Railroad Crossing Crackdown Reveals Hazmat Crisis Waiting to Happen

It was a hazmat disaster waiting to happen.

Plainfield police were flabbergasted when, during last week’s railroad crossing crackdown, they spotted a tanker semi truck bearing a hazardous materials placard resting “with his rear tires smack dab on the tracks,” said Sgt. Eric Munson, traffic safety officer.

“If a train had come along right then, he would have been stuck,” Police Chief John Konopek said. “We’d be looking at another Bourbonnais.”

The chief was talking about the infamous 1999 train-truck collision between Amtrak's southbound city of New Orleans passenger train and a semi truck driver trying to beat the crossing gates with a train barreling toward him. Eleven passengers died when the train derailed. The train tragedy an hour south spawned stepped-up enforcement of crossing signals and mandated event recorders at all tracks that cross roads.

What could have happened in the village last week illustrates the importance of train safety awareness and enforcement campaigns Canadian National Railway and Plainfield police are waging this spring, officers say.

Hazmat placard 1824

In the case of the tanker on Route 126 in Plainfield, the peril is not only to the people in the cars nearby. Another dire threat, if there was such a crash, would be the spilling of dangerous chemicals into the surrounding neighborhood.

The semi tanker bore the hazmat placard number 1824 to show it was transporting sodium hydroxide, commonly known as lye, according to online hazmat information. Solid sodium hydroxide can cause permanent injuries like chemical burns, scarring or blindness. It can also ignite flammable substances like gasoline.

“With trains overhanging the tracks by three feet minimum and up to five feet, this tanker would have been hit for sure,” Munson said.

If a train hit a tanker like the one parked precariously on the tracks in Plainfield that day, it would be a major emergency management crisis, Konopek and Munson said. The neighborhood would have to be evacuated.

“That truck becomes an 80,000-pound missile taking out everybody and everything in its way,” Konopek said. “Cars, pedestrians, houses. Who knows what?”

Mistakes we can’t afford

The  and the Canadian National Railway police celebrated last week’s Train Safety Awareness Week by slapping eight drivers with as much as $750 in fines and court costs for stopping within railroad grade crossings.

 A local hazmat simulation exercise may be in the future.

Doubling train traffic over Plainfield’s 17 railroad crossings during the next year, police say, is going to affect the community—from children walking to school to parents taking vanloads of swimmers to the pool to residents driving home from work.

“It’s our job to do everything we can to get the community ready and keep them safe when the train traffic increases,” Munson said.

What happened to the guy who parked his tanker of lye on the tracks on Route 126? He got a ticket—a life-changing ticket, police said. He’ll lose his license to drive a truck for several months.

“In other words, he’ll lose his job,” Munson said.

“The guy just was not using his head at all,” Konopek said. “Basically, stupid mistakes like this are something this community simply cannot afford.”