Railroad: 230,000 gallons of oil spilled

DOON, Iowa (AP) — An estimated 230,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into floodwaters in the northwestern corner of Iowa following a train derailment Friday, a railroad official said Saturday.

BNSF spokesman Andy Williams said 14 of 32 oil tanker cars just south of Doon in Lyon County leaked oil into surrounding floodwaters from the swollen Little Rock River. Williams had earlier said 33 oil cars had derailed.

Nearly half the spill — an estimated 100,000 gallons — had been contained with booms near the derailment site and an additional boom placed approximately 5 miles downstream, Williams said. Skimmers and vacuum trucks were being used to remove the oil.

Officials still hadn’t determined the cause of Friday morning’s derailment, but a disaster proclamation issued by Gov. Kim Reynolds for Lyon and three other counties placed blame on the flooding. Reynolds visited the derailment site Saturday.

A major part of the cleanup includes building a temporary road parallel to the tracks to allow in cranes that can remove the derailed and partially-submerged oil cars.

The train was carrying tar-sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to Stroud, Okla., for ConocoPhillips, which said that the derailed cars were model DOT117Rs, indicating they were newer or had been retrofitted to be safer and help prevent leaks in the event of an accident.