Clean-Up Coalition, a citizen group that monitors chemical pollution. “It’s been a worry – a chemical tanker train fire in a tunnel is almost a worst case scenario.”
The derailment has caused problems far beyond the darkness of the tunnel, not the least of which is a snag in the East Coast’s information superhighway. Technicians continued yesterday trying to patch fiber-optic cables damaged in the derailment that transport huge amounts of Internet data, e-mail and cell phone service.
A Silicon Valley company that studies cyberspace called the fiber-optic cabling through Baltimore “the I-95 of Internet traffic into and out of Washington” and said the accident has caused the worst data-flow congestion in the past several years.
Other problems hit closer to home.
The Baltimore Orioles postponed another game last night – the third since the derailment – because of public safety concerns. Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos said through his chief operating officer that he might try to recoup from CSX any losses resulting from cancellations.
The Orioles estimate they could lose $3 million to $4.5 million if the games are not played. “We’re obviously going to keep all our financial options open,” said Orioles chief operating officer Joe Foss.
Conditions at the scene have been so dangerous that officials with the National Transportation Safety Board haven’t been able to do a full assessment of the accident, saying it’s too dangerous to go into the tunnel.
“Right now, that’s hampering us,” said Keith D. Holloway, an NTSB spokesman.
Emergency workers and inspectors have had to forge ahead into an area many would never enter – and are finding grueling conditions. Two were treated for exhaustion yesterday after walking into the north end of the smoke-filled tunnel to examine the condition of the track.
City Fire Department Battalion Chief Hector L. Torres said the workers were part of a four-man team sent in to determine whether the first 45 train cars could be pulled out to give firefighters better access to the blaze.
After receiving a radio call for help, the Fire Department sent in a locomotive to get the men, who were treated at Maryland Shock Trauma Center and released.
Change in strategy
Torres said the severity of the conditions has caused firefighters to rethink their strategy and abandon the idea of hauling out a 45-car link of the train. Officials said they opted to go instead with a less ambitious plan of pulling out several cars at a time.
“We have a very firm plan in place,” he said. “It’s a less aggressive strategy.”
Torres said some speculation exists that the fire was started by metal of a train car rubbing against the tunnel walls, which created a spark and ignited the tripropylene in Car 52. That car has completely burned.
A CSX spokesman said the train had been looked over by its crew at the Locust Point terminal shortly before the accident. No leaks were detected in any cars, according to CSX.
State inspectors examined a 12-mile section of the CSX track that includes the tunnel on April 9. An inspector with the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation found four defects in the southern portion of the track, including missing bolts, a cracked joint and a weak rail bed section that was rebuilt as a precaution.
The defects were fixed within a month. On the northern portion, missing bolts were replaced the same day. All the problems were considered minor and routine, said Karen Napolitano, a spokeswoman for the state agency.
The tracks through the Howard Street tunnel were also inspected visually by CSX engineers on both the Monday and Tuesday before the crash, according to CSX spokesman Rob Gould. All such “high-density” rail lines are required to be inspected twice weekly by federal law.
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Driving the tracks
Those inspections typically involve workers driving the tracks in a truck equipped for traveling on rail, and inspecting the tracks with flashlights.
According to other CSX officials, that section of track also was inspected earlier this year with an ultrasound device used to find cracks or weakness in the rails.
CSX engineers said that since April 2000, two 1,440-foot track sections have been replaced inside the tunnel, new drainage ditches have been dug along its entire length and the tunnel floor was regraded and tamped. Along a 7-mile stretch that includes the tunnel, 6,000 new railroad ties have been installed.
“We’ve complied with everything with respect to that audit, we’ve invested a significant amount of money in improvements and done everything we could think of to ensure that track was safe,” Gould said. “I’d caution anyone not to speculate about the cause of this derailment. It’s still under investigation.”
Cost in the millions
If major portions of the Howard Street tunnel need to be rebuilt, the price could be steep.
CSX officials have been seeking state funds for more than a decade to enlarge several of its tunnels to accommodate double-stacked railroad cars. In 1995, the cost of enlarging the Howard Street Tunnel and another in Harper’s Ferry, W.Va., was estimated at $40 million.
In 1999, CSX released a $575 million wish list of improvements it said would be needed to accommodate a huge marine terminal in Baltimore.
