Train Tunnel Fire Continues to Rage

A fire raging for a second day Thursday in a train tunnel under Baltimore cast smoke over downtown offices, shut down the Orioles’ ballpark and burned fiber-optic cables, slowing Internet traffic across the country.

The accident, by blocking CSX Transportation’s only direct route between the industrial Northeast and the South, also derailed freight and passenger transportation.

Several city blocks were closed above the tunnel where a train carrying hazardous materials derailed Wednesday afternoon. Crews Thursday night began pumping hydrochloric acid from a derailed tanker car. Extreme heat had allowed them to remove only five of the train’s 60 cars.

“We’re told some of the boxcars are actually glowing,” Fire Department spokesman Hector Torres said. “You’re talking about glowing metal. I’m guessing 1,000 or 1,500 degrees.”

The train was carrying wood as well as hydrochloric acid and at least five other hazardous chemicals. But Torres said air quality tests showed the smoke was coming mostly from the burning wood.

“Right now, there doesn’t appear to be any toxins in the smoke, so that’s a good sign,” Torres said.

The fire caused major Internet slowdowns in the mid-Atlantic states, and delays rippled across the country as companies diverted Web traffic to other lines. Fiber-optic cable running through the tunnel was damaged, but authorities said they had not yet assessed the extent of the damage.

The Coast Guard closed portions of the Inner Harbor to all water traffic, including water taxis that ferry tourists along the waterfront restaurants and bars and take commuters to work. Baltimore’s aquarium, one of the city’s biggest tourist attractions, remained open. Thursday’s Orioles’ game at Camden Yards was postponed.

Railroad officials have privately told customers to expect delayed shipments for at least the next seven to 14 days as dozens of trains are being rerouted over lines as far away as Cleveland, and some shipments aren’t moving at all.

The widespread effect of a single tunnel fire illustrates the congested nature of all freight transportation in the Northeast, including highways and ports, as movement of goods in the region from Virginia to Massachusetts grows far faster than money is being spent to add transportation capacity and to eliminate “choke points,” such as the ancient Howard Street Tunnel.

It affects passenger movement as well, since commuter railroads in the Northeast operate on the same tracks as freight railroads.

“To me, this points up how fragile and constrained our freight system is,” said Mortimer Downey, former deputy secretary of Transportation and now principal consultant for pbConsult, a division of Parsons Brinckerhoff Inc. “Small problems can take down major, major elements of the system.”

That’s exactly what happened because of the CSX tunnel fire.

For instance, rail traffic headed south from the port of Baltimore, located on the north side of the Howard Street Tunnel, must detour hundreds of miles. The Tropicana “juice train,” which carries Florida orange juice to the New York-New Jersey market and is one of CSX’s most time-sensitive shipments, was forced to detour through Harrisburg, Pa., on a Norfolk Southern line.

That Norfolk Southern line through Harrisburg and Hagerstown, Md., is the only other direct freight line from the Northeast to the Southeast, and it too has serious congestion problems even under normal circumstances.