(The following article by Lisa Sandberg was posted on the San Antonio Express-News website on May 4.)
SAN ANTONIO — A freight train derailment early Monday created a jumbled mess of overturned boxcars that left three men slightly injured and a 5,600-gallon diesel spill along the San Antonio River.
It could have been deadly.
Four of the train’s rail cars were carrying highly explosive propane, but none of those cars derailed, Union Pacific said.
“They were some 20-odd cars away,” company spokesman Mark Davis said.
The diesel spill had little immediate impact on wildlife.
“We have not seen any dead fish or fowl,” said Mike Gonzales, an official with the San Antonio River Authority. “We’re very lucky with this one.”
One might say the same for the two Union Pacific crew members who jumped from the train before it plunged off a South Side overpass and for the homeless man sleeping beneath the bridge.
Engineer Robert Moore, 49, and Jose Garcia, 48, who was under the tracks, were treated and released from area hospitals. Conductor Frederico Pena, 56, was taken to a hospital in fair condition, police said, but his condition was not available.
Authorities said it might take weeks to learn if the derailment was caused by human error. Under company policy, the two employees will remain on unpaid leave until the investigation is completed, a company spokesman said.
Authorities said the derailment occurred at 4 a.m. on the southbound track near Roosevelt and South St. Mary’s, near Brackenridge High School about a mile south of downtown in a largely residential area.
A section of the 80-car train, bound for Mexico, apparently clipped the rear of a passing train. That sent the southbound train’s two engines and the 12 rail cars immediately behind them sailing off the overpass into the river and on to nearby St. Mary’s Street.
The engines, their fuel and five rail cars carrying rice, canned goods, beer and soap, plunged into the river. The other rail cars landed on the street, their twisted wreckage resembling a child’s tumbled electric train set.
The northbound train, which was damaged slightly, stopped briefly before continuing to East St. Louis, Ill.
Gary Minter, 42, a security contractor who returned last month from Iraq, watched the crews from behind his newly purchased home. He said he awoke to the sound of metal ripping and felt the earth shake beneath him.
Too tired to get out of bed, Minter said he turned over, and “slept like a baby because there were no more trains.”
It wasn’t so peaceful for some neighbors.
A strong diesel odor filled the air for blocks around the spill, and a black sheen of the fuel was found more than a mile downstream at Military Drive.
“Five thousand gallons of fuel is not minor, but its impact may be minimal,” said Henry Karnei, waste sections manager at the San Antonio offices of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Throughout Monday morning, the railroad company’s environmental cleanup contractors joined city emergency crews in trying to contain the spill. Field workers from at least six state and local environmental agencies were at the scene.
Near the site, hoses connected to three giant vacuum trucks attempted to siphon the diesel. Downstream, crews dropped a series of absorbent floatation devices into the water to corral the runoff. Tractors also pushed temporary dams of topsoil across the river to contain the spill.
Kip Portis, a regional biologist for Texas Parks and Wildlife who is in charge of the state agency’s “kills and spills” response team for this area, said the spill occurred in a section of the river that’s largely been stripped of native trees and shrubs.
Had the spill occurred farther downstream, where larger and more diverse populations of plants and animals flourish, the environmental effects could have been devastating, Portis said.
Environmental damage could worsen if the cleanup doesn’t happen quickly, Gonzales said.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he said.
More leaking fuel is expected when the engines are removed from the waters as early as today.