The figure included at least $120 million to widen the Howard Street Tunnel and improve tunnels and bridges in Western Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio. State officials and lawmakers have repeatedly balked at using taxpayer money for the improvements.
Jay L. Kivowitz, the NTSB investigator in charge at the scene, is heading a team of about 10 other investigators. He said so far they have been examining each car as it is brought out at either end of the tunnel, which is covered with an inch-thick sooty sludge from the fire.
They are looking at historical information about the cars, the track, the signals, mechanical tests and the cargo, Kivowitz said. There are four things that can fail: track, equipment, crew and signals.
“It’s like a puzzle. You try to put all the pieces together,” he said.
They have learned so far that the train’s locomotive event data tapes, essentially the black box, show the train was moving about 18 mph, well within the 25-mph limit for the tunnel. The train was moving with a steady pull at about a 0.8 percent uphill grade through the tunnel.
While fire and heat present unique problems in the tunnel, water is troubling other parts of the city.
A gaping hole at Howard and Lombard streets, caused by a water main break three hours after the train wreck, will remain troublesome for days. The Fire Department asked the Department of Public Works to stop repairing the 40-inch pipe because of fears the tunnel might collapse on firefighters working below.
The damaged cast-iron pipe rests just 9 inches above the top of the tunnel and is actually embedded in the brick arch that supports the tunnel, city officials say.
“We don’t want to compromise anything and have a cave-in situation,” said Amar Sokhey, head of DPW’s Bureau of Water and Wastewater.
Once the Fire Department indicates it is safe to fix the main, it will take at least two days for Public Works to complete repairs, Sokhey said. The job is complicated by the fact that the city must custom-order specialized pipe clamps from a foundry in Arkansas.
At the Inner Harbor, the most noticeable effect was the smell. Water from the train tunnel, pouring from the broken water main and fire-fighting hoses, carried the distinct smell of smoke through the city’s storm sewers to a drain pipe near the corner of Pratt and Light streets.
Workers for the MDE, the Environmental Protection Agency and private contractors were using litmus paper and more sophisticated equipment to test for acid fumes in the smoke coming from the tunnel and along downtown streets.
“Preliminary indications are that everything is normal,” said John Verrico, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of the Environment.
Verrico said a state-of-the-art, extremely sensitive air meter was brought in from a lab in Little Rock, Ark., and tested a dozen sites near the accident scene. “We got zero readings, which is an excellent, excellent sign,” Verrico said.
Clean-up crews had to abort plans to pump out the train car that had been leaking hydrochloric acid, because the car’s plastic liner had detached from the metal walls of the car – apparently because of the fire’s heat – and kept clogging a vacuum hose.
Only about 3,500 gallons of the estimated 15,000 gallons of acid left in the car could be removed, said Verrico. Officials now plan to try towing the damaged car from the tunnel, believing that they can avoid spilling any more acid if it is hauled out slowly.
Coast Guard team arrives
A team of Coast Guard chemical accident specialists arrived yesterday and was doing its own testing, with equally good results, according to Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Tod Lyons.
Seven members of the 35-person Atlantic Strike Team, one of three Coast Guard haz-mat teams in the East, arrived from their home base at Fort Dix, N.J., yesterday with a trailer full of sophisticated air and water monitoring equipment.
Lyons, the spokesman for the team, said they joined two other Coast Guard experts who had arrived from North Carolina.
Coast Guard workers were also monitoring water quality at three storm sewer outfalls along the Inner Harbor.
At one pipe behind Harborplace, the water levels went acidic briefly Wednesday but have been fine ever since, said Lt. Russ Bowman of the Baltimore Coast Guard Station.
When the city will get back to normal is anyone’s guess. Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley said he believes the work thus far has gone well.
“We’ve made a lot of really great progress over the past 24 hours,” he said.
There’s still no indication as to whether or not tonight’s Orioles game will be played – although it would provide a fitting tribute if it was. Orioles management had slated the game months ago as “Firefighter Appreciation Night.”
Sun staff writers contributing to this article were Scott Calvert, Heather Dewar, Gail Gibson, Robert Little, David Nitkin, Marcia Myers, Andrew Ratner, Michael Scarcella, Joe Strauss, Del Quentin Wilber and Kimberly A. C. Wilson.
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