(The Associated Press circulated the following article on November 21.)
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Railroad officials said they are examining whether a broken rail caused six train cars to derail in the city’s seventh train accident since May.
There were no injuries and no hazardous materials were involved in the latest accident, which happened at a Union Pacific rail yard.
Four freight cars filled with grain tipped off the rails about 3:40 a.m. Saturday at the South San Antonio switching yard, railroad spokesman John Bromley said. The cars fell on two other cars on an adjacent track.
“It’s kind of the railroad version of a parking lot accident,” Bromley said in Sunday’s editions of the San Antonio Express-News.
He said the Federal Railroad Administration would decide whether to send an investigator after Union Pacific submits a report on the accident.
The Federal Railroad Administration already had planned to conduct a review of the railroad’s South Texas safety operations after a series of incidents that caused four deaths and three toxic spills in six months.
The San Antonio area is at the crossroads of Union Pacific’s Texas network, with transcontinental trains running east and west, and others moving north and south to connect with Mexico.
Earlier this month, one man was killed and another was injured when a Union Pacific boxcar car smashed into a cold-storage warehouse.
In May, two Union Pacific trains collided and derailed in San Antonio, spilling 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel into the San Antonio River. An engineer, conductor and homeless man were injured.
The worst was on June 28, when a Union Pacific train struck a Burlington Northern train, splitting a car carrying chlorine gas and creating a toxic cloud that killed a conductor and two women who lived near the crash site.
There were two train wrecks in September. On Sept. 16, five Union Pacific train cars derailed at a San Antonio sorting yard, spilling nontoxic chemicals. Nine days later, Union Pacific and Burlington Northern-Santa Fe trains collided near downtown San Antonio, derailing 27 cars. Nontoxic chemicals leaked and power lines were damaged, causing electricity outages.
In October, nine Union Pacific cars derailed in San Antonio.
Omaha, Neb.-based Union Pacific is the nation’s largest railroad. It serves 23 states across the western two-thirds of the country.