Two months after a railroad bridge collapse sent carloads of hazardous oil products plunging into Montana’s Yellowstone River, the cleanup workers are gone and a mess remains.
Thick mats of tarry petroleum asphalt cover portions of sandbars. Oil-speckled rocks and bushes line the shore along with chunks of yellow sulfur, a component of crude. In the middle of the river downstream of the bridge, a tangle of steel juts out of the water from a ruptured railroad tank car that has not been removed.
