River council lobbies for investigation into derailment

By CHARLIE BUTERBAUGH

NARROWSBURG, NY — In a letter sent to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) last week, the Upper Delaware Council (UDC) continued its push for a federal investigation into the October 13 train derailment in Parkers Glen, PA.

The UDC sent a letter to FRA regional administrator Mark McKeon, requesting “a complete and thorough” investigation of the train wreck. The UDC also wants the results of the investigation to be made public.

The letter states that while death, personal injury or property damage weren’t results of the wreck, local officials and residents need to learn from the accident “in order to prevent a more serious incident in the future.”

The letter recognizes the importance of the railroad to the local economy and expresses hope for its continuation. It also invokes the life force of the Upper Delaware River in local and lower-river-basin communities, including Philadelphia, where the river is the largest source of drinking water.

“A spill of hazardous material from a train accident could be devastating,” the letter warns. It also points out the difficulty of evacuating residents, caused by the proximity of the river and the railroad, in the event of a hazardous-materials spill.

FRA Hazardous Materials Specialist Fred Fraini, Jr. attended a late-October meeting in Shohola Township following the derailment, and the UDC has been assured that an FRA investigation is underway, but UDC Executive Director Bill Douglass said his board wants to “keep the ball rolling.”

When Fraini visited Shohola Township, Douglass said the main issue on the table was the inefficient communication immediately following the wreck between the New York Susquehanna and Western Railroad Corporation, Pike County Emergency Coordinator Roger Maltby and Shohola Fire Chief Don Wall. As Wall was trying to determine whether hazardous materials had spilled when the train cars jumped the tracks, several hundred firemen and buses to evacuate residents were unnecessarily called to the scene.

Attending the Shohola meeting were Douglass, Wall, two other firemen, representatives from the railroad and the National Park Service and Shohola Township Supervisor George Fluhr.

“The communication could have been better. That’s the bottom line,” Douglass said. “We hope to work with the railroad to update an existing Emergency Response Guide, which will assist local fire companies and ambulance corps serving the river corridor,” the UDC letter reads.

Douglass said train engineers took at least an hour to provide Wall with a manifest, a list of freight contents on the train. “No one should go in there until they know what’s on the train,” he said. It turned out that the derailed cars were not carrying hazardous materials. “I think we came away [from the Shohola meeting] with the feeling that we can all work together better, and communication is a good place to start,” Douglass said.