(The following article by Paul Rogers was posted on the San Jose Mercury News website on August 1.)
SAN JOSE — Rekindling memories of a disastrous 1991 chemical spill, a Union Pacific train traveling through Northern California derailed Thursday morning near the town of Dunsmuir, sending five rail cars tumbling into the Upper Sacramento River near Mount Shasta.
Fifteen cars of the 86-car train derailed at about 6 a.m. on a curved, uphill section of track about two miles north of Dunsmuir. The five cars that slid into the river were empty.
“From what we can tell, it looks like there is no danger to the environment,” said biologist Bruce Dewell, with the California Department of Fish and Game in Redding.
Police reported a wave of calls from local residents, many of whom were evacuated in 1991 when a Southern Pacific train derailed on a twisting section of track nearby known as the Cantara Loop.
That spill dumped 19,500 gallons of weed killer from tank cars into the river, killing everything for 38 miles downstream in the state’s most famous fly-fishing waters.
“People were concerned about whether there were fumes and whether they should be traveling on the roads,” said Susan Gravenkamp, a spokeswoman for the Siskiyou County Sheriff. “Cantara is pretty fresh in everybody’s mind.”
John Bromley, a spokesman for Union Pacific railroad in Omaha, said the cause of the accident is under investigation. There were no injuries.
Bromley said three cars in the river had been transporting ammonium nitrate, a potentially explosive compound used in making fertilizer, but that only residues remained at the time of the spill.
The accident comes only six weeks after Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroads won a lawsuit to invalidate new rail-safety rules passed after the 1991 Dunsmuir spill. On June 18, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said weaker federal laws governing railroad safety pre-empt California’s efforts to impose more training, tougher track standards and more oversight of train configuration.
Union Pacific put a guardrail on the Cantara Loop Bridge and installed concrete rail ties to improve safety. But some environmentalists and fishermen were unsatisfied Thursday.
“This is one of the steepest, tightest sections of track in the United States,” said Curtis Knight, area director for the fishing group California Trout in Siskiyou County.
“Next time it could be really dangerous chemicals again. We’re playing Russian roulette.”