(Television station KESZ posted the following story on its website on September 8.)
PALM DESERT, Calif. — Crews are still on the scene of last night’s train collision in Beaumont. This morning a member of the clean up crew was nearly crushed to death.
A sea of twisted metal lines this county road just west of Beaumont. There were two trains, one headed west from Texas, the other eastbound from Colton. Around 9 pm Sunday, something went wrong.
“We had derailed.”
Witnesses say the sights and sounds of these two steel giants colliding was frightening.
When the two trains hit, they were carrying several kinds of cargo, everything from grain, to scrap metal and diesel fuel, but Union Pacific officials told us that nothing was hazardous to this area.
As soon as local rescue crews had pulled the engineers from their locomotives, Union Pacific assembled a small army of workers, semis, bulldozers and cranes, all in an effort to clear the tracks and get things rolling again.
But while crews began their work early this morning, a clean up crew member was nearly crushed to death by a crane. He was Life Flight-ed to a local hospital and is listed in critical condition.
As for the enormous pile of wreckage blocking the rails and the roadway, Union Pacific hopes to have things back on track within 10 to 12 hours.
Still no word yet on what might have caused that first box car to jump the tracks. Stay with Newschannel Three for the latest this story.