(The following article by Gustavo Reveles Acosta was posted on the El Paso Times website on February 27.)
EL PASO, Texas — Railroad and emergency personnel worked Thursday at the scene of a train derailment near Ivey and Cathy in the Lower Valley.
A Union Pacific derailment in the Lower Valley Thursday morning — the third train accident with El Paso ties in six days — left a pile of 26 freight cars in the back yard of a home and knocked out power around the area for several hours.
Officials don’t know what caused the train to derail near Ivey and Kathy streets about 6 a.m. The Dallas-bound train had only two passengers, and no injuries were reported.
Although some of the cargo was hazardous, the cars involved in the accident contained dry goods, a Union Pacific spokesman said.
Celia Morales was awakened by a bang behind her house, but it wasn’t until sunrise that she saw a mound of freight containers piled up like toy building blocks in her back yard.
“You don’t wake up to this every day,” Morales said. “I’m not upset, though. It could have been much, much worse.”
The derailed cars knocked out the Morales’ back fence and part of a corral where they keep horses. The house was about 30 feet from the nearest derailed car.
Union Pacific officials said they will pay for all repairs to the Morales’ property and will also need to replace about 700 feet of track.
Spokesman Mark Davis said Thursday that it wasn’t clear how long it would take to remove the derailed cars but that the tracks would reopen by 6 a.m. today.
The accident knocked down an electrical pole, leaving several blocks — including the Lower Valley Wal-Mart — without power for several hours.
Union Pacific officials asked various utility companies to check for damage to their lines. A police spokesman said only power lines were affected.
A neighbor thought a nearby electrical power plant had exploded when she was awakened by the boom early in the morning.
“I expected to see flames when I looked out the window,” Dale Manning said. “We’re glad it wasn’t more intense, and we are all trying to help our neighbors.”
Because cleaning crews will need to knock down some animal living quarters, the Moraleses need to find homes for their horses — including a pregnant mare that is due to give birth in about two weeks.
Area residents want Union Pacific to enforce better safety precautions and point to last weekend’s fatal train accidents as proof.
Two men sleeping on Union Pacific tracks in Tornillo were killed Sunday by a train. A two-train collision near Carrizozo, N.M., on Saturday, also on Union Pacific tracks, killed two El Paso men.
“Each accident has been different, and it’s unfortunate that some of them involved fatalities,” Davis said. “We don’t know what caused (Thursday’s) accident, but we can say that the fact that the three accidents happened in this short period is a coincidence.”
Davis said that he couldn’t comment Thursday on any preliminary cause for the accident but that some information should be available within a couple of days. The amount of damage was not known.
Warren Flatau, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration in Washington, D.C., said his agency will “look further into the matter and perhaps conduct an abbreviated investigation” into the circumstances surrounding the Lower Valley wreck.