(The following column by Carlos Guerra appeared on the San Antonio Express-News website on October 14.)
SAN ANTONIO — When nine of the 71 railcars Union Pacific was moving from Baton Rouge to Laredo jumped the tracks Monday, it was Bexar County’s fourth rail mishap since May.
In September, you may recall, 50 cars mysteriously broke free from a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train, rolling freely before careening into a Union Pacific train and derailing 27 cars.
That and Monday’s accident resulted in no injuries or hazardous materials spills, but two other recent incidents did.
In May, two locomotives and 12 cars ended up in the San Antonio River and on St. Mary’s Street near Brackenridge High School, injuring three and dumping 5,600 gallons of diesel into the river. Luckily, four tankers full of propane were unaffected.
At the time, an exasperated Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said, “This was as close as you could get from a huge tragedy,” adding that it underscored the urgency of rerouting tracks away from residential neighborhoods.
But in the early morning hours of a warm June night, a westbound Union Pacific train plowed into a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train that was moving east onto a sidetrack in deep Southwest Bexar County.
A number of the two trains’ 197 rail cars left the tracks and several tank cars were punctured, sending acrid plumes of chlorine and some ammonium nitrate wafting through residential neighborhoods, forcing their evacuation and sending 49 San Antonians to hospitals for treatment.
Three people on nearby farms died.
The latest derailment is yet another warning, Wolff said Wednesday, of the urgency of hurrying plans to reroute freight now moving through numerous neighborhoods before a major disaster occurs.
Railroads contributed greatly to San Antonio’s growth, but changing markets over two decades have greatly increased the amount of freight that moves through the city.
“There’s no question that freight traffic has increased substantially because of increased trade,” Wolff said Wednesday, “and the railroads were caught flatfooted. They didn’t have the experienced personnel they needed, didn’t have enough training, not enough maintenance, and that’s part of what’s causing our problems.”
UP spokesman Mark Davis denies that maintenance is slack but agrees about the growth.
“We’ve had double-digit growth since pre-NAFTA days,” he says, “and it’s continuing.”
And San Antonio has become an important point through which much of the new trade is passing in and out of Mexico and between both coasts.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s 1997 Commodity Flow Survey indicates that San Antonio exceeds nine of the nation’s 10 largest metropolitan areas — Houston being the exception — in tonnage, per capita, that is rolling through it.
Annually, 4.34 tons of freight moves by rail through Bexar County for every resident.
“The only thing we can do on the short term is (for the railroads to) increase personnel, training, safety measures and security,” Wolff said. “But the long-term solution is to put in place a plan to bring the freight around the city, like Denver, Chicago and a lot of other large metropolitan areas have already done.”
But that won’t be done quickly or inexpensively, Wolff warned.
“Things are moving but it’s going to take awhile,” he said.
Like years, or even decades?
Stay tuned.