This is a blog version of a Facebook posting from September 14, 2026.
Looking back at the May 11, 1987, derailment and haz-mat incident south of Elm City in Wilson County. At about 10:30 a.m., at least 27 cars of a CSX freight train derailed. Many were overturned and started leaking sulfuric acid. Some 2,800 area residents were evacuated.
Here’s what the next day’s Rocky Mount Evening Telegram wrote about the incident:
Train derails; Elm City evacuated
Sulfuric acid cloud released
From AP & Staff Reports
ELM CITY — About 2,800 residents were evacuated Monday after about 115,000 gallons of toxic sulfuric acid leaked following a train derailment south of Elm City.
No one was reported injured in the accident and only a few complained of throat irritation from the chemical compound. But a patient of the Friendly Elms Rest Home suffered a cardiac seizure while being moved to safety in adjoining Nash County.
At least 27 cars of a CSX Transportation tanker derailed about 10:30 a.m. about a half-mile from the intersection of State Road 1330 and Old U.S. 301. Many of the derailed cars were overturned, and the poisonous gas floated west in a large white cloud toward Sharpsburg.
Railroad officials said a wheel and axle assembly overheated, causing the wheel to fall off the axle.
Authorities were expected to set upright the ruptured 137-car train today, after the remaining acid was pumped out. The tanker was patched last night.
“The tanker is laying on its side, so only about half of it has drained out,” said Fire Chief Doug Batts, the commander at the scene. “The railroad people don’t want to try to right it for fear the patch would break.”
The acid cloud began dissipating by mid-afternoon Monday and cleared in the evening. By about 6 p.m., the cloud was about 150 feet long and hovering about 50 feet above the ground.
Most residents were allowed to return last night.
Wilson County Sheriff Wayne Gay said 30 families who live within a half-mile of the derailment would not be allowed back to their homes until the afternoon.
Moments after the wreck, the rest home and students of both Elm City schools were evacuated to N.E.W. Academy at Sharpsburg. The evacuees were transported by school buses, ambulances and personal vehicles.
But the academy had to be abandoned as the cloud, which at its height was about 500 feet across, approached. Thirty-two rest home patients were transported to a Red Cross shelter at Coopers Elementary School on N.C. 58 near Sandy Cross.
Officials from Nash County Emergency Management Services and countywide emergency personnel aided with transport and facilitating patients’ needs.
Army cots were set up inside the gymnasium, and the school’s cafeteria staff fed the group a spaghetti dinner. Nurses from Nash and Wilson County health departments provided medical assistance.
The patients were expected to be returned to the home today.
Sharpsburg was on alert during the incident. Police Chief Wayne Hathaway had reserve officers on standby, and fire department volunteers waited at the Town Hall.
Hathaway, who drove a busload of rest home patients to N.E.W. and later escorted a convoy of ambulances to the Coopers school, said Sharpsburg was fortunate not to have been affected by the gas.
“We didn’t know how the wind would be blowing,” he said of the alert status maintained during the day. The drifting cloud could be seen from the railroad tracks in Sharpsburg.
The ruptured tanker held oleum, a form of sulfuric acid used in the manufacture of chemicals, dyes, explosives and petroleum products, officials said. The highly toxic and corrosive material can ignite wood and other organic matter, they said.
Oleum also can be hazardous to the environment, but officials with the N.C. Division of Environmental Management said there was no threat to ground or surface water.
“The main concern is the air quality at this point,” Bryson Jenkins, a spokesman for the division, said.
Firefighters were unable to douse the site with water because the material is highly combustible.
“If they try extinguishing it with water, it will explode,” a spokesman from Wilson County Emergency Management Services told The Telegram.
“The EPA people are spreading lime to neutralize it, and those ditches are just bubbling,” said Pat Nicholson, an Elm City firefighter who lives 300 yards from the wreck scene.
Originally, authorities were waiting for the cloud to dissipate and for federal authorities to complete their inspection of the scene before righting the tanker.
Nicholson said firefighters met with some resistance when they first tried to evacuate the town.
“Most of the old folks didn’t want to leave,” he said. “And other people thought it was a thrill. We were going through town with the trucks and loudspeakers warning people to leave.
“But when we went back through a second time and told them this wasn’t a drill, most of them started to leave,” Nicholson said.
Some residents told firefighters “they wouldn’t leave until they smelled it,” he said. “I was in town and believe me, you could smell it.”
Highway Patrol troopers blocked roads leading into town and rerouted motorists.
In Washington, Amtrak officials said the derailment closed the track and impeded the movement of several passenger trains.
Amtrak spokesman John Jacobsen said the northbound and southbound Palmetto between New York and Savannah, Ga., were interrupted, with the southbound run terminated at Richmond, Va., and northbound held in Wilson.
“We’re going to bus the passengers between those two cities,” Jacobsen said.
Three other trains were rerouted on other tracks, he added.
The train had been en route from Hamlet to Richmond, VA.
