On Thursday, crawler excavators finished dismantling the wagons damaged by the fire in Hustopeče nad Bečvou. A front-end loader and a wheel loader picked up all the loose debris from the wagons and trucks took it away for disposal. Firefighters will continue today to prepare the site for further environmental protection and clean-up operations.
A heavy-duty crawler crane loaded the railroad ties onto rail cars. They were transported to the central landfill site of the railway company.
Strict fire precautions were set up on site during all the work: two TITAN rescue unit's insulated tankers, a foam tanker, four firefighter-chemists with a detector. A decontamination station is also still in action to clean the intervening firefighters, said their spokeperson.
A specialist company drilled additional deep boreholes, assisted in this work by a combined fire engine covering each borehole with foam. The crawler excavator has now made a total of 31 deep boreholes. Eighteen of them are ready for pumping contaminated groundwater.
Rain has complicated the clean-up work, with heavy equipment difficult to move in the waterlogged terrain. An additional rear container was called in as a back-up for responders.
All efforts are being made to get experts to the site as quickly as possible. Environmental inspectors have not yet been able to assess the extent of the contamination below the site.
On top of all this, The Czech Hydrometeorological Institute is forecasting rainfall in the area until Saturday, which could complicate an already difficult situation.
