With all the train wrecks in the news lately — most of them involving Norfolk Southern, the railroad that slices through Pickens County — it seemed like a good time to check and see what kind of risk we may be facing if a train were to derail here.

“It could happen to any of us, anywhere in the United States,” said Denise Kwiatek, emergency management director for Pickens County.

“We never know when that moment’s going to happen.”

Many of you probably remember a multi-car derailment in Liberty back in 2010 in which two Norfolk Southern tank cars spilled 18,000 gallons of isopropanol and three others discharged 19,000 gallons of a substance referred to only as “hazardous waste liquid.”

The accident forced the evacuation of 536 homes for

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