Iowa, Osceola County, Sibley City Welcome Monument Sign. (Photo by: Bernard Friel/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
An evacuation order remained in place Monday for part of a northwest Iowa town as firefighters worked to extinguish a burning train after a weekend derailment.
About 47 cars derailed Sunday afternoon near Sibley, including several cars that were carrying hazardous materials. The resulting fire created a thick plume of black smoke but no injuries were reported.
Sibley is a town of about 3,000 people roughly 200 miles (322 kilometers) northwest of Des Moines. The west end of the town was evacuated after the derailment.
Union Pacific spokeswoman Robynn Tysver said the railroad's hazardous materials experts worked with first responders through the night to contain the blaze.
Tysver said several cars involved in the derailment were carrying hydrochloric acid, potassium hydroxide and asphalt. An empty tank car on the train had been carrying liquid ammonia nitrate.
The railroad said the cause of the derailment remains under investigation, but witnesses reported that a bridge had collapsed underneath the train.
Robin Eggink told the Des Moines Register that she and her husband noticed the train slowing down followed by a big cloud of smoke as they were eating at a Pizza Hut outside of Sibley on Sunday. The family drove near the site of the smoke and saw the train split in two on both sides of a bridge that had collapsed before firefighters ordered them out of the area, Eggink said.
Jill and Carlo cover the latest developments with the Omicron variant that are spooking markets once again. Twitter's @Jack is leaving, SCOTUS takes up abortion rights and the world has a brand new republic.
An episode of "The Simpsons" alluding to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre was removed from Disney+ in Hong Kong. It is unclear whether Disney or Hong Kong initiated the removal, but the change comes amid mainland China's crackdown on tech companies and entertainment.
Jon Lowen, Co-Founder of Surfside, joined Wake Up With Cheddar's Baker Machado to discuss Uber's partnership with cannabis retailer Tokyo Smoke, as it's the first time a cannabis merchant has been listed on UberEats across all of its global markets.
According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, Hollywood has been falling short on financial support for transgender-specific organizations despite some improvements in on-screen representation. Actor and producer Scott Turner Schofield, the founder of the consultancy Speaking of Transgender, joined Cheddar to note that rather than focusing on the dearth of donor dollars itself, fixing media representation helps fund those service groups, even if the money isn't yet flowing. "If you ask people, 'are trans people more visible in media,' everybody is going to say yes because it's very clear, but are there commercials for those direct service organizations? No. That's something you'll get from social media — maybe — if you're following people," Schofield said.
Thanksgiving fueled a lucrative weekend at the box office, even during a pandemic. Over the five-day holiday weekend, moviegoers in the U.S. and Canada spent around $142 million on tickets. Sean O'Connell, Managing Director at CinemaBlend, joins Cheddar News to discuss what the numbers mean for the industry.
Guilty verdicts have been handed down to the three men charged with killing 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery on multiple murder counts, as well as other charges. The verdict was delivered last Wednesday by a mostly white jury after more than 11 hours of deliberation spanning two days. It followed eight days of testimony. Jason Nichols, senior lecturer in the African American Studies Department at the University of Maryland, joins Cheddar News to discuss what's next.
