They Trained for the Worst Before Anyone Was Watching. Ten Years Later, the Record Speaks for Itself.

Firefighters respond to a crude oil rail incident in Bear, Delaware. In 2017, Christiana Fire Company and surrounding departments completed specialized hazmat rail training. In 2025, that preparation was tested.

This morning, a Facebook memory surfaced on my screen. A post I made on February 11, 2017. Most people scroll past those. A quick smile, maybe a share, keep moving.

I could not keep moving.

Because the memory was not a photo from a party or a vacation snapshot. It was a communication from Christiana Fire Chief Richard J. Perillo to the New Castle County Council. And it carried a weight that has only grown heavier with time.

Ten years ago this week, on January 22, 2017, firefighters from the Christiana Fire Company and surrounding companies walked into Station #6 in Christiana, Delaware, and gave an entire day to preparing for something they hoped would never happen in their community.

They trained for a crude-by-rail emergency.

Not because a train had just derailed. Not because a crisis was trending on cable news. Not because an election was coming and someone needed a photo opportunity. They trained because their chief, Richard J. Perillo, understood something that most people in government never say out loud: the time to prepare for a disaster is not the morning it arrives. It is every single day before that morning comes.

The Email That Started It

On February 8, 2017, Chief Perillo sent a formal email to the New Castle County Council. I was one of the recipients. At the time, I was serving as President of the Council and later Co-Chair of Public Safety, the committee with direct oversight of the very issue he was writing about.

His subject line was simple: "Crude by Rail."

His message was anything but routine.

He told us that area fire officers and firefighters had just completed specialized training on crude-by-rail emergencies. He reminded us that he and I, along with other Council members, had attended civic meetings, neighborhood gatherings, and public hearings where residents in the New Castle, Newark, and Bear areas expressed deep concern about the increasing volume of crude oil being delivered by rail through their communities. He asked every one of us to carry that information back to our constituents. To let them know that their firefighters and command staff were trained, focused, and preparing every day.

Attached to his email was an internal Christiana Fire Company memorandum from Assistant Chief Allen Huelsenbeck. It documented what had taken place on January 22, 2017: a full eight-hour Rail Haz-Mat Response Operations Course, attended by one deputy chief, three assistant chiefs, active members, and firefighters from surrounding fire companies. The training was conducted by instructors from the University of Findlay in Ohio, funded by a federal grant.

I have included both documents with this brief. The original email. The original memo. Read them for yourself.

This is what The Truthline does. We show our work.

What Was Happening on the Rails

To understand why Chief Perillo sounded the alarm, you have to understand what was rolling through New Castle County in 2017.

Crude by rail is the transportation of crude oil by freight train. In the United States, the volume of crude oil shipped by rail grew more than fiftyfold between 2008 and 2014, with much of it being Bakken crude from North Dakota, a lighter, more volatile form of oil containing higher concentrations of flammable gases, like butane.

These were not short freight cars carrying gravel. These were mile-long trains loaded with tanker after tanker of one of the most combustible materials in the American transportation system, running directly through the neighborhoods of New Castle, Newark, and Bear on their way to the Delaware City Refinery.

Residents did not need a report to tell them what was happening. They could hear it. They could feel the ground vibrate when the trains passed at night. They came to civic meetings and public hearings and said what any parent, any homeowner, any person living a stone's throw from those tracks would say: what happens if one of those trains goes off the rails in our backyard?

I stood in those rooms. Chief Perillo stood in those rooms. We listened. We spoke. And then he did what the best public safety leaders do. He stopped talking about the problem and started training his people to handle it.

That is the part of governance nobody sees. No cameras. No headlines. No applause. Just a fire chief making sure that if the worst day came, his people would be ready.

June 13, 2025: The Day the Training Was Tested

Eight years after that January training session, the scenario Chief Perillo prepared for came to life in one of the exact communities he had flagged.

On June 13, 2025, a Norfolk Southern train derailed in Bear, Delaware. Eight tank cars carrying petroleum crude oil came off the tracks at a railroad crossing along Porter Road. Hazardous materials teams from the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control and New Castle County fire companies, including Christiana Fire Company, responded.

The tank cars remained upright. No spills. No leaks. No injuries. Firefighters cleared the scene in approximately three hours.

Bear. The same community Chief Perillo named by name in his 2017 email to County Council as an area of heightened concern for crude-by-rail risk.

That outcome was not luck. Luck is when something goes right and nobody can explain why. What happened in Bear was the opposite. It was the accumulated result of years of preparation, training, coordination, and leadership. It was the product of a fire chief who decided in 2017 that his people would be ready, and of the firefighters who showed up on a January day and spent eight hours making sure they were.

February 3, 2023:

What Happens When Preparation Fails

Not every community has had that outcome.

On February 3, 2023, a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. Thirty-eight cars left the tracks. Twenty were carrying hazardous materials, including vinyl chloride, ethylene glycol, and butyl acrylate. Several cars caught fire and burned for days. A controlled burn released hydrogen chloride and phosgene into the air. Two thousand residents were evacuated from their homes. An estimated 43,000 fish and aquatic animals were killed across miles of contaminated streams. Toxic chemicals seeped into soil, water, and air.

