OCALA, FL (352today.com) – The Marion County Board of County Commissioners unanimously approved, with a 5-0 vote, the filing of an injunction against the defendants responsible for the railroad tie fire that took place on the CSX property in Dunnellon on Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026.

The county will be filing a complaint with the circuit court and will serve all the relevant defendants–Track Line Rail, LLC, Florida, Northern Railroad and CSX Transportation–said Matthew “Guy” Minter, Marion County attorney. The defendants will have an opportunity to respond to the complaint.

“This will get us beyond going back and forth with letters,” said Minter.

The affected area is a quarter of a mile, and there are unburned railroad ties on the north and south end of where the fire was. The Forestry Service is investigating the cause of the fire.

It was only a couple of acres that burned outside of the actual CSX property, said Chief James Banta, Marion County Fire and Rescue.

“Florida Fire Service did a tremendous job of preventing this fire from escaping into the residential areas,” said Banta.

Marion County Fire and Rescue’s involvement at this stage is just air monitoring, said Banta.

“My recommendation is that [CSX] remove all the ties as soon as possible, so we don’t have another fire,” said Banta.

Commissioner Kathy Bryant suggested a letter be sent from Marion County’s legal counsel to CSX demanding that the ties be removed immediately.

At the moment, Marion County Fire and Rescue is calculating all of their costs related to the railroad tie fire, including personnel and apparatus costs, and verifying how much responding to the fire cost the citizens of Marion County from a fire and rescue standpoint, said Banta.

“We’re looking at the different avenues we may have to collect that, either through our fire prevention ordinance, or our hazardous materials ordinance, or any other ways that we can collect,” said Banta.

Marion County Commission Chair Carl Zalak, III, wanted to make certain the taxpayer isn’t paying for this and that CSX is held accountable and pays for the costs incurred.

“At the end of the day, I don’t care what LLC or what other agency had it, it’s on their property, it’s their stuff,” said Zalak. “We need to go after them.”

Bryant echoed those sentiments, citing all that Marion County did preemptively to resolve the issue prior to the fire.

“At this point, I think we’ve sent enough letters, had enough conversations, and so we have a complaint for an injunction prepared, and with your approval, we’ll move forward with that,” said Minter.

Who is responsible

CSX is a railroad and they’re governed by federal law, and it had to be determined who the rail-ties belonged to and how they got there, why they were there and what was going on, said Linda Blackburn, Marion County assistant attorney.

“So, through connecting these dots, we figured out that CSX was the property owner,” said Blackburn “And the path to least resistance in this regard was working with CSX for them to police their property, and not necessarily come in with the strong arm of a lawsuit to get these ties removed. The period of time that the county has been involved is really three months before the fire, and we have been making great efforts with CSX to get CSX to bring rail cars out there to move these ties.”

Cars were brought out in December; things finally started to move two months after the county became involved, said Blackburn.

(Read the timeline of communication between Marion County and CSX here.)

“As we’ve heard, there were a ton of rail-ties out there, and so we were attempting to work with them in good faith,” said Blackburn. “We just weren’t able to make the headway that the citizens really wanted us to make at the pace that they wanted to see it.”

The size of the property that CSX owns is on the order of almost 100 acres, said Blackburn. The property is in four different parcels, with some of it lying in the City of Dunnellon and some of it lying in the unincorporated area of Marion County. The railroad ties were shifting from unincorporated Marion County to the City of Dunnellon, and more than likely were shifted multiple times. It became a challenge of finding out where they were, what was going on how it was operating. It was CSX’s property to police, said Blackburn.

In relation to the injunction, the largest section of the CSX right-of-way is inside of the City of Dunnellon, said Mounir Bouyounes, Marion County administrator.

Marion County would have to communicate with the City of Dunnellon’s attorney, to see if they want to join in the injunction, so action can be taken in one lawsuit.