May 1, 2016 Sunday Morning HAZMAT Freight Train Derailment- just before 7AM
near the Rhode Island WMATA Station
14 car derailment, with 3 leaking cars- one of sodium hydroxide (similar to bleach or Drano)- reportedly was sealed Sunday; another of non-hazardous calcium chloride said to be non-hazardous, also plugged; and another of ethanol slowly leaking from the base
of a valve, and contained.
No injuries. No evacuations ordered.
Was an interstate shipment from Cumberland, Maryland to Hamlet, North Carolina.
Caught on video. See: http://abcnews.go.com/US/video-shows-dramatic-csx-train-derailment-dc/story?id=38827399
Fortunately this did not occur in an area as the Takoma Station area, to the north, just inside the Washington, D.C. line, where the railroad is upon an embankment higher than the adjacent wood framed residential dwellings recently constructed as part of the mania for 'transit oriented development'. Such a derailment there would kill dozens of people in their homes within such projects as 'Elevation 314' for being irresponsibly located within the footprint of a derailment and at a lower elevation- meaning that that train cars would not just come into their dwelling laterally but also from top down.
'Elevation 314'
Derailments along that railroad corridor in 1996 and in 1976 did not result in such injuries or deaths because the nearby dwellings were set back 50 feet or more from the railroad. The 1996 derailment just north of 16th Street in Silver Spring went eastward into an apartment building parking lot; while the 1976 derailment, though from the embankment just south of the Takoma Station area, went westward upon Blair Road and the front yards of the houses along that Roads' west side.
Location of the May 1, 2016 derailment is adjacent to two new 'transit oriented development' real estate development projects by MRP Reality and Douglas Development.
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