exploding train

There was some excitement near here last Friday. A cargo train derailed and exploded/burned within three miles of the house. Kendre's mom called to let us know - I was on conf calls and everyone else was doing school. I went out to the front yard and took this photo of the smoke:



A little later we got a call from the neighbor saying that the fire dept was short on manpower so they couldn't contact everyone, but asked him to call around and ask us to evacuate for 4 hours to let the fumes dissipate. As we were leaving, they already had roads blocked going over to the area:


(the tilted cars in the photo are caused by the slow scan speed of the Blackberry camera - since we were driving by, the picture looks tilted)

Apparently this video was shot by some emergency personnel on the scene:

We went to Edmond where we met some of Kendre's family for BBQ and then watched a movie at her nieces' house.

One of the OKC television stations has a photo gallery from the derailment.

[update]
The boys and I drove by the site this evening. There are still several cars laying by the tracks in various levels of destruction. The tracks are completely torn up. I guess it will take a while to restore service.