Ten90 Solutions LLC

The yard blew up at 1214 AM on January 7, 1983, some 35 years ago.  Well, not exactly.

The yard didn't exactly blow up.  Texaco's tank farm across from the east end of the yard blew up. In particular, a gasoline storage tank being filled to its 3 million gallon capacity overflowed and the vapor from 150,000 overflow gallons exploded, touching off the 3 million gallon tank.

A little before 1214 AM, the locomotive engineer on a Selkirk bound train in the departure yard called the hump on the radio and reported gasoline leaking from the tanks down at the east end of the yard.  At first, I thought he was referring to some tank cars at the east end and I was perplexed since gasoline was never shipped to Oak Island by rail.   Then I realized he meant the tank farm.

The engineer said he was going to shut down his locomotives (a set of four GP 40s) and I told him to get his crew off the train and go over to the east end yard office.

The assistant division superintendent was on the property that night as we had had a derailment on the River Line.  I called him at the movement office in Elizabethport. 

"Can you go down there and check it out?" 

"Sure," I said.   He hung up and called the car foreman at the east end to make the same request of him.   

I walked over to the radio rack to get a portable radio to take with me to the east end when the yardmaster said, "There it goes."   

I thought he was screwing around and I turned to tell him to cut it out, but he wasn't there.  He was gone, and so was the retarder operator.  I looked east into the classification yard.  I saw this wave, this tidal wave of flame rushing towards the hump tower. 

I remember thinking how strange it was that I couldn't hear anything as if all the air had been sucked out of the area and sound couldn't transit the vacuum.   

And I also looked at the clock, because hump trainmasters always look at the clock; because everything at the hump is timed, and I particularly wanted to know what time it was when I died. 

The hump building had three levels and we, the yardmaster, the retarder operator, and the trainmaster were located on the top level.  Our office had floor-to-ceiling glass windows on three sides, north, east, and west.  On the east and west sides, the windows could pivot 360 degrees, allowing access to the "decks" on either side so that the trainmaster could stand outside and get a better view of something, or just scream at a crew without using the radio. 

I watched the wave of fire for maybe half a  second before fear overtook fascination and I headed for the exit stairs. 

I don't remember the blast.  I remember feeling the blast.  I remember being in the stairwell on the third floor and then I remember being on the ground floor, covered in plaster dust.  I don't remember anything in between, but I was upright, in line, radio in hand and ready to run. 

Run I did, like a jet, west on the access road toward Wilson Avenue.  As I ran I tried calling the block operators at Upper Bay tower on the east end and NK tower on the west end to tell them to hold all trains clear of the yard. 

I looked to my left and I saw one of the PM yard transfers, PN 32, pulling out of Doremus Avenue yard, across from the hump, at about 30 mph. 

"Is that PN 32 I see pulling around the wye at 20 miles per hour more than the authorized speed?" 

"Is that Dave Schanoes I see passing me at 25 miles per hour more than the authorized speed?" I was running too hard to laugh. 

The silence stuck with me.  I didn't then and don't now every recall actually hearing the explosion.  I saw the flames. I still see the flames.  I felt the heat, and on days like today I wish I could still feel the heat. 

But silence was the overwhelming sensation.

Then I realized I wasn't hearing what I most expected to hear-- sirens. 

Where were the fire trucks? I continued west  toward Wilson Avenue and came upon the fire trucks-- silent, stopped, blocked, behind a swarm of automobiles parked across the acces road, their drivers and passengers sitting on the hoods of the cars watching the flames from the gasoline storage tanks, as if this were July 4th entertainment, not a January 7th catastrophe.

I knew we had crews at the east end of  the yard. I knew we had a yardmaster  at the east end.        I knew we had car inspectors at the east end.        And I knew thirty percent of our business was tank cars of hazardous materials. 

I was worried.   I climbed up and opened the cab door of the first fire truck in the queue. 

"Do you know where you going? " I asked the driver who looked at my plaster-dust covered self like I was a mime. 

"Not really," he said.

"I'm the trainmaster, and I can get you there."

I closed the door. "Let's go," I said. 

"We can't," he said.  We're blocked." 

"Look," I said, "that yard right now has about 300 tank cars in it filled with the most toxic substances known to man.  If those cars start cooking off, these people won't have to worry about getting out of the way of a fire truck." 

With that he hit the sirens on his truck at full volume and began edging his truck gently, but insistently, forward, all the while hitting the horns.  Some cars moved.  Some cars he moved. 

He held up a mask connected to an air tank. "We gonna need these?"   

"If we do," I said, "we're too late and it's too late." 

He threw the mask behind him and hit the gas hard.

"There are speed bumps ahead," I warned him.

"In that case," he said, you better hold on tight."

David Schanoes

January 16, 2018

"We aint off this ship in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space."-- Parker, Alien