Australian authorities have declared an emergency after a train derailed with tens of thousands of gallons of sulfuric acid on board.
The freight train was carrying roughly 200,000 liters (53,000 gallons) of the highly corrosive acid when it came off the tracks Sunday morning in a remote area of northern Queensland, police said.
A 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) exclusion zone was put in place around the area and remained in effect Monday as authorities dealt with “minor leakage of sulfuric acid and spillage of diesel fuel,” the Queensland Police Service said.
The train’s locomotive ended up on its side, and all 26 freight cars it was pulling derailed, according to authorities.
Photos from the scene showed the jumble of cars sprawled across mangled tracks and waterlogged terrain.
Three men who were aboard the train were believed to have suffered minor injuries, police said.
Weather, floods hampering response
A nearby highway was closed as a result of the exclusion zone and flooding in the area.
It isn’t clear what exactly caused the derailment about 20 kilometers east of the town of Julia Creek.
Police Inspector Trevor Kidd told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that there was soft mud at the crash site.
“You have to take into account it’s remote, it’s impacted heavily by weather, access is quite difficult, and these are the challenges the responders are facing at the moment,” he said.
Kidd told the broadcaster that it was too soon to determine whether the spilled acid and fuel had affected the local environment or water supplies.
“It is some significant distance from major waterways and any major infrastructure, so we do have something going our way as far as that goes,” he said. “But it is certainly challenging to make an effective assessment at this stage.”
