Firefighters Working to Prevent Rail Car Explosion

[Geee]

Fox News:

Firefighters in a Northern California suburb were trying to keep a burning rail car from exploding and leveling nearby houses, schools and businesses as authorities on Wednesday kept an evacuation order in place that affected thousands of homes.

The 29,000-gallon tanker loaded with liquid propane caught fire midday on Tuesday at a Northern Propane Energy yard in Lincoln, a city of 40,000 north of Sacramento.

Firefighters set up four fixed hoses to soak the tanker and to keep its temperature down as the propane burns off, a process that officials said on Tuesday could take until Wednesday. Trying to directly extinguish the flames shooting into the air from a vent could create a propane gas cloud that could ignite into a fireball, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Daniel Berlant said.


Meanwhile, the American Red Cross has set up three evacuation centers to help people whose homes are inside the mandatory evacuation area -- designated as within one mile of the rail car.