Paulsboro schools to reopen as cleanup continues

Paulsboro public schools are to reopen Tuesday morning, more than a week after they were closed because of the Nov. 30 derailment of freight-train tank cars carrying toxic chemicals.

The school district said classes would begin at their normal times and what had been scheduled as a half-day on Friday will now be a full day.

Meanwhile, officials overseeing the post-derailment cleanup have scheduled a community information session for 6 p.m. Tuesday at Paulsboro High School.

The reopening of the schools follows a weekend during which several hundred people who were evacuated from their homes were allowed to return after officials detected zero vinyl chloride in the air or inside residents' houses.

About 30 people who live in 10 houses closest to the derailment, however, still not have been given the go-ahead to go home. Officials say work related to the cleanup, not the presence of gas, is the reason.

The freight train derailed on a swing bridge across the Mantua Creek about 7 a.m. Nov. 30, and one tank car carrying vinyl chloride ripped open, spewing some of its 23,000-gallon cargo into the air in gas form.

Work is still under way to remove the wreckage, including two other tank cars carrying vinyl chloride that fell into the creek.