After Monday’s massive chemical freight train derailment in the City of Oneida that sent fireballs into the sky and forced the shutdown of schools, roads, and communities for miles around, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer Wednesday called for the creation of a new National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Railroad Administration, and Department of Homeland Security joint taskforce investigation into the cause of this accident and the repeated incidents involving CSX trains across upstate New York.   

Schumer said Monday’s accident in the City of Oneida is just one in a series of dozens of accidents, derailments, and fatal crashes that CSX has been involved in across upstate New York.  This most recent accident occurred when a CSX train traveling from Buffalo to the CSX rail yard in Selkirk derailed, igniting liquid propane tanks that created explosions that lit the dawn sky. There were 79 cars on the train, including 40 propane cars and two containing non-toxic inhalant hazardous material. 

Schumer said that had the train derailed earlier -- it passed through downtown Syracuse shortly before the accident -- the explosions could have been devastating and chemicals could have been spewed throughout the heavily populated area. The crash forced the evacuations of hundreds in the community, closed schools, and shut down a large section of The Thruway, leading to back-ups throughout Central New York.

This accident comes on the heels of several CSX related train incidents that have occurred on CSX tracks all across the state. On January 16, thirteen cars on a CSX train left the tracks in the village of East Rochester. No one was injured, but at least two motorists were nearly hit by falling trailers that were dislodged from their train cars. The week before, 20,000 gallons of methanol caught fire at the CSX Selkirk rail yard, the same destination as the train that derailed on Monday. On December 10, a CSX train carrying cans of mixed vegetables derailed on an overpass in Cheektowaga, leaving one boxcar teetering on the edge of a railroad bridge and sending a second onto Union Road.

According to the Federal Railroad Administration, 2.95 million tons of hazardous materials are carried by rail through New York State.  However, from 2000-2006, there were 572 rail accidents in communities across upstate New York, causing nearly $34 million in damages.