1992: Superior, Wisconsin
In June 1992, some 80,000 people living at the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin were forced to evacuate their homes after a train jumped the tracks north of Minneapolis and plunged into the Nemadji River. The accident created a toxic cloud of chemicals, including cancer-causing benzene, that stretched 20 miles long and 5 miles wide and sent 17 people to the hospital. Questions remain about the long-term health impacts of the cloud on the residents.
“We had no idea what was in that cloud,” the police chief of nearby Duluth, Minnesota, Scott Lyons, said in a 2022 interview with Forum News Service. ”And so that was our biggest concern: You know, what is it? Is it a killer cloud? Is it nothing?”
