Something for easterners to contemplate.
The biblical “wormwood” delivered by rail instead of by air.
The water is not going to run uphill into the tributaries much, I promise.
I believe you posted a link to this unrolled thread. I encourage everyone to read this in detail. A lot of the tech stuff was way, WAY beyond me, but the basic message was clear. I’m just copying a small bit of the beginning. He explains how fast the various chemicals involve degrade, in air, water, soil, etc. It is not Chernobyl.
https://underappreciated/thread/1624935878639353856.
Based on my preliminary research, the derailed train of Vinyl Chloride is going to be something of a short term calamity with hopefully few long term effects. Apart from the cause of the derailment most everything else makes sense.
Vinyl Chloride is a highly flammable carcinogenic and monomer used to make plastic. It’s really nasty stuff, bad for you down to at least 1 PPM, but you can only smell it starting at 10 PPM. It causes Cancer, liver issues, and is mutagenic in acute and chronic exposure.
The HazMat information I found earlier today indicates that evacuation of 1 mile is standard. The fire is not to be extinguished unless the leaks can be stopped. Due to the risk of BLEVE approaching the accident was very hazardous for several reasons, even geared up.
Apparently a decision was made to vent the tanks explosively. This is preferable to an uncontrolled BLEVE. The combustion products are bad, HCL and trace amounts of Phosgene but both of these will be eliminated in the environment quickly.
Vinyl Chloride is quite reactive and will begin to polymerize in open atmosphere. This is actually good because polymerized Vinyl Chloride is relatively harmless stuff, think PVC. The environmental damage should be short lived with a fast recovery.
They basically had to blow up those tanks, there was not a good way to deal with the fire and leaks under the threat of a BLEVE.
Remember Cuyohoga?(sp?). Rivers in that area used to catch fire 50-60 years ago. There were refinery operations in the early 20th century that used to discharge gasoline as a waste product into water ways before widespread adoption of gasoline engines...