(The following story by Lane Bettencourt appeared on the Idaho Press-Tribune website on November 24.)
NOTUS, Idaho — The small Canyon County town of Notus was rattled from its sleep overnight Monday when a train derailed near its eastern edge.
Derailing just before 1 a.m. Tuesday were three locomotives and 25 cars of an eastbound Union Pacific freight train.
There were no injuries, no significant spillage of hazardous materials and no major property damage apart from what was done to the train.
Firefighters from Caldwell and Notus doused a blaze that broke out in one of the boxcars. The Canyon County Sheriff’s Office also responded to the accident.
Highway traffic on Highway 20-26 near Notus was detoured all day Tuesday so clean-up work could take place. The Idaho Department of Transportation said one lane of the highway should reopen Wednesday morning, with a flagger directing traffic. Notus City Clerk Linda Landis said there was little effect on local traffic on Tuesday.
John Bromley, a spokesman for Union Pacific Railroad, said the cause of the derailment is under investigation, but it was not the result of a collision. Bromley said the 49-car train would have been traveling about 65 mph when the mishap occurred. The train was made up of empty automobile carriers and refrigerated box cars carrying vegetables and frozen fish.
Bromley said the train was on its way to a switching yard in North Platte, Neb., from another yard near Hermiston, Ore.
An engineer and conductor were on board, said Bromley, and neither sustained injuries. Though derailed, the engines remained upright. He did not have an estimate on when the rail line might reopen.
“It was a really big wreck, but fortunately there was no major hazardous substances (on board) and no injuries,” said Caldwell firefighter Tim Scott, who went to the scene as a member of the Southwest Idaho Regional Response Team, which is based at the Caldwell Fire Department.
Scott said the only hazardous material the team handled was a small amount of leaking diesel fuel that was used to run the refrigeration units on the boxcars.
Scott said none of the fuel reached the nearby Boise River.
Tom Krasowski, who lives about a quarter mile from where the train derailed, said he felt his bed and house shake when it happened.
Even if he hadn’t felt the vibration, he would have been awakened a few minutes later by his pager beeping. A volunteer with the Notus Fire Department, Krasowski was one of the first on the scene.
As serious as the wreck was, Krasowski and others who responded were grateful for what didn’t happen.
“We talked about 101 different ways that it could have been worse, like a chemical spill, where we had to evacuate the town,” he said. “This was really one of the better case scenarios.”