(The following story by Eric Johnson appeared on the Press Telegram website on January 13.)
LONG BEACH, Calif. — The wet and wild Southland winter has laid claim to another victim: Union Pacific’s railroad tracks.
The barrage of rainstorms the past week has severely damaged several of the railroad’s lines in and out of Southern California, temporarily paralyzing a portion of the goods movement network to Northern California and the Midwest.
“We estimate the storm damage has cut our capacity by almost a third,” said Union Pacific spokesman John Bromley.
UP operates about 80 trains a day in and out of the Southland, Bromley said. The hardest-hit lines are the tracks that connect Los Angeles to Oakland and the Midwest.
Trains use the eastbound tracks through Las Vegas to deliver cargo from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles to the distribution centers in the Midwest. About half the cargo that arrives in local ports is sent to other parts of the country by rail.
A washout of the line northeast of Las Vegas derailed a train earlier this week, while bridge damage was also reported.
Meanwhile, mudslides, debris and track washouts closed the Pacific line to Oakland near Santa Barbara. Bromley said there is no timetable for when those two key lines might be opened.
Two other sections of track affected by the storms one through the Cajon Pass and the other connecting downtown L.A. and San Bernardino were up and running by Thursday afternoon.
The line connecting L.A. to Arizona and New Mexico also opened Thursday morning after weather damage.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe, the other freight rail line operating in Southern California, reported no damage to their tracks even though the two companies’ lines run parallel in stretches.
The rail closures, ordered by the Association of American Railroads on Wednesday, has affected cargo shipments from the Sierra Nevadas to the Plains and beyond.
But it’s not all doom and gloom.
“From what we’ve heard, in the short-term there’s been an impact, but everybody’s pretty confident it will only be a few days,” said Jeff Lustgarten, spokesman for the Southern California Association of Governments.
“It won’t be overly dramatic unless it lasts longer than a few days,” he said. “It’s nothing like the strike a couple years back. But it helps to further demonstrate the sheer volume of cargo coming into the ports and what even a temporary shutdown can do.”
Bromley said workers are feverishly repairing and clearing the tracks. Once they’re back online, the backlog will likely take more than a few days to fully clear.
M.K. Wong, marketing director for Orient Overseas Container Line, said OOCL almost exclusively uses Burlington Northern, so its operations have been virtually unaffected. But he said the cargo already en route to Los Angeles and Long Beach from Asia could be affected.
“The impact will likely be in terms of weeks, not days,” Wong said.
The rail closures have left containers piled up in already crowded marine terminals, leaving truckers who haul containers locally more congestion with which to deal.
John Cushing, president of Irvine-based eModal, said crises like this force the entire industry to think ahead.
“When things are congested, it’s important for everyone to work smarter and use the tools available,” he said.
Paperwork, such as customs clearances, can back up the system and cause late fees to be imposed on truckers for failing to pick up a container in time, or for failing to bring it back on time.
“Information for everyone on the supply chain is even more critical right now,” he said.