Highway Shut as Rail Spill Cleanup Starts

One of Southern California’s main arteries to the north remained closed Monday as emergency workers wearing protective suits and masks struggled to clean up a hazardous chemical spilled in a train derailment Sunday in northern Ventura County.

As wrecked cars and train parts lay strewn across the Southern Pacific tracks, Amtrak was forced to cancel local passenger service between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara and to use buses for its popular Coast Starlight service, which travels that route.

The highway, U.S. 101, which crosses above the derailment site, was scheduled to remain closed at least until Wednesday, officials said, forcing motorists to continue using a 35-mile-long detour over twisting mountain roads. About 300 evacuated residents were expected to be able to return to this Ventura County hamlet today.

The derailment, which occurred just after noon Sunday, ruptured a shipping container carrying 76 drums of aqueous hydrazine, a suspected carcinogen that can irritate lungs and eyes. Eight drums broke open, spilling their contents, officials said.

Officials with the Federal Railroad Administration said the derailment occurred when an overheated bearing caused an axle to snap off a car. When that car derailed, so did 11 others on the 42-car train bound from Los Angeles to Oakland.

FRA spokeswoman Claire Austin in Washington called overheated bearings “a freak thing, one of those acts of God” that a railroad cannot prevent.

Southern Pacific does not appear to have violated any federal rules in connection with the derailment, Austin said.

The train was inspected before leaving Los Angeles and no problems were detected, Southern Pacific officials said.

“This is a mechanical cause and there are no regulations covering these sorts of things,” Austin said. “It can happen in a matter of hours and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s like something we call ‘summer kinks,’ when a track heats up and melts and causes an accident. It’s just an act of God.”

Despite the FRA’s conclusion, the top railroad safety official in California said it was too early to fix a cause for the derailment.

“It could be a bearing, but then again it could be a faulty axle,” said William Well, chief of railroad safety for the California Public Utilities Commission, the agency with authority over railroads on the state level. “It’s premature to call this an act of God. I haven’t heard anything from my staff that answers the question (of cause). They haven’t even had a chance to get in there and take a look.”

The FRA is the agency with lead regulatory responsibility for the nation’s railroads. Only the FRA can impose penalties on Southern Pacific if violations of federal railroad rules are found. The National Transportation Safety Board also sent an investigator to the scene, but the board is not likely to conduct a full-fledged inquiry because there were no fatalities. The board is an advisory body that can recommended new laws or regulations but has no authority to impose penalties.

Mike Mohan, president of the Southern Pacific Transportation Co., said the railroad accepts “full financial responsibility” for the wreck.

“It’s a great public inconvenience for which we are deeply sorry,” said Mohan, who arrived at the scene by helicopter Monday morning.

No damage estimate has been set.

As transportation and safety agencies continued their investigations, emergency workers began spraying the spilled chemical with a solution of calcium hypochlorite, which they said would neutralize the hazardous effects of the hydrazine. Then they planned to scoop up the contaminated soil for disposal.

Cranes were standing by, ready to begin righting the derailed cars and clearing the tracks. But officials said the work may be slowed while they check for possible ruptures in a natural gas pipeline that runs parallel to the tracks.

This was Southern Pacific’s second derailment involving a chemical spill in two weeks. But unlike the July 14 wreck near Dunsmuir that resulted in a pesticide spill that wiped out all aquatic life along a 45-mile stretch of the Sacramento River, the Ventura County derailment appeared to have caused no major environmental damage, officials said.

Even so, Patricia Eckert, president of the state Public Utilities Commission, said she will ask the panel this morning to authorize an investigation of Southern Pacific’s safety procedures.

But the FRA’s Austin said the railroad does not appear to be at fault.

“Everything met our requirements,” Austin said. The container was labeled “corrosive” and “combustible,” as required by federal law, she said.

Well, the PUC’s chief of railroad safety, said the train’s two crew members--an engineer and a conductor--have been tested for drugs but the results are not available. Investigators said the train was moving at 56 m.p.h. in a 60-m.p.h. zone.

The overheating apparently developed quickly. Jack Jenkins, a Southern Pacific inspector, said a trackside heat detector 36 miles south of the derailment scene did not register problems when the train passed. Later, the crew of another train parked on a parallel track in Ventura, 10 miles from the accident scene, watched the freight train pass and saw nothing unusual.

No serious injuries were reported as a result of the derailment, but a news photographer was treated Monday after he became ill while photographing the ruptured chemical drums. Terry Miller, 38, of the Carpinteria Herald was overcome by fumes, officials said. He was hosed down at the scene and taken by ambulance to Ventura County Medical Center, but was not admitted.

While emergency workers struggled to clean up the scene, motorists detoured along the alpine twists and turns of California 150 and 33, the only routes around the accident scene.

Scores of northbound Amtrak passengers criticized the railroad for stranding them in Oxnard on Sunday night.

Doug Major said he and his family had to sleep on cots at a Red Cross temporary shelter set up at the Ventura County Fairgrounds.

Major, bound for Santa Barbara, said he, his wife and two sons boarded a train in Fullerton at 7:10 p.m. Sunday without being told that the rail lines to Santa Barbara were closed. In Union Station in Los Angeles, where Major expected to change trains, he said his family was ushered onto a bus destined for Oxnard without being told that they would be left there for the night.

“They said there had been an accident, but no one told us the bus wasn’t going through to Santa Barbara,” said Major, a Paso Robles resident. “This ‘you’re-on-your-own attitude’ on Amtrak’s part is not the type of thing that will get them repeat customers.”

Clifford Black, an Amtrak spokesman in Washington, agreed that the derailment had “severely disrupted our service between L. A. and Oakland,” but he said he had no information on specific complaints.

Seacliff residents Jim and Cathy Foley spent the night in the Red Cross shelter after finding out on their drive home Sunday from a picnic in Thousand Oaks that their community was in the evacuation zone.

Cathy Foley said all motel rooms were booked up in the Ventura area, where they encountered the highway closure at 5 p.m. “The Red Cross did a really great job and were real accommodating to everyone.”

Randall Carbonel, a Red Cross volunteer, said 92 people spent the night on cots in two fairgrounds buildings.

Times staff writer Mack Reed in Ventura County also contributed to this story.