(The following article by Tony Bizjak was posted on the Sacramento Bee website on March 23.)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — As a column of black smoke rose like an exclamation point above Union Pacific’s burning trestle in Sacramento last week, state officials launched their own firestorm of e-mails and conference calls.
The message from the Governor’s Office was simple:
Do whatever possible to help UP rebuild its freight line to ensure the “critical corridor reopens as quickly as possible,” said Eric Lamoureux of the state Office of Emergency Services.
Reacting with equal urgency, and even before the flames died, UP rolled an armada of trucks in four Western states loaded with precast construction materials, all bound for Sacramento.
In a flash, an astonishing construction site has emerged on the north bank of the American River near downtown Sacramento.
The cause of the fire that destroyed 1,400 feet of wooden trestle March 15 during the evening commute has yet to be determined.
Working night and day, seven days a week in 12-hour shifts, a crew of 135 — headed by a travel-weary UP veteran from Omaha, Neb. — is erecting a curving concrete and steel rail bridge from the ground up. The goal is 16 days.
Within 72 hours, the first of 282 iron pilings had been driven 60 feet into the parkway ground. Neighbors knew it because the pounding reverberated a mile away.
A second adjacent track will be built separately at the site, and is expected to be finished May 1.
“Knock on wood, everything is rolling along,” said UP construction manager Bart Culbertson this week. Culbertson has dealt with derailments, washouts and bridge fires throughout UP’s rail empire. “It’s not the worst I’ve been to, but, it is one of the longest, and it’s double track. At least it wasn’t a derailment.”
For UP, time is of the essence.
“The only way they make money is by moving their customers’ stuff,” said Chuck Baker of the National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association. UP, he said, may be losing millions of dollars a day.
The issue is economic as well for the state of California.
The severed line is the main link between the Port of Oakland in the Bay Area and the rest of the nation. Dozens of trains a day pass through carrying essentials like home-building products, automobiles, produce and electronic equipment. Several passenger trains also use the line.
State Public Utilities Commission official George Elsmore said the state’s sense of urgency was heightened by news of critical shipments being slowed, such as trains carrying chemicals needed at the Valero gasoline refinery in Benicia.
“If those aren’t delivered, they would shut the Valero refinery,” Elsmore said.
Regulators quickly concluded no special permits would be required for UP to rebuild its destroyed trestle. The state Transportation Department agreed to allow oversized trucks to haul bridge materials on highways. State Fish and Game officials decided the emergency nature of the project means a streambed alteration permit isn’t required.
State and federal environmental protection and water quality officials determined that although soil toxicity issues need to be addressed, most of that work can be done afterward.
The Governor’s Office was even ready to declare a state of emergency last week, if need be, Lamoureux of emergency services said.
Officials said they are not shirking their governmental watchdog role in offering the railroad company a quick green light. The rebuilding project, which will cost the rail company up to $30 million, is on UP land and amounts to rebuilding an existing structure, they pointed out.
“The intent was never to circumvent anything,” Lamoureux said. State Fish and Game officials have been sent to the site to watch and consult with UP, he said.
But some officials also say they are relying on UP’s experience on how to handle the situation.
Federal EPA officials, who deal with soil and water contamination issues, will oversee cleanup work, but otherwise will step out of the way.
“EPA would look at their cleanup and sampling plans and make changes if necessary,” spokesman Mark Merchant said. “We would monitor them all along, and in the end make sure the cleanup was done properly.”
Antonia Vorster of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board said officials so far have only limited groundwater samples from a single pit dug on site.
“We have no idea, really, what the groundwater situation here is,” she said.
To protect the American River during construction, runoff is being pumped into a tank, she said. Her agency may ultimately require soil removal or covering on what she calls a “long-term project.”
While the work schedule is a marvel to some, rail experts say it is not unusual.
“I’m impressed with railroads in general when they respond to an emergency,” Caltrans’ Bill Bronte said.
After Hurricane Katrina hit News Orleans, the Norfolk Southern railroad company pieced together five miles of damaged rail line in 16 days. After fire destroyed 800 feet of rail bridge in Yuma, Ariz., last year, UP crews had a new line open in eight days.
Thanks to prefabricated pieces, construction on-site is like building a Tinkertoy set, engineers said. The bridge under construction at the American River this week is the same design — the same basic pieces — as the Yolo Causeway rail line reconstruction in 2002.
The main problem, UP’s Culbertson said, is quickly getting materials to the site. By project’s end, more than 500 trucks will have made deliveries from Texas, Nebraska and New Mexico. Some materials are being shipped from Roseville, where UP keeps an emergency store for the West Coast.
Workers continue to laboriously pound pilings into the ground, even through the night, when the construction site becomes a surreal scene: heavy equipment and men in orange, lit up by banks of construction lights, surrounded by shadows and riparian foliage.
Earlier this week, under a sliver of a moon, deep-throated frogs in nearby Bushy Lake croaked in counterpoint to the thumping of an 80-foot pile driver. Nearby, sparks flew into the night from welding torches.
Once pilings are driven, Culbertson said, cranes will quickly add concrete caps to the pilings, then girders on top, and finally rails that come in ready-made 80-foot sections with the timber ties already attached.
The whirlwind pace, especially the nighttime pile driving, has kept some people in nearby residential areas awake.
City Councilwoman Sandy Sheedy, who can hear the nighttime pile-driving, has contacted UP and asked for consideration for residents.
A UP spokesman on Thursday, however, said the company will continue to drive pilings during the night as long as officials feel they need to.
“We recognize it is an inconvenience, but our goal is to finish this bridge as quickly as possible,” UP spokesman James Barnes said.
At the site, workers have a definite goal in mind, as well, project head Culbertson said — seeing the tracks back in operation.
“There isn’t a railroader out there who doesn’t get a little enjoyment seeing that first train run.”