Ken Ruinard Independent-Mail Anderson Fire Department Capt. Eddie Beebe, right, communicates with the first two city firemen returning from Aiken while Sgt. Melton Nash, center, and firefighter Stephen Hays listen Monday morning.

Local rescuers helping at train crash scene

By CHARMAINE SMITH
Anderson Independent-Mail
January 10, 2005

To Anderson rescue workers Don McCown and Charlie King, the small textile town of Graniteville felt like a completely furnished house with everything present to make it a home — except the people.

"The whole town is empty," said Mr. King, an assistant coordinator for Anderson County’s hazardous materials team now heading up the four teams providing back-up and medical attention to workers cleaning the scene of last week’s fatal train collision in Graniteville, near Aiken.

The crash and resulting chlorine leak killed nine people and left more than 250 people sick.

Members of the Anderson County hazardous materials team left for Aiken on Saturday afternoon to help relieve crews from the Aiken area that had been working since Thursday.

The 38-member Anderson County team will work in what has been called the "hot zone" — an area around the crash site off-limits to everyone except certified public safety personnel — until at least Wednesday, Mr. King said.

Mr. King and Mr. McCown, a certified paramedic, were at the site Sunday and Monday, helping tend to the needs of residents who were evacuated.

Mr. McCown said team members, who are working in 12-hour rotations, have been going into evacuated homes, caring for pets left behind or in some cases, rescuing them. They have been providing support to the teams repairing the damaged train car that leaked the chlorine.

Between Sunday and Monday, more than 100 pets had been rescued, he said.

"I have never been to something this involved or this large in my 30 years as a paramedic," Mr. McCown said. "It has been a tremendous response."

Workers continued Monday to mix the chlorine gas with sodium hydroxide to turn the gas into liquid bleach, which can be safely pumped out of the car, said Thom Berry, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Environmental Control.
Investigators have determined that the three-man crew that had parked a two-car train on a side rail failed to switch the tracks back to the main rail. That sent the oncoming train hurtling into the parked train.