I don’t know how many of my readers know that I live near Monument Colorado. This morning my mother woke me with a telephone call to tell me there was an evacuation near Monument due to a leak of hydrochloric acid. A train car is leaking and there is a chance of a vapor cloud. I had to look up the cross streets in Google maps to find the evacuation area. I think we are a comfortable distance away but am monitoring the situation via local television. Since I don’t normally watch local television, I am once again amazed at the the commercial to content ratio.
I hope they get the area cleaned up quickly so that 250 families that have been evacuated can return. Trains along that track usually carry coal down from the north, or the empties from the south, but we’ll occasionally see other types of freight. The tracks, to judge from the railroad crossing we use every day, are well maintained. The twitter hash tag is #monumentacidleak.