2002: Minot, ND
In 2002, a 112-car Canadian Pacific Railway train derailed near Minot, North Dakota; five cars carrying anhydrous ammonia, a gas used as a fertilizer, were ruptured. One person died from exposure to the gas, while 11 were seriously injured and 322 suffered smaller injuries from exposure, and houses near the crash site were evacuated.
Residents remembering the disaster 20 years later said that while the impacts of the actual spill only lasted for a few days, the fallout has lingered.
“What I remember the most is trying to get through the night,” Minot resident Mike Elm told a local news station in 2022. “We were put on a path of [being] handed something and having to figure out how to deal with it in our own house, so we were trapped, couldn’t get out, and no one could get to us.”
