(The Lafayette Advertiser posted the following article by Todd Billiot on its website on December 9.)
MIDLAND, La. — Authorities opened U.S. Route 90 between Midland and Mermentau in Acadia Parish on Monday afternoon but intend to close it again at 6 a.m. today, to continue picking up 13 railcars that derailed Sunday after a train struck a tractor-trailer.
Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis said that the 100-car train with two locomotives was traveling from New Orleans to Houston when it hit the abandoned truck, which was stuck on a crossing, in this sparsely populated area, surrounded by rice fields and crawfish ponds.
“We’re very fortunate that no one got hurt,” Davis said.
Seven of the derailed cars carried hazardous materials, but none of the materials leaked. Five of the cars carried an unspecified poison, one carried a corrosive material, and one carried a combustible liquid.
Two of the cars carried rice, one carried bricks, and one carried plastic pellets. Two of the derailed cars were empty, he said.
No one lived close enough to the accident to be evacuated.
State police are managing the cleanup.
The company will have to replace 1,000 feet of railroad track before being able to use the line again, and cost of the cleanup will be an estimated $400,000, Davis said.
For all of Sunday evening and most of Monday, traffic on U.S. 90 at Midland was rerouted about 10 miles south along La. 91 through Morse to La. 92, and then west on La. 92, where it turns north and reaches U.S. 90 again, slightly east of Mermentau.
“The trailer was drug about 200 yards, leaving parts of the tractor cab along the tracks,” said Maxine Trahan, spokeswoman for the Acadia Parish Sheriff’s Office.
The driver of the truck, whose name was not released Monday, had delivered equipment to a land-based oil rig a half-mile from the railroad crossing when his truck stalled, Trahan said. He abandoned the truck to get help and told authorities he didn’t know that a train was approaching.