(The following article by Chris Richard was posted on the Press-Enterprise website on May 18.)
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — Local public safety officers and representatives of the Union Pacific Railroad told San Bernardino residents Tuesday that they responded appropriately to a train derailment.
Angry residents at the meeting at San Bernardino City Hall met such claims with stories of a disorganized evacuation and failures in communication by fire and police personnel. They accused railroad employees and public officials of concealing a toxic chemical spill that, speakers insisted, has left many people ill.
“These chemicals are affecting residents’ health,” neighborhood resident Esther Hernandez said. “I am having trouble trying to eat. I cannot swallow. I’m choking at night. And this is from these chemicals that you say were never spilled.”
About 300 residents of homes on Macy Street and two mobile home parks on Meridian Avenue evacuated their homes after the April 4 derailment.
The train included seven cars filled with hazardous materials, including two loaded with poisonous chlorine.
Before Tuesday’s meeting, railroad officials had reported that about 200 gallons of antifreeze spilled, and that technicians had removed all the earth where the substance soaked into the ground.
But on Tuesday, Brian Otter, an environmental health specialist with the San Bernardino County Fire Department, said the spilled liquid was a solvent.
Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis said the liquid escaped as a tank car was being lifted back onto the tracks, and safety personnel caught almost all of it in a child’s wading pool. A specially sealed truck later vacuumed up the liquid and transported it out of the area, Davis said.
Cory Davis, an environmental health contractor hired by the railroad, said that although some of the solvent evaporated rapidly, computer models indicated it would have affected an area 38 feet from the wading pool.
Since the neighborhood had been evacuated at that point, the solvent did not pose a risk to the public, said Robert Bavier, the railroad’s manager of chemical transportation.
Danny Gallegos, who oversees rail maintenance for Union Pacific, said the derailment was caused by a 3/8-inch difference in height between two rails. One track was 2 3/8 inches higher than the other. That was enough for one set of wheels to lift off the track.
That has been corrected, and the area strengthened by welding rails together near a switch, Gallegos said.
He said an inspection by railroad technicians and separate inspection by federal investigators have shown that rails throughout the region are properly aligned.
A specially equipped railroad car that measures rails’ position will arrive in Southern California on Friday and will spend at least two weeks checking for safety again, Davis said.
But neighborhood residents said they don’t trust the railroad and are worried about what will happen if there is another accident.