The Wisconsin village with more derailments than gas stations

By Josephine Johnson and Cat Murphy
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism

REESEVILLE, Wisconsin — Elizabeth Statz watched fire engine after fire engine speed past the Wisconsin farmhouse she and her husband Roger called home for nearly five decades.

But it wasn’t until she saw the hazmat truck racing toward the center of Reeseville, a village of fewer than 800 people, that she called her brother, a first responder in a nearby township.

“What the hell is going on?” she remembers asking him, her confusion having morphed into concern. “Do we need to go to the basement?”
That’s when the Statzes found out a Canadian Pacific Kansas City freight train derailed a quarter of a mile from the heart of their community. Again.

Two of the 24 rail cars that had left the tracks Aug. 15 near Reeseville’s cozy downtown were now leaking petroleum crude oil just feet from the spot where the last train derailment spilled grain barely two years prior due to defective track.

At least nine trains have derailed in Wisconsin in 10 years. The occurrence of two so close in time and location moved Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., to demand CPKC take “immediate action” to improve track conditions.

Still, Jacob Pacala, the village president, is worried Reeseville will get lost in the mix, noting there have been points where it felt like the village was “screaming in the void.”

“Are we going to wait for a third one that actually blows up in the middle of town?” asked Sarah Zarling, a Wisconsin rail safety advocate who lives on the same stretch of tracks that run through Reeseville. Ninety-four of the 96 rail cars in the most recent accident contained hazardous materials.

The derailments in Reeseville haven’t been worst-case scenarios, like the catastrophic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that sent a toxic plume towering over the town in 2023. But they could have been.

“God forbid if that shifted a couple hundred feet further up, that would be occurring right there,” Pacala said, pointing to the tracks that cut directly through the center of town, less than 500 feet from the library, post office, bank, gas station and fire department, which also serves as the police station and government building.

Amtrak’s Empire Builder, the nation’s busiest long-distance tourist route, travels on the same track.

The village, like many small towns near the tracks, lacks the resources to respond to a mass casualty event, giving officials reason to worry about the next derailment.

Small-town government officials are “not exactly trained on how to deal with something like this,” Pacala said.

Jessica Becker, a Reeseville board member, added: “Our hospitals aren’t big enough. We don’t have enough EMS.’’

The Statzes have lived and farmed in Reeseville for 48 years, raising six kids and 23 grandkids there, as well as dozens of cows, chickens and cats. They know how wet and marshy the village’s landscape is — something they suspect may have contributed to the track problems.

The village is surrounded by rivers, lakes and marshes, which can impact soil stability.

“You wonder,” Elizabeth Statz said. “You know, land close to the river … and the marsh down there, it wasn’t a surprise, I guess, that the foundation of the track would have given way again.”

What did come as a surprise, though, was how quickly CPKC managed to clear and reopen the tracks. The derailment happened on a Friday, and the tracks were cleared over the weekend.. “I was surprised it didn’t take long.” Elizabeth Statz said.

CPKC said in a statement the company is committed to safety and is fully cooperating with the NTSB’s investigation, which is ongoing. In a letter responding to Baldwin, CPKC said it was conducting an “in-depth geotechnical investigation into the ground conditions underneath the track.” Instruments have been installed on the track to monitor groundwater and other elements.

On June 30, 2025, a Wisconsin & Southern freight train derailed and leaked diesel fuel in nearby Hartford, Wisconsin, after striking a fallen tree on the tracks.

Three months before the 2023 derailment near downtown Reeseville, four crew members were injured when washed-out tracks derailed a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train just a few hours away in rural Ferryville, Wisconsin. The Federal Railroad Administration said BNSF had been warned about a possible track washout following a heavy rainstorm, but the railroad allowed a second train to go through without first inspecting the track.

In 2019, three BNSF locomotives and nine freight cars derailed along the Mississippi River after the train struck a mudslide blocking the tracks in Glen Haven, Wisconsin, according to an accident report BNSF filed with the FRA.

In 2018, in Weirgor, Wisconsin, a Canadian National crew missed a signal and collided with another train, igniting a toxic fire that burned for 10 hours. The FRA concluded the inexperience of the train engineer contributed to the accident, and fatigue for him and the conductor may also have been a factor.

In 2016, a washed-out bridge dumped a train and 1,170 gallons of diesel into the Mississippi River backwaters in Ferryville, about 4 miles from where a 2023 derailment would be. A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report said 10 inches of rain washed out the toehold of the bridge.

In 2015, 75 people were evacuated after a brake issue derailed a BNSF train in Alma, Wisconsin, about a three-hour drive from Reeseville, and dumped over 15,000 gallons of alcohol into the Mississippi backwaters. The FRA said crew fatigue may have contributed to the accident.

Zarling said she became a rail safety activist in April 2015 after learning oil trains ran on the tracks just half a block from her home in Watertown, Wisconsin. With every train that passed, Zarling said, “I’d worry, is this the one? Is this going to be the one? Is this the one?”

Seven months later, a Canadian Pacific train derailed and spilled about 500 gallons of crude oil right by the park where she took her children to play. She wasn’t surprised.

“I thought I was going to see that train explode in the middle of my town, and I can’t believe that it didn’t,” she said. “I’d already warned my city that this could happen.”

The Howard Center previously reported many first responders, especially in small towns and rural areas, lack the necessary training and equipment to effectively respond to train derailments involving hazardous materials. A fifth of all fire departments do not have specialized hazmat teams, especially those made up of volunteers.

“We’re talking millions of Americans who are put in imminent threat every day,” Zarling said. “Every single one of these trains … is putting that community at risk of a derailment and a horrible thing happening again.”