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Most of the oilspilled in a freight train was crash cleaned up in Amur region

Most of the oil spilled at the side of a freight train crash as 17 tank cars derailed in the Amur region was cleaned up

KHABAROVSK, February 7 (Itar-Tass) — Most of the oil spilled at the side of a freight train crash as 17 tank cars derailed in the Amur region was cleaned up, the corporate communication service of the Trans-Baikal Railway told Itar-Tass on Tuesday.

According to the company official, the railway’s emergency units “collected all that could be collected.” Railway workers are planning to conduct excavation of the contaminated soil and reclamation of the land in several stages. The full cleanup of the area contaminated with petroleum products is possible only in warm weather conditions. The situation is currently monitored by the ecological laboratory of the rail transport workers. Diking of the spill area, the use of sorbents and other measures are to prevent the oil remains’ penetration into the ground waters when the snow melts.

The crash of a train of 68 tank cars carrying oil occurred near the Novobureisk station on January 31. According to preliminary conclusions of experts, a warped solebar of a carriage bogie of one of the tank cars caused the derailment of 17 tank cars, 13 of which overturned. According to the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry’s (EMERCOM) main department for the Amur region, at least 240 tonnes of oil were spilled on the ground. The area of the oil spill was about 1,000 square metres. More than 600 square metres of the railway embankment and hundreds of square meters of right-of-way land were contaminated.

The scale of damage to the environment is assessed by a special commission with the participation of experts of the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Usage (Rosprirodnadzor).