(The following story by Mark Havnes and Michael N. Westley appeared on The Salt Lake Tribune website on January 16.)
CALIENTE, Nev. — As he repaired a signal along one of Union Pacific’s main arteries connecting Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, Allen Griffin wondered how many boxes of breakfast cereal fit into a typical freight-train car.
He figured people in Southern California eat quite a bit, but they could run low not only on cereal, but practically every other product Americans take for granted if the rail line isn’t repaired soon.
The same storms that saturated southern Utah last week washed out several sections on 10 miles of track near Caliente, a Nevada railroad community about 40 miles west of Utah’s southwest state line.
The persistent rain falling on an earlier snowpack and already brimming reservoirs resulted in floods that caused at least $156 million in damage to Utah’s infrastructure and private property. Federal relief money could be disbursed by the end of the week, said Anne Rae Garett, chief of staff for the Utah Department of Emergency Services, who has been working with federal disaster officials since Saturday. The declaration for disaster relief has been complied and will be given to Gov. Jon Huntsman no later than Tuesday, she said.
Meanwhile, the damaged sections of track may take another two weeks to fix, which entails rebuilding the track bed with dirt and gravel before installing new line.
The rail connects Salt Lake City to Southern California and Las Vegas. On average, 22 trains pass through Southern Utah in a 24-hour period, said Union Pacific spokesman John Bromley.
Compounding the problem is that many access roads also were washed out.
“We’re in the process of trying to re-open some roads to access the area,” Bromley said. “So far, the only way to get in there is by rail.”
The work can be tedious and time-consuming, repairing one patch at a time and then moving the equipment farther down the line.
In addition to the 90 or so Union Pacific members working to repair the damaged rail, Ogden-based Durbano Metals sent out their troops last week.
“This is quite a huge undertaking,” said Dennis Durbano, the company’s owner. The 20 or so employees Durbano dispatched to the area near Caliente will work in shifts around the clock along with several other contractors hired by the railroad.
“All the equipment we have available is in the Caliente area trying to get their track back into service,” Durbano said.
Most of the trains that travel the southern Utah route have been diverted through Nevada and northern California. Others along the tracks that span the Great Basin were sitting idle near Milford and Modena in Utah Saturday and Sunday, where they will stay until repairs are made or they are pulled back to Salt Lake City to be rerouted.
“Obviously, they’re delayed and working off the backlog from the storm,” Bromley said.
In Milford, a primary staging area for Union Pacific train crews, railroad workers gathered at the Hog’s Breath bar Saturday night and faced the reality of no work unless they take temporary assignments at other company facilities around the West.
If not reassigned, they could be twiddling their thumbs until near the end of the month when the large-scale repair job is expected to be finished.
In addition to the rail disruptions, the small town of Caliente saw Meadow Valley Wash grow out of its banks, sending tentacles of muddy torrents down residential streets, filling basements, wetting carpets and covering lawns with same sandy silt deposited by Utah floodwaters.
The heavy rains Tuesday isolated about 120 students at the Caliente Youth Center, a state-operated center for children 12 to 18.
City councilman Tom Acklin, working at the incident command post Sunday in the old Caliente rail terminal, said when the road to the school became inundated Tuesday, three Black Hawk helicopters with the Nevada National Guard landed on school grounds and ferried students to safety.