Fires still burning at West Virginia oil train disaster site

Some fires continued to burn Thursday afternoon, three days after a train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded in rural West Virginia.

Suzanne Emmerling, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Transportation, said that the fires are hampering investigators’ ability to access what they need in order to determine the disaster’s cause.

{mosads}The Federal Railroad Administration and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, both units of the Transportation Department, are leading the investigation, working with other federal and state agencies and CSX Corp., which operated the train.

In a Thursday afternoon update about the investigation, Emmerling said the train was traveling at 33 miles per hour at the time of the derailment, well under the limit of 50 miles per hour.

Investigators are gathering and analyzing video footage and data on track and mechanical inspections, Emmerling said.

The National Transportation Safety Board has decided against leading an investigation. But the agency has sent employees to the site to gather information that might be useful for assisting other agencies, it said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard and other federal and state agencies involved in the disaster have created an official unified command to handle the response.

“The top priorities for response personnel remain the safety of the community and responders, and mitigating the impact to the environment,” Coast Guard Capt. Lee Boone, the on-site coordinator for the response, said in a statement.