Train Derails With Load of Naval Shells

A nine-car freight train carrying artillery shells from the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station derailed here Tuesday evening, prompting authorities to close roads and call in military explosives experts.

But officials stopped short of a full-scale evacuation of nearby homes and businesses after safety officials determined there was no danger of an explosion.

“I would say this had the potential to be devastating had the munitions exploded,” said Battalion Chief Allan R. White of the Westminster Fire Department, noting that an evacuation could have affected an estimated 1,000 residents within a mile of the derailment.

A pair of locomotives leading the train and two boxcars--including one loaded with crates of 2-foot-long, military projectiles--jumped the tracks just south of Westminster Boulevard about 6:45 p.m., causing a diesel spill from one of the engines.

Fire crews managed within hours to mop up the spill from the second of the two Southern Pacific locomotives, which dumped between 50 and 100 gallons of diesel fuel onto the tracks. Nearby streets were closed to traffic, but police were not forced to evacuate any residents from the surrounding area, which is ringed mostly by light-industrial buildings and small shops.

Southern Pacific officials said it remained unclear what caused the derailment, which left the front locomotive and the cars twisted on the tracks. None of the cars flipped over, but the steel rails were bent by the force of the accident. About 300 feet of track was damaged.

The only injury reported involved an unidentified naval weapons worker who tripped and fell into an embankment and suffered a sprained ankle while examining the ammunition. The worker was taken to Humana Hospital-Westminster.

Authorities were initially unsure what type of explosives were aboard the train, but eventually determined that four of the nine cars were loaded with projectiles that one official described as “a bullet with a big bomb in it.”

The derailed cars were being put back on tracks by huge cranes under the direction of Navy ordnance experts from the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. A hazardous material response team from the railroad was also dispatched to the scene.

“It was explosives, but it was packed well and they aren’t worried about it detonating,” Westminster Police Lt. Andrew Hall said. “It’s no danger to anyone and we’re not going to evacuate at all.”

The munitions were packed on wooden pallets and were secured with heavy steel bands, officials at the scene said.

Tom Thomas, a spokesman for the naval weapons station, said he believes the derailment was the first such incident involving munitions.

“We’ve been in this business 46 years and this, to my knowledge, is the first incident. . . . We take every precaution,” Thomas said.

About two dozen spectators gathered to watch shortly after the train jumped its tracks, but they were mostly shooed off by police.

“I didn’t hear anything until I heard the helicopters going round and round,” said Rosita Selga, 55, who lives at a nearby apartment complex for senior citizens. “I thought the vice president was here. . . . It’s scary, if that was live ammunition. We’re too close.”

Andy Anderson, a Southern Pacific railroad spokesman, said the train’s destination was a Navy weapons support center in Crane, Ind. But he said the train most likely would have first stopped at a train yard in either Colton or Los Angeles, where larger trains are put together.

“I don’t know at this time its actual routing,” he said. “These were just loose cars put together to be taken to a yard.”

Anderson said he was not sure whether the train engineer will be tested for drugs or alcohol.

“I can’t tell you whether they would test or not,” Anderson said. “We’re required to in some circumstances. It depends on what the senior railroad officers feel the cause is. There are certain types of accidents where the testing is required. . . . If it’s clear there’s a human failure, then a test is done.”

But if the train was derailed by a mechanical failure, there would almost certainly not be a test, he said.

Many residents near the rail line said they were unaware of the derailment until they saw the flashing lights of fire engines and police cars.

The flashing lights and constant clamor of the crossing guard bells brought about two dozen residents of the senior citizen apartments at Hoover and Westminster Avenue out to the lawn behind the apartment building. Others stood peering from hallway windows.

William Rosen, a resident of the apartment complex, went to investigate when he noticed traffic had stopped on Westminster Boulevard. He walked up to the corner where he saw the derailed train, police cars, fire engines and flashing lights.

“They had the bells tinkling and the lights on just like it was Christmas,” said Rosen, 78.

But a firefighter warned Rosen and other spectators to leave the corner because there were explosives on the train. “They told us to scram,” he said.

Times staff writers Sonni Efron, Rose Ellen O’Connor, Marla Cone and Kevin Johnson and correspondent Shannon Sands contributed to this report.