(The following story by Tom Alex appeared on the Des Moines Register website on July 9.)
GUTTENBURG, Iowa — A freight train derailment early Wednesday that threw several grain cars into the Mississippi River in southern Clayton County was caused by a garage-sized boulder that broke loose from a soggy bluff, rolled 200 feet and smashed into the tracks about two hours earlier, officials determined.
The wreck tossed two Iowa, Chicago & Eastern Railroad employees, locomotives and at least a half-dozen rail cars into the water. One of the men jumped to shore and “the Guttenberg fire boat took the other one off the top of one of the engines,” Sheriff Robert Hammann said. Both men were taken to a Guttenberg hospital with injuries that were believed to be minor.
The accident was the second in less than month blamed on erosion caused by heavy rain that has drenched eastern Iowa since April and triggered historic June floods and millions of dollars in damage to home, business, roads and bridges across the state.
An IC&E engineer suffered leg and back injuries June 25 when a bridge near Columbus Junction collapsed under his locomotive, which plunged into the Iowa River. Rescue workers waded in the dark through waist-deep water and diesel fuel to reach the injured man. Officials say floodwater had weakened the bridge, which belonged to the Tyson Foods plant it served.
A similar accident Monday caused a locomotive and 10 coal cars to fall about 50 feet from a track that officials said was undermined by high water on the Yellowstone River near Forsyth, Minn. No one was hurt. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway engineers were worried about the area and had slowed the train when the ground gave way about 1:15 a.m., company spokesman Gus Melonas said.
Federal rail investigators from Washington D.C. were on the way to Clayton County to investigate Wednesday’s accident, while environmental regulators tried to minimize the effect of diesel fuel, grain and ethanol from the ruptured rail cars.
The rail line runs between the Mississippi River to the east and steep bluffs to the west. The southbound train derailed about 1 1/2 miles north of where the Turkey River meets the Mississippi, Herb Jones, spokesman for the railroad, said. The crash upended about the cars into about 6 feet of water.
Dozens of other cars were pulled off the track toward the water but stayed upright.
Sheriff Hammann said a northbound train had passed safely through the same area about three hours earlier. At some subsequent point, the 30-ton boulder apparently tumbled down the bluff, tore through a line of trees at an estimated 20 mph and splintered the tracks.
Probably what brought it down was all that wet weather,” Jerry Farmer, a natural resources employee, said. “You’re not stopping something like that.”
Guttenberg was pounded with six-tenths of an inch of rain between 7 a.m. Sunday and 7 a.m. Monday, then another 1.32 inches Monday into early Tuesday, when it is believed the boulder broke free. The National Weather Service reported that the 28.49 inches of rain in nearby Elkader since April is 16.64 inches above normal.
The train engines were partially submerged and began to immediately leak diesel fuel and transmission oil. Five other train cars spilled grain. Two cars that carried ethanol rolled near the water but did not leak, state Department of Natural Resources workers reported.
They said spilled fuel and oil had washed about five miles downstream by Wednesday afternoon. The Iowa Department of Transportation and the U.S. Coast Guard were called in to help with the cleanup. The railroad also sent an environmental cleanup crew.
The identities of the railroad employees were not made public. Steve Kulm, spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration, said investigators the men will be interviewed to help piece together what happened.