By Matt McKinney

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Sarah Zarling has become a close watcher of oil trains since February, when she realized her Watertown, Wis., house was in the blast zone if a train derailed and caught fire.

So when an oil train passed through town Sunday afternoon she prepared to report it to a national network of activists pushing for stricter railway regulations that are keeping close tabs on where and when oil trains are running.

Then she heard a loud boom nearby.

Yelling to her husband to take the kids and flee, she ran to the site of a train derailment near her home in the center of Watertown, population 24,000, hoping to document the crash with photos.

“We so could have been another Lac-Mégantic,” she said, referring to the Canadian city where 47 people were killed in 2013 after an oil train derailed and exploded.

One train car leaked oil in Watertown but didn’t explode. It was the second derailment in Wisconsin this past weekend — the other spilled at least 18,000 gallons of ethanol into the Mississippi River near Alma, Wis. Investigations and cleanups were underway at both sites Monday afternoon, and the twin incidents galvanized several local efforts to bring more oversight to railway practices.

A Minneapolis City Council committee plans to pass a resolution Tuesday morning calling for more and better communication between the train companies and local public safety officials. The resolution has been under discussion for months.

A La Crosse, Wis., group that sued the state over the expansion of rail lines through their community said the weekend’s derailments lend more weight to their arguments that environmental risks should be studied. And U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., said in a statement that the derailments prove that safety concerns remain as the U.S. House and Senate meet in conference committee to work out a six-year transportation package.

The Alma derailment was the third that led to an ethanol spill so far this year nationwide, according to the Federal Railroad Administration. And the Watertown incident was the fifth derailment so far this year nationwide that led to an oil spill, the agency reported.