CHICAGO - When three cars of a freight train slid off the tracks in Burlington at about 2:30 a.m. a week ago Tuesday, Burlington Village Board members may have been wishing the errant tank cars had slid just a little bit farther, the Sun-Times reports.
Then they might have demolished one of Burlington's chronic headaches an ugly, dangerous, long-abandoned grain elevator at trackside that the village wants to get rid of but can't afford to tear down.
"Quite a few of us were wishing the train had knocked it down," one official said. "Then it would clearly have become the railroad's responsibility."
Village officials claim the building actually is on property owned by the Canadian National Railway. But negotiations with the railroad about tearing it down broke down last year, in part because the railroad insisted on the village buying expensive liability insurance while demolition was underway.
Village officials' biggest worry is that a collapsing drainage pipe passes underneath the building, and if it becomes totally blocked, that could flood ground uphill from the site.
Ironically, the board members had talked about the elevator situation when they met the night of Dec. 21, just five hours before the train wreck. What's even more weird is that at least two village officials even were talking about train wrecks right before that meeting.
It seems that an unidentified Cub Scout needed to interview a public official about some village issue as part of the requirements for a merit badge. So the boy interviewed the first board member who showed up for the meeting, Trustee Duane "Curly" Wilkison, and his wife, Village Clerk Mary Ann Wilkison. He asked them what would happen if a disaster hit the village. The Wilkisons said one major danger that had been considered was that a train could derail, and tank cars could either leak out poisonous gas or threaten to blow up. If so, they said, the town might have to be evacuated.
"The boy asked us what young people could do in such a situation. I said that if he was aware of elderly people or someone else who might need more assistance, he could help them to evacuate."
When another trustee called the Wilkisons at 5:30 in the morning the next day and said some tank cars had derailed in the middle of town, Mary Ann says that at first they thought the call might be a gag. "But then we looked out and could see red flashing lights all over. If I had known the Cub Scout's number, I would have called him up. I think he might be from Hampshire."
In real life, the derailed cars were carrying only carbon dioxide, so the town didn't need an evacuation or the aid of a certain Cub Scout.
(This item appeared in the Sun-Times Dec. 30, 2009.)
