The Day the Sky Over West Virginia Exploded Thirteen Times

The Day the Sky Over West Virginia Exploded Thirteen Times

The sky above West Virginia burned for four days with thirteen separate fireballs after a train derailed on February 16, 2015 - and the rail had been flagged by instruments twice, sixty-one and thirty-five days earlier, yet no hand inspection was done. How did two missed ultrasonic warnings and one inspector’s judgment lead to a town evacuated into a February storm and a house consumed by the last blast?

In this episode, you’ll hear the sequence of events that led from a flagged rail to a catastrophic derailment, the characteristics of the train and cargo involved, and why investigators began to question assumptions about speed, weather, and tank car safety. What did the instrument readings mean, and how did human decisions turn those readings into disaster?

Person: Sperry Rail Service (contractor) Date: February 16, 2015 Location: Mount Carbon, Kanawha River valley, West Virginia Event: Derailment with thirteen fireballs over four days Cargo: 107 tank cars of Bakken crude, up to 30,000 gallons each

- The flaw detector logged an anomaly on December 17, 2014, 61 days before the derailment. - The same instrument signal reappeared on December 12, 2015, 35 days before the derailment. - The inspector with 15 years’ experience classified both signals as surface noise and did not perform hand inspections. - The train consisted of 109 cars, traveled at 33 miles per hour, and was subject to a 40 mph cold-weather restriction. - The last fireball occurred more than ten hours after the first, after a house in Adena Village had been destroyed.

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