(The following Associated Press article by Laura Wides was posted on the Contra Costa Times website on June 25.)
COMMERCE, Calif. — Railroad officials say they have assured residents of this Los Angeles suburb that all damages will be paid after a runaway train derailed and destroyed or damaged a half-dozen houses. But angry city officials and families in the neighborhood keep coming back with questions.
“What happened?” Mayor Jesus Cervantes asked outside City Hall on Monday night. “Why was a train derailed in our city? Why was the train derailed in an area that had people?”
Union Pacific officials are under fire for not quickly giving a detailed public explanation, though residents and officials now expect answers at a City Hall meeting Thursday.
“I wish they would move with the speed at which the train was moving when it ended up in our community,” council member Hugo Argumendo told KABC-TV.
Railroad officials did not return calls for comment.
City officials criticized Union Pacific for presenting varying accounts of why the train derailed near homes Friday.
A company official said on the day of the crash that the cars were deliberately taken off the main line in Commerce because it was the last place they could be safely switched to a rail spur before roaring into downtown Los Angeles. Another official said Sunday that the cars had been expected to roll safely through the residential area before being deliberately derailed at a nearby rail yard.
As they came off the main line, more than two dozen cars tipped over, sending tons of lumber flying through the neighborhood, injuring 13 people and destroying two homes. Four other houses were so badly damaged they may be declared uninhabitable, authorities said.
The event that set the derailment in motion began 30 miles to the east, in a freight yard in Montclair where the cars rolled away as they were being switched from one engine to another. They had reached speeds of up to 70 mph when they arrived in Commerce, a city of warehouses, factories and homes 10 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.
Huge pieces of lumber remained scattered Monday night throughout the neighborhood of modest, well-kept homes where the freight cars came to rest.
Union Pacific litigation manager Gil Torres said the company will reimburse the city and the Red Cross for “any and all” aid to affected residents.
Carmen Briones, who has lived in a home across from the railroad tracks for 16 years, said her house escaped damage but her sister Celia Avila’s home was nearly destroyed. Her own home was still surrounded Monday night by portable toilets brought out by emergency workers.
She praised city officials for quickly finding lodging for those left homeless.
“Thank God for the city,” she said in Spanish. “If it wasn’t for the city, we’d all be staying in the school with the Red Cross.”
Another, far less serious derailment of a Union Pacific train took place Monday afternoon in East Los Angeles, when a single locomotive went off the tracks at an intersection and blocked traffic for about an hour. Union Pacific workers quickly cleared the area, and no one was hurt.