(The following story by Jessica Garrison and Alexandra Zavis appeared on the Los Angeles Times website on February 21, 2010.)
LOS ANGELES — Firefighters late Sunday put out a stubborn fire sparked by a freight train derailment in Central California, allowing residents evacuated because of a toxic cloud to return home, officials said.
But the blaze has caused freight traffic around the state to be stalled or rerouted.
The accident happened about 9:30 p.m. Saturday at the entrance to a tunnel on the Tehachapi Loop south of Keene. A tanker car carrying denatured alcohol burst into flames, producing a toxic cloud, said Engineer Justin Corley, a Kern County Fire Department spokesman.
The alcohol fire was confined to the tunnel, and firefighters allowed it to burn out, Corley said. But during the night, the fire spread to at least two other cars, one containing plastic pellets and another containing corn meal, he said.
The train was traveling from Barstow to Stockton on Union Pacific tracks when the accident happened, said Lena Kent, a spokeswoman for BNSF Railway, which owns the train.
Kent said that because of the crash, BNSF was unable to move freight through the area. She said that 18 trains were holding Sunday night.
Union Pacific spokesman Aaron Hunt said the railroad is rerouting most traffic from Roseville, Colton or the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach up and down their coastal line–at least 10 trains a day for “the next couple days at minimum.”
But he added that there were a number of trains–he couldn’t say how many–that were already en route to the Tehachapi Loop and were parked and waiting for the derailment to be fixed.