The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the continued use of DOT-111 tank cars, a design that had been flagged as inadequate for years, contributed to the severity of the disaster. Norfolk Southern ultimately committed over one billion dollars to cleanup and remediation. The federal government reached a settlement valued at more than $310 million. The EPA remained on site for years, directing the removal of over 167,000 tons of contaminated soil and 39 million gallons of tainted water.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said what needed to be said: "The absence of a fatality or injury doesn't mean the presence of safety."

East Palestine is what happens when the training does not happen. When the protocols are not updated. When the preparation is assumed rather than verified. When nobody asks the hard questions until the morning after the disaster.

Bear, Delaware, tells a different story. And the difference between those two outcomes may come down to something as simple and as powerful as a fire chief who decided his people would be ready, and a Council that made sure the message got to the public.

The Questions That Still Need Answers

This brief is a tribute to Chief Perillo, to Assistant Chief Huelsenbeck, and to every firefighter who gave a full day in January 2017 to make sure their communities would not be caught off guard.

But a tribute is not enough.

Because the crude is still moving. The rail lines still cut through the same neighborhoods. The same schools. The same parks. And the families who live along those corridors deserve to know whether the preparation that protected them in 2025 is still in place today.

Who is ensuring that crude-by-rail training is still happening in New Castle County fire companies? What specialized hazmat rail courses have been conducted in the past three years? Are the federal grants that funded the 2017 training still flowing, or have they dried up? Are the fire companies that would respond to a rail emergency in the Bear, Newark, and New Castle corridors staffed, equipped, and trained at the level they need to be? After East Palestine, Congress debated rail safety legislation, Norfolk Southern pledged reforms, and the federal government issued new safety advisories. But at the local level, in the communities where these trains actually roll, who is asking whether the promises became preparation?

These are the questions I asked when I served as Council President and Co-Chair of Public Safety. They are the questions I continue to ask now as Editor-in-Chief of The Truthline Network. Because the difference between a community that survives a disaster and a community that is destroyed by one is almost never decided on the day of the emergency. It is decided in the years before it. In the training sessions nobody covers. In the memos that move quietly up the chain of command. In the leaders who choose preparation over politics.

The Documents

The original email from Christiana Fire Chief Richard J. Perillo to New Castle County Council, dated February 8, 2017, and the internal Christiana Fire Company Station #6 memorandum from Assistant Chief Allen Huelsenbeck to Chief Perillo, dated January 22, 2017, are reproduced with this brief.

This is how The Truthline works. Primary sources. Original documents. The paper trail that power cannot revise after the fact.

We show our work. Always.

A Note of Gratitude

Thank you, Chief Perillo. For the training you ordered. For the email you sent. For the trust you placed in the Council to carry the message to the people who needed to hear it. For understanding that real public safety leadership is not a press conference after the disaster. It is the work you do every day so the disaster never becomes a catastrophe.

Thank you, Assistant Chief Huelsenbeck. For documenting the training. For the memo that became part of the permanent record. For making sure the chain of command had the evidence it needed.

Thank you to every firefighter from Christiana Fire Company who gave a full January day in 2017 to prepare for the worst. And thank you to every surrounding company and every Delaware fire company that stands ready when the call goes out.

Because in Delaware, no fire company stands alone. When one tones out, others roll. When one trains, others sharpen their edge. When one community faces risk, the entire state answers. That is not politics. That is culture.

You did not know that eight years later a train carrying crude oil would derail in Bear. You did not know the scenario would become real. But you trained as if it would. And when the moment came, preparation spoke louder than panic.

That is why what happened in Bear was contained, not catastrophic.

Some records are worth more than a moment of reflection. Some are a call to action.

This is one of them.

Key Facts

What crude by rail training did Christiana Fire Company conduct in 2017? On January 22, 2017, Christiana Fire Company hosted a full eight-hour Rail Haz-Mat Response Operations Course at Station #6 in Christiana, Delaware. It was attended by one deputy chief, three assistant chiefs, active members, and firefighters from surrounding fire companies. The course was conducted by instructors from the University of Findlay in Ohio, funded by a federal grant.

What happened in Bear, Delaware on June 13, 2025? A Norfolk Southern train derailed at a railroad crossing along Porter Road in Bear, Delaware. Eight tank cars carrying petroleum crude oil came off the tracks. The cars remained upright with no spills, no leaks, and no injuries. Hazardous materials teams from DNREC and New Castle County fire companies, including Christiana Fire Company, responded. The scene was cleared in approximately three hours.

How does the Bear, Delaware derailment compare to East Palestine, Ohio? The Bear derailment involved eight crude oil tank cars that remained upright with no environmental release. The East Palestine derailment involved 38 cars, 20 carrying hazardous materials, with fires burning for days, evacuation of 2,000 residents, contamination of soil and water, and over one billion dollars in cleanup costs. Analysts point to the level of local first responder preparedness as a key differentiating factor.

Who is Karen Hartley-Nagle? Karen Hartley-Nagle is the Founder, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of The Truthline Network, an independent accountability journalism platform based in Delaware. She served as President of New Castle County Council from 2016 to 2024 and was Co-Chair of Public Safety.

What is The Truthline Network? The Truthline Network is an independent, reader-supported journalism and public-interest advocacy platform founded by Karen Hartley-Nagle. It publishes investigative reports, briefings, radio, and live content focused on government accountability, public safety, and community impact in Delaware and nationally. Its editorial model emphasizes primary source documentation, original records, and verifiable evidence.