Freight Car Slams Into Apartments : Derailment: A dozen flatcars jump the tracks in Mt. Washington. Tenants of a crowded building and train crew escape injuries.

A Los Angeles-bound freight train derailed Monday as it rounded a curving stretch of track in Mt. Washington, sending one flatbed car careening through a parking lot and into an apartment house crowded with tenants. All escaped without injuries.

A dozen flatcars toppled off the tracks, flattening a eucalyptus tree, snapping a telephone pole and severing communications to more than 200 nearby residents. A Los Angeles County Fire Department hazardous materials squad checked for leaks from two upended truck trailers filled with flammable gelatin used in portable stoves. No spills were found, fire officials said.

The runaway flatcar battered a half-dozen automobiles on its path, ramming into the apartment building at 10:10 a.m., shaking and cracking its walls with a sudden jolt that sent parents and children scurrying outside.

Francisco Covarrubias, a tenant in the building in the 4600 block of Figueroa Street, rushed out, convinced “it was a plane coming down.” Irma Quintanar, sweeping her stairs on the other side of the building, imagined that “we were having an earthquake.” When she saw the tumbling cars, she screamed: “The train! It’s falling on my house!”

At least eight families--27 adults and seven children--were displaced, fire officials said. No one will be allowed to return until the safety of the building can be assured, said Fire Capt. Richard Andradde.

Many of the working-class tenants who live in dwellings hugging the tracks claimed that the 53-car Santa Fe Railway freight train--nearly a mile long and pulled by four engines--took the curve at an excessive rate of speed.

“The train was going faster than usual,” Covarrubias said. “Usually it makes a mild noise (as it goes by). Today it was loud, right before the crazy noises started happening.”

Santa Fe officials disputed those accounts, saying the train was proceeding at its 25 m.p.h. speed limit. “The engineers told me it was not excessive,” said Mike Plumlee, assistant operating superintendent for the railway.

No one in the train’s three-man crew was hurt, Plumlee said.

Santa Fe spokesman Michael Martin said later that “we haven’t found any broken rails, track problems or broken wheels--which leaves possibilities from vandalism to human error.”

The derailment was the fourth in a month on Southern California railways. Two weeks ago, a nine-car train carrying artillery shells jumped the tracks in Westminster. Several days before that incident, four boxcars loaded with new Mazdas upended in Oxnard. On Sept. 9, 14 runaway freight cars sped untended down the track for eight miles before slamming into three stationary locomotives in Pico Rivera.

Vandals were blamed for the two recent derailments, but in the Sept. 9 incident, Southern Pacific officials cited workers for improperly coupling the runaway flatcars.

Andy Anderson, a spokesman for Southern Pacific, said that derailments “run in streaks sometimes.” In Southern California, he added, “You have more people, houses, more cars, more congestion and more railroad tonnage moving down the tracks than ever. So you have to expect some of these accidents.”

According to railway and fire officials, the Federal Railroad Administration and California Public Utilities Commission will investigate the derailment. Neither agency could be reached for comment.

Santa Fe officials said that investigators will be able to analyze “event recorder tapes” retrieved from the engine. The tapes are similar to those found in an airplane’s “black box.”

Fire officials and residents agreed that the derailment could easily have become a disaster. The Santa Fe rail line--running from Los Angeles to Chicago and one of two major arteries owned by the railway in Southern California--is only 50 feet from the apartments, separated by an earthen berm.

Several neighbors said that children often play in the parking lot where the freight car tossed aside automobiles on its way toward the pale-blue stucco apartment house.

“God must be taking care of us,” Covarrubias said. “We’re lucky everyone was inside.”

Salustia Lopez, 28, was in her second-floor apartment with her 3 1/2-year-old son when she felt the apartment begin to shake. The edge of the flatcar smashed into the wall of the apartment below. Lopez, eight months pregnant, grabbed her son and dragged him outside in time to see the outlines of the falling flatcars obscured by a thick plume of dust.

“The ground shook violently, then we felt a bang,” Lopez said. “I screamed: ‘Let’s get outside! The building is going to fall!’ ”

Trembling and complaining of abdominal pains, Lopez was taken to a nearby hospital for observation.

Fire officials said no one was inside the downstairs apartment, where the impact of the derailed car tore through the wall, upended furniture and raised a cloud of plaster. Neighbors said the tenant had recently left the apartment to enter a convalescent home.

Neil Leaverton, an assistant supervisor for the railway, said that 600 feet of track was splintered by the tumbling flatcars. Heavy equipment would be brought in to right the upended cars and repair the damage, he said.

Until the tracks are repaired, Leaverton said, nine daily freight trains and two Amtrak passenger trains will be rerouted through Santa Fe’s other main artery running through Orange County.

Times staff writer Scott Harris contributed to this story.