101 Freeway Reopened at Derailment Site

A 10-mile stretch of the Ventura Freeway reopened Friday afternoon, five days after a freight train derailed near the beachside community of Seacliff and spilled toxic chemicals beneath an overpass.

And, after a meeting late Friday night, authorities decided to allow 300 evacuated residents to return to their homes. Packets of safety and health information were distributed to them.

“It’s about time,” said Seacliff resident Michael Cord moments after being told of the decision. “We just want to get home.”

A small cleanup crew worked into the night, removing the last piles of debris from the road beneath the overpass, but any toxic hazard to freeway motorists from the wreck was believed to be over, said Sandi Wells, a spokeswoman for the Ventura County Fire Department.

In the accident Sunday, eight 55-gallon drums of hydrazine, a suspected carcinogen, were spilled and another 15 were punctured. Workers searched Friday for remaining patches of hydrazine that may have spilled, but said they thought that they had cleaned up all toxic hot spots.

“It’s safe on the freeway,” Wells said. “If anything happens, it won’t be on the freeway, because hydrazine is heavier than air. It would be low to the ground.”

A 5,000-gallon tank of combustible naphthalene was moved Friday to a vacant lot at the county’s Rincon Fire Station about 10 miles north of Ventura to further secure the area.

Fire officials were trying to determine if the tank was sound enough to be transported out of the area, said Battalion Chief Dan Spykerman. If not, the naphthalene would be pumped into another tanker at the site before being removed, Spykerman said.

Although 11 workers unloading a freight car were overcome by hydrazine fumes Thursday night, officials said Friday they believed that there was no more danger to the cleanup crews and that all the hot spots had been removed.

“They don’t think there’s any more vapors, and they don’t expect to find any more pools or collections of hydrazine,” Spykerman said.

The hydrazine was removed from the train wreck site about 8 a.m. Friday and was being taken by rail back to the manufacturer, the Olin Corp. in Lake Charles, La., said Southern Pacific spokesman Mike Furtney.

Meanwhile, county environmental health workers were monitoring the air quality around homes in the Seacliff Colony area to see if it was safe for residents to return.

A stretch of the Old Rincon Highway, which runs between the railroad and the Pacific Ocean, was scheduled to remain closed, probably through the weekend, while the remaining wreckage is cleared and air quality is checked further, Spykerman said.

During the weeklong cleanup effort, Fire Department and Southern Pacific crews had been plagued by numerous delays caused by equipment failures and the painstaking planning process for handling the dangerous chemicals.

Despite complaints about the delays--and concern from Santa Barbara residents that a popular cultural festival, Old Spanish Days, faced the loss of as much as $1 million in tourist revenue--officials said Friday that they were more concerned with public safety than with pushing crews to hurry the cleanup.

“We’ve had pressure since this began, but we have not been under any pressure internally to open this highway,” said California Highway Patrol spokesman Mike Serrano. “Our utmost concern is the safety of the public. We would not jeopardize that.”

The Old Spanish Days festival, which began Wednesday and ends Sunday night, usually draws huge crowds to the Santa Barbara area, a Chamber of Commerce official said.

Because of the freeway closure over the past week, festival attendance has been half of normal, Santa Barbara city officials said. The city is now considering asking Southern Pacific for a “financial settlement,” said Steve Cushman, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce.

But the freeway closure boosted Santa Barbara tourism last weekend, said Margie Ranc, executive director for the Santa Barbara Conference and Visitors Bureau.

“All those people on their way down south who couldn’t get through last weekend had to stay in Santa Barbara,” Ranc said. “Hotels and restaurants were jammed all over town.”

Many Ojai Valley businesses also reported a boom from the increased traffic, which was routed through the Ventura County backcountry during the freeway closure. But others said they have lost business from local patrons who preferred to stay home to avoid the congestion.

Casitas Market Manager Sam Kangi said his sales jumped by 40% this week from northbound traffic stopping at his small store in Casitas Springs.

And hotels along Highway 33, including the 34-room Oakridge Inn in Oak View along the detour route, were full.

“We’ve been booking up every night and that’s unusual during the week,” said the assistant manager, Rob Pelham. “The managers are very happy.”

As the cleanup efforts continued, U.S. Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.) asked the head of the Federal Railroad Administration to undertake a study of Southern Pacific’s safety record.

By Friday, officials had reported a total of 12 injuries to workers during the cleanup, including the 11 overcome by fumes Thursday night and a worker who injured his arm slightly earlier in the week.

Officials did not have a total cost estimate Friday for the cleanup efforts, which involved county firefighters, Sheriff’s Department employees, CHP officers, county environmental workers and Southern Pacific contract workers.

“This has put a tremendous strain on all of us,” said Serrano of the CHP. About half of the 70 members of the county’s CHP force have been working 12- to 15-hour shifts every day since the incident, either at the site or along the detour route around Ojai.

“The sooner we are able to go back to regular schedules, the better,” Serrano said.

Though the freeway reopened about 2 p.m. Friday, the California Department of Transportation said that access to the derailment site will remain limited for now.

The southbound Seacliff off-ramp will be closed. And while the northbound Seacliff exit is open, the only access will be northbound on California 1, officials said.

The Old Rincon Highway will remain closed between Hobson County Park and Seacliff, and any traffic from Ventura must use the state beaches exit of the Ventura Freeway to reach the Rincon highway, Caltrans said.

Southbound traffic can get onto the Old Rincon Highway by taking the West Main Street exit, officials said.

Times staff writers Mack Reed in Ventura and Miles Corwin in Santa Barbara contributed to this story. Correspondent Thia Bell in Ojai also contributed.