Around 20 wagons of a cargo train of Norfolk Southern derailed near Springfield on Saturday night, the second derailment of the company’s trains in Ohio in a month, authorities said.
But unlike the February 3 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, a company spokesman said the train was not carrying hazardous materials, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
The train, with no passengers on it, derailed around 5 p.m. Saturday on State Route 41 near the Clark County Fairgrounds, the Dispatch reported. Springfield is located about 46 miles (74 kilometers) west of Columbus, the capital of the state of Ohio.
Twenty of the train’s 212 carriages derailed while traveling south, the spokesman for the train said. Norfolk Southern.
Shawn Heaton told the Springfield News-Sun newspaper that he was waiting at the intersection when the train passed through it and he was able to capture the start of the derailment on video.
“I was right there playing on my phone and then I heard a loud bang. It was when I started recording,” Heaton explained. “When I heard the bang, all kinds of debris and metal came out from under the carriages and that’s when I started recording and you could see them start to jump off the tracks,” Heaton explained.
The Clark County Emergency Management Agency has asked residents within 1,000 feet (300 meters) of the derailment to shelter in place, but the agency stressed that it has not issued formal evacuation orders.
