(The following article by David Sneed and Jeff Ballinger was posted on the San Luis Obispo Tribune website on February 13.)
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — A white powder found leaking from two rail cars Thursday in San Luis Obispo turned out to be a relatively harmless substance.
The San Luis Obispo City Fire Department cordoned off a section of railroad track shortly after 8 a.m., after two piles of a white powdery substance were found leaking from two rail cars near High Street.
Local authorities learned shortly thereafter from the train’s conductor that the powder was hydrated alumina. Manufacturers of the chemical list it as a raw material used in the production of other aluminum products and of glass and fertilizers.
Although not a particularly dangerous substance, it could be an eye and nose irritant if it blew in someone’s face, said Fire Department spokesman John Madden.
Winds from the southeast were light, but there was concern the breeze could blow the powder toward downtown if it picked up. Members of the county’s hazardous materials team took no chances, sending in two men in bulky blue suits that covered their entire bodies.
The cleanup
As a county environmental health officer tested the substance the team collected to confirm it was indeed hydrated alumina, city firefighters Chris Slate and Matt Callahan covered the two piles with thick plastic sheets. They also placed buckets underneath the slight streams of powder leaking from the bottom of the two rail cars.
The duo finished their work in barely 20 minutes, just before 11:30 a.m. It followed nearly three hours of cordoning off of the area, discussing how to proceed and assembling equipment and the dozens of people involved in the effort.
Authorities did not evacuate anyone from homes near the rail cars, but they did keep people off the bicycle path next to the tracks. In addition, High, Roundhouse, Swayze and Ella streets were blocked off to vehicle traffic.
The two piles of the substance — one 3 feet high and the other 2 feet high — were discovered around 8 a.m. beneath the rail cars.
Local officials turned over the incident to Union Pacific cleanup crews, which arrived about 1 p.m. and vacuumed the powder from the rail cars into a large container.
Not vandalism
A Union Pacific employee, who declined to give his name, said he was confident this was not a case of vandalism. He said it would have taken someone with the knowledge of the mechanism that opens the chute at the bottom of the rail car, as well as the proper tool to open it.
He suspected that the chutes on the rail cars, which originated from Texas, were not closed properly when the cars were filled. The train arrived in San Luis Obispo at 8 p.m. Wednesday.
While local authorities said rail traffic was halted during the cleanup, the Union Pacific worker said there were no other trains scheduled between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. and that his company’s cleanup crew would stop working to allow the 3:25 p.m. northbound Amtrak train to pass by on an adjacent track.
An Amtrak employee said the northbound train was about 10 to 15 minutes late, possibly because of the chemical leak. The southbound train was an hour late, she said, but its delay was unrelated to the incident.
Roughly 8,200 rail carloads of potentially hazardous substances were shipped through San Luis Obispo County in 2000 — the most recent figures available from Union Pacific Railroad Co. — according to a Tribune report from June 2003.
No public safety agency in San Luis County contacted by The Tribune for that story said they had requested information from Union Pacific for details of which chemicals are shipped through the area, although that information is available.