Amid the sounds of wrenching metal and crackling fire, the hissing whine signaled that one of the overturned tank cars was doing its job.
Flames licked the tanker just outside the state fairgrounds on July 11, 2012. Thousands of gallons of ethanol heated up inside the car. As pressure mounted, the intense heat weakened its shell, less than an inch thick.
But it found relief, escaping through a valve system meant to keep tanker cars from exploding.
Firefighters who responded that early morning took caution. Another car had exploded, sending a fireball mushrooming hundreds of feet above the derailment. The hissing could have been the precursor to another explosion.
Minutes earlier, the 100-car train carrying grain, corn, ethanol and styrene had rolled without incident through Weinland Park and was about to cross Fields Avenue.
Then something went terribly wrong.
“It was just ... a large boom and yeah, the ball of fire, mushroom cloud, you know, a lot of heat,” Columbus Fire Battalion Chief Sean Moore told federal investigators. “A blast of heat came through, and once I got my windows down in the car, I’m like, ‘Whew, boy.’ ”
Moore told investigators that Columbus was fortunate. The Norfolk Southern train had derailed in the right place at the right time.
Few people were out at 2:04 a.m. when the first 911 calls about a plane crash or a trash fire were reported. The Ohio State Fair wouldn’t begin for a month, and the nearby Central Ohio Transit Authority garage was quiet.