Burning rail cars carrying hazardous materials were largely extinguished Saturday, a day after they derailed in a remote area of North Dakota.
Officials said Friday that no one was injured. The threat to nearby residents remained low, according to the county’s emergency management department, which reported no air pollution in the area or in the wind direction.
Twenty-nine cars of a CPKC train The train derailed around 3:45 a.m. in a swampy area surrounded by farmland about 140 miles (225 kilometers) northwest of Fargo, said Andrew Kirking, the county’s emergency management director.
Kirking said in a statement Saturday that the fire still flared up occasionally as emergency workers removed cars from the tracks. But “firefighting operations throughout the night and morning have been incredibly successful,” he said.
Emergency services now report that the contents of the derailed wagons included anhydrous ammonia, methanol and plastic pellets.
Bill Suess, a spill investigation program manager for the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality, saw ammonia as a potential risk, but winds carried the smoke away from the nearby town of Bordulac, which has a population of about 20.
“The wind was in our favor,” Suess said Friday.
Exposure to high levels of ammonia in the air can cause burns to the eyes, nose, throat and respiratory tract, and can lead to blindness, lung damage or death, health officials say. Exposure to lower levels can cause coughing and irritation of the nose and throat.
CPKC said in a statement Friday that it “has initiated its emergency response plan and launched a comprehensive, coordinated response.”
The railroad was formed last year from a merger of Canadian Pacific Railway and Kansas City Southern.
The National Transportation Safety Board said Friday it was conducting an investigation.