By Mike Sever

Record-Courier staff writer

Kent State University students Tom Kelly and Michael Katz were driving across the Crain Avenue Bridge in Kent Thursday afternoon when they heard a boom and saw something flip up from the side of the bridge.

What they saw was 13 fully laden coal cars that flipped off the tracks around 1:30 p.m. and tumbled, tearing out a city sewer line suspended under the bridge.

The bridge was closed Thursday afternoon after the cars on a 119-car long CSX Railroad coal train derailed under it, leaving tons of spilled coal and crumpled train cars jammed 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.

If the debris is removed by late today, a bridge inspection could happen on Saturday, Marozzi said. The bridge will remain closed at least until that inspection.

The bridge is used by some 15,000 vehicles daily, making it the second most active in the city.

The force of the crash must have been tremendous, said Portage County Engineer Michael Marozzi.

"You can see where the railbed -- the ties and rails -- was shifted four feet to the side. It takes a lot to do that." Coal in cars still on the track east of the bridge was shifted far forward by the impact, like sand in a bottle.

"Actually, it's very difficult to tell (bridge damage) right now, the wreckage is all over the bridge structure itself," Marozzi said.

"There's coal everywhere, its very difficult to make any judgments at this time. There are no obvious structural problems that we can see."

CSX had crews on the way quickly to clean up the debris and begin to figure out what caused the derailment.

The train was headed from Newell, Pa., to Flint, Mich. No coal or wreckage was spilled into the Cuyahoga River, which runs just a few feet away from 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."

Kelly said they didn't realize what had happened until they got across the bridge to Water Street and looked back. "Cars were still tipping over," he said.

Rick Knapp was working at his auto repair shop, Knapp's Collision, at the south end of the bridge when he heard the train crash.

"It was just a strange rumbling sound. It kept going and going and going for a long time." He said it wasn't much louder than what he hears from passing trains all day long.

The jumble of train cars was a popular cell phone camera subject as students and others trekked to the scene. The wreckage could be seen from both ends of the Crain Avenue Bridge and also from the Main Street Bridge. The engine and 10 cars that cleared the bridge before the collision stopped behind the Star of the West Mill.

A man walking with friends along Main Street was amazed by the wreck. "Wow. How did we not hear that?"

Traffic was redirected to Main Street and the Haymaker Parkway. Theodore Roosevelt High School in Kent released students early because of the crash.

CSX cleanup crews from Pittsburgh and Columbus were due in last night.

"Our first priority is to make sure the area is restored to a workable condition, check the safety of the bridge. Then we'll investigate what might have caused (the derailment)," said CSX spokesperson Garrick Francis. He declined to speculate on a cause.

The 43-year-old span is due to be replaced, with some work expected to start this spring.

Marozzi said the county-owned Crain Avenue bridge was to remain open for at least a year into the project, while work is under way on its replacement, the new Fairchild Avenue bridge. The project is slated to be completed by December 2011.

The current span opened in 1965, replacing one that had collapsed under the weight of an overloaded truck in December 1964.

According to the City of Kent's Web site, the bridge is listed as in poor condition. It was rated as structurally deficient in 2001. The county has done annual repairs in recent years to keep it open.

The replacement project is a collaboration between Kent, the county and the Ohio Department of Transportation.

Record-Courier staff writer Colin McEwen contributed to this story.