Waverly explosion

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The Waverly explosion occurred on February 24, 1978 in Waverly , Tennessee , United States , 90 km west of Nashville and 228 km east-northeast of Memphis . A derailed tank car with liquid propane ( BLEVE ) exploded during clean-up and rescue work after a train accident that had occurred two days earlier . With 16 deaths, it was the most casualty incident of its kind in the USA and led to a tightening of national safety precautions for liquid gas tank wagons.

Course of events

On February 22, 1978 around 10:30 p.m. derailed in Waverly due to a broken wheel 24 of the 92 wagons of a train on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad on the way from Nashville to Memphis, including two single-walled tank cars filled with liquid propane. The first rescue teams on site were firefighters and police from Waverly, who could not find any leaks or fires on the cars, but also had no gas detectors. They had also mistakenly assumed they were double-walled wagons. Nevertheless, a nearby house and a care facility were evacuated as a precaution.

The next morning the alerted civil defense and a dangerous goods team arrived at the scene of the accident. The evacuation area was expanded to a radius of 400 m and all electrical and natural gas sources in the danger area were turned off. At this point the firefighters had already installed heavy hose lines to cool the derailed tank wagons. The clean-up work proceeded quickly and around 8 p.m. the route could already be reopened to restricted traffic.

Preparations for unloading the tank wagons did not begin until around 1 p.m. on February 24, after gas indicators had shown no leaked propane. Most of the evacuations were then also canceled. The fire chief, the chief of police, a fire brigade and two civil defense representatives were on site, along with railway workers and staff from a private contractor. Before the unloading process could begin, someone noticed propane fumes escaping from one of the cars at around 2:58 p.m. Within seconds, before anyone could react to the leaking propane, the tank car exploded in a BLEVE . The shock wave and the subsequent fire destroyed or damaged 36 Waverly buildings and a large part of the equipment of local emergency teams was affected. The damage was later put at 1.8 million US dollars . 16 people died as a result of the explosion, including the fire brigade commander and the city police chief. 43 people were injured.

Assistance came in response to a federal request for help from 39 counties . Due to the second, now burning tank car, a 1.6 km radius around the danger area was evacuated. Helicopters brought injuries to hospitals in Nashville, Louisville , Birmingham and Cincinnati .

The Waverly Train Explosion Memorial Museum commemorates the tragedy .

Effects

The Transport Safety Authority investigated the incident and found that the cause of the release and ignition of the liquefied gas was due to damage to the outer shell of the tank wagon. This happened either through the external influence during the movement of the wagon in the course of the unloading preparations, or through the increased pressure inside the wagon. The structure itself was already weakened by the derailment process.

Through other BLEVEs in the 1970s, including 1970 in Crescent City ( Illinois ) with 66 injuries, 1971 in Houston ( Texas ) with one dead and 37 injured and the Kingman explosion in 1973 in Arizona with 12 dead and 100 injured, the armored Railway industry up to 1980 all liquid gas tank wagons with heat protection, safety couplings and reinforced head zones. Since then, there have been no BLEVEs of rail tank cars in the United States.

In direct response to the tragedy, Governor Ray Blanton ordered the establishment of an institute for hazardous materials and the Tennessee General Assembly passed one of the strongest emergency management laws in the United States.

Web links

Coordinates: 36 ° 5 ′ 13.2 "  N , 87 ° 47 ′ 31.2"  W.