Spilled ammonium nitrate. Impact dissected truck’s trailer, but the cab was already across the tracks. The rig was heading into Nelson from Minnesota. Clean-up took six hours. Image: Buffalo County sheriff
Witness: Driver ignored crossing gates
NELSON, Wis. – The truck driver whose trailer was sliced in half by a Burlington Northern train escaped injury. So did the two-person crew in the locomotive cab. Sheriff Michael Osmond said his investigation was incomplete. A witness, he said, reported the trucker had driven through flashing lights and crossing gates – right into the train’s path. Sheriff Osmond identified the driver only as 65 years old and from Durand, 16 miles up the Chippewa River from Nelson. The semi-trailer was hauling 224,000 pounds of the nitrogen-rich agricultural fertilizer. Crews spent six hours sweeping up the mess. Traffic was blocked on U.S. Highway 25 across the Mississippi River to Wabasha in Minnesota.
Fertilizer profile
Ammonium nitrate, a white crystalline salt, is highly explosive during manufacture. Thousands of workers died in factory explosions before government regulations were established. It remains a tool of choice for terrorist attacks such as the 1970 Murrah federal building explosion in Oklahoma City. It is inert in agricultural applicatoons as a water-soluble fertilizer. although should should be kept away from combustibles. In typical farm use it’s not hazardous to human health.