FERGUSON, MO (KMOX) "We were pretty blessed and lucky last night." That's Ferguson Fire Chief John Hampton's reaction to a late Friday night train derailment that almost destroyed a recently vacated house.
Hampton tells KMOX eight cars of a Norfolk Southern freight train left the tracks along Elizabeth and Ferguson Avenues, sending them into the back yards of several homes. He says they were lucky because all the cars were empty, no one got hurt and no houses were hit.
Hampton says there was one extremely close call. "When it came down the hill," he says, "we are blessed to have big trees in the City of Ferguson, we are known as the City of Trees, one of the trees saved the house from the car going through it."
Hampton says the resident had just recently moved from the house.
Investigators will be using the train's black boxes and cameras in an effort to determine the cause of the derailment.