(The following article by Tom Bower was posted on the San Antonio Express-News website on September 26.)
SAN ANTONIO, Tex. — For the third time this year, freight trains carrying hazardous cargo collided in San Antonio.
This time they caused no significant leaks, spills or casualties, but they shook telephone poles like tuning forks, causing power outages and raising the specter of what-if.
Late Friday night, a runaway string of 50 rail cars rolling backward from a northbound train struck an 80-car Union Pacific train nearly broadside just east of Brackenridge High School.
The thunderous collision rattled houses and knocked 27 cars off the track, many upended like Tinker Toys.
But it was the cars left standing that resonated most.
Among those that missed being involved in the wreck by perhaps only seconds were 19 on the eastbound Union Pacific train carrying hazardous cargo: 14 tankers of sulfuric acid and five tankers of sodium hydroxide, or lye.
Both substances are potentially deadly.
Informed of the close call in a telephone interview Saturday afternoon, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said the wreck was yet another example of the railroads’ cavalier attitude toward local residents.
“I’m frustrated,” Wolff said.
Neither railroad is friendly to proposals for re-routing rail lines that carry hazardous cargo around the city, as was recently done in Brownsville with a $47 million investment, he said.
“The first thing is they’re getting a lot more freight to haul. The second thing is that San Antonio has never been a priority for the railroads because San Antonio has never had a lot of outgoing freight.
“The third thing is that all the lines lead right through the heart of the city,” Wolff said.
The wreck occurred just two blocks east of where the rail line crosses the San Antonio River south of the high school, where a collision May 3 sent two locomotives and 12 rail cars into the water and others onto nearby South St. Mary’s Street.
Three people were injured in the collision, which caused a 5,600-gallon diesel spill.
Four tanker cars that stayed on the tracks that day were carrying highly explosive propane.
A month and a half later, on June 28, a collision just outside the city limits in South Bexar County left three people dead and 49 sick or injured, mostly from chlorine gas.
Friday’s booming collision, though frightening for nearby residents and a close call once again for a city fast becoming skittish of the hazardous loads snaking through its heart day and night, was relatively harmless.
The runaway cars came from an 81-car Burlington Northern-Santa Fe train. Railroad officials believe the cars detached from the rest of the train when someone — possibly illegal immigrants — hit the brakes to slow the train so they could jump off.
Each rail car has its own set of brakes.
“The railroad police did an extensive search, and what they found was consistent with train riders trying to use the brakes to slow the train down and get off,” Union Pacific spokesman John Bromley said.
The runaway string of cars, most of them brand-new empty boxcars, rolled backward downhill for about two miles before running into the Union Pacific train as its 30th car rolled by the switch between South St. Mary’s and South Presa streets.
The Union Pacific tankers carrying hazardous cargo were farther to the rear, remaining unaffected by the collision. Had the cars from the other train been detached seconds or minutes later, a disaster might have occurred, Bromley acknowledged.
Roland Castanuela, who lives nearby in the 100 block of Vitra Street and who saw the collision, drew a picture of it and wrote this caption:
“There was a lot of screeching, breaking, bumping, sparks and then the impact — boommmmm. Metal (rail cars) pounding against each other. Millions of sparks everywhere. It looked like a bottle rocket in the sky.”
The sketch showed rail cars standing on end and flying through the air.
Five cars were punctured. One leaked magnesium chloride, a bitter crystalline salt that is used to replenish electrolytes in the body but that is not toxic or flammable, said Randy Jenkins, district chief of the San Antonio Fire Department.
Among the cars not affected were the 14 carrying sulfuric acid, which is harmful if inhaled and corrosive if it comes into contact with eyes and skin; and the five that were carrying sodium hydroxide, which also is extremely corrosive.
If inhaled or ingested, sodium hydroxide can cause severe burns to the mouth, throat, and stomach, leading to scarring of tissue or even death.
By how many seconds or minutes those cars were spared involvement in the wreck is unclear; railroad officials had no idea how fast the cars were moving. But nearby residents described the collision as thunderous, flinging and upending rail cars.
Albert Hernandez, who lives next door to the Castanuelas and fewer than 100 yards from the switch where the collision occurred, was watching TV with his fiancée, Harley Reese, when it happened.
Seated in the living room, they felt their duplex start to shake.
“It was right at 11 p.m., and we opened the front door and we saw it all right there. We saw the biggest part of it,” Hernandez said.
“The telephone poles looked like rubber, the wires were bouncing all around, and the sparks were flying,” he added. One of the rail cars knocked down a utility pole, temporarily causing a power outage to the surrounding neighborhoods.
“I had a panic attack. I was scared,” Reese said.
“The Lord kept it all over there, and no one got hurt.”
Reese, who is 81/2 months pregnant with the couple’s first child, said she recalled two fatalities on the nearby tracks within the past year, where pedestrians were struck and killed by trains. She and her fiancé hopes to move away someday.
“We just had this train wreck, and there was the train wreck at the river,” she said. “I said, ‘Baby, we’ve got to find another place to live.'”
Burlington Northern-Santa Fe officials at the wreck scene would not consent to be interviewed, and corporate spokespeople did not return repeated phone calls.
But Wolff said he was frustrated with the railroads and thinks rerouting trains so they don’t go through the heart of the city, as has been done in Brownsville, is a good idea — albeit unlikely.
Referring to the Brownsville solution, he said, “We’re trying to get them to do that, but that’s years away.”
Wolff added: “But I can tell you they are not beefing up their personnel and dealing with their operational and security issues.
“The only people that can get their attention is Congress. We’re left with no authority to do anything. They have no requirements to tell us about the hazardous materials they are carrying.”
Wolff said he planned to speak to San Antonio’s congressional delegates for help pressuring the railroads to address concerns with safety and security.
“I don’t know what else to do,” he added.
Union Pacific crews and contractors went to work clearing the wreckage immediately after it was determined there were no hazardous chemicals, and by 9 a.m. were rebuilding the track and switch.
Freight was expected to be moving through the tracks by 6 p.m. Saturday, and all three tracks were expected to be open by 10 p.m.