About 20 cars of a Norfolk Southern cargo train derailed near Springfield Saturday evening, the second derailment of the company’s trains in Ohio in a month, officials said.
But unlike the Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, a company spokesperson said there were no hazardous materials aboard the train, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
The train, which did not have passengers, derailed around 5 p.m. Saturday by State Route 41, near the Clark County Fairgrounds, the Dispatch reported. Springfield is about 46 miles west of the state capital of Columbus, Ohio.
The 20 cars of the 212-car train derailed while traveling south, the Norfolk Southern spokesperson said.
According to the Clark County Emergency Management Agency, four of the 20 derailed cars were identified with non-hazardous materials. Two tankers contained residual amounts of Diesel Exhaust Fluid and the other two contained residual amounts of Polyacrylamide Water Solution.
Norfolk Southern officials, the Clark County Hazmat team and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency each independently examined the crash site and verified there was no evidence of spillage.
Shawn Heaton told the Springfield News-Sun that he was waiting at the intersection as the train crossed the intersection and captured the start of the derailment on video.
“I was right there, and I was playing on my phone and then I heard a loud bang. And when I heard the loud bang, I started recording,” Heaton said. “When I heard the bang, there was all kinds of debris and metal shoot out from under the cars and that’s when I started recording and you could see them start jumping off the tracks.”
The Clark County Emergency Management Agency asked residents within 1,000 feet of the derailment to shelter in place before lifting the order late Saturday night. Ohio 41 remains closed and the Ohio Department of Transportation is expected to post a detour for drivers.
In an update at 2:15 a.m. on the agencies’ Facebook page, no hazardous materials were found at the derailment site in Clark County. The Ohio EPA will oversee cleanup of the site.
Gov. Mike DeWine said both President Biden and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg reached out following the derailment.
On Feb. 3, 38 cars of a Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, in northeast Ohio near Pennsylvania, derailed and several of the train’s cars carrying hazardous materials burned.
Though no one was injured, nearby neighborhoods in both states were imperiled. The crash prompted an evacuation of about half the town’s roughly 5,000 residents, an ongoing multi-governmental emergency response and lingering worries among villagers of long-term health impacts.