The City of Petal has settled out of court with Norfolk Southern Railway for $68,370 for damages to Railroad Street caused by a train derailment in late January.
The Petal Board of Aldermen agreed to accept the amount at the Aug. 4 board meeting to recoup the cost the city incurred for repairing the street after the accident.
“Basically, they had to have an estimate from an engineer when it came to how much it was going to cost to pave (the road),” Mayor Hal Marx said. “When we were doing our estimates for our paving projects and things that we’re doing, we had that one also, as far as cost estimate, and that’s what they came up with. So we presented that to them, and they wrote a check.”
The incident occurred at approximately midnight on Jan. 23, when a Norfolk Southern train carrying denatured alcohol derailed near the intersection of U.S. 11 and Central Avenue, necessitating the evacuation of several homes in the area. Immediately after the accident, officials established a 150-foot perimeter around the site for work crews.
No injuries were reported.
U.S. 11 was closed temporarily after the incident and later reopened, followed shortly by Central Avenue. The Coleman Center for Families and Children closed for the day, although the rest of the Petal School District opened as scheduled.
“We’re satisfied (with the settlement), because we didn’t have to go to court,” Marx said. “We just wanted to make sure that we were able to put the road back in good condition, and it was just the right thing for them to do because it was their rail cars that went off the track. It did cause some damage, so we feel like it’s a fair settlement.”
Marx said he is still unaware what caused the derailment.
“I’ve never heard that; I did not hear what caused the derailment,” he said. “I would assume there’s some type of report, maybe, that the National Transportation Safety Board has to do at some point about things like that. But if they’ve issued a report on what the cause was, I haven’t seen that.”
In addition to the Forrest County Sheriff’s Office, other agencies that responded to the incident included the Petal Police Department, the Petal School District Police Department, Hattiesburg Police Department, Hattiesburg Fire Department, Mississippi Department of Transportation, Mississippi Highway Patrol, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and Emergency Management District.
