By Mike Sever
Record-Courier staff writer
The Crain Avenue Bridge in Kent was closed Thursday afternoon after several cars of a 119-car long CSX Railroad coal train derailed under it, leaving tons of spilled coal and crumpled train cars jammed under the bridge.
Tom Kelly and Michael Katz were in a vehicle on the bridge when the train derailed.
"I felt the train going by and then a "boom' and I saw this thing flip up on the side of the bridge," Kelly said.
The "thing" was a couple of 13 fully-laden coal cars that flipped off the tracks and tumbled, tearing out a city sewer line suspended under the bridge. The engine and 10 cars tore free of the crash, stopping just a few hundred yards west of the bridge, near the Star of the West Mill.
Kent Police Chief James Peach said the engineer and conductor, both in the engine at the time, were not injured. He said the city is checking the structural integrity of the bridge.
The crash occurred about 1:30 p.m. Thursday and traffic was redirected to Main Street and the Haymaker Parkway. Theodore Roosevelt High School in Kent released students early because of the crash.
The bridge will remain closed until county engineers can make an inspection.
No coal or wreckage was spilled into the Cuyahoga River, which runs alongside two sets of train tracks. City crews contained the spilled sewage and quickly made plans to pump sewage from the broken line across Water Street into a separate, nearby sewage line.
For the size of the crashed train cars, it was not an unusually loud event, witnesses said.
"It sounded like an airplane flying over," Kelly said.
"I thought it sounded like a snowplow dragging on the road," Katz said.
"There were still cars going over as the train was crashing," he said. "We called 911. They came really fast."
See Friday's record-Courier for more coverage.