Rail Accident Area’s Second in 4 Months : Trains: Southern Pacific officials say they plan to install a metal block to help prevent further derailments.

Like many other residents of a tree-lined neighborhood near La Palma Avenue and Brookhurst Street, Mae Wiger took the latest crisis in stride.

For the second time in four months, a row of tanker cars, some carrying residue of toxic chemicals, slid down a short stretch of track late Monday before derailing in a flat, dirt area just north of La Palma Avenue.

“I don’t know why they don’t repair that section,” Wiger said, motioning toward the railroad track.

In July, a similar incident with two tanker cars triggered an evacuation of the quiet neighborhood as experts assessed the hazards.

“Why can’t they do something about that?” asked a receptionist at Fun Time Distributors, a large warehouse near La Palma Avenue and the Santa Ana Freeway that backs up to the main line of the track.

On Tuesday, Southern Pacific Railroad officials announced that to help end the annoying and frightening problem, they will install a rail skid, a metal block that can be attached to the steel track.

The skid, the equivalent of a block of wood under the wheel of an automobile, “will make operations out there more cumbersome, but it will prevent this from happening in the future,” said Mike Furtney, a Southern Pacific railroad spokesman at their San Francisco headquarters. Railroad officials determined the July incident was the result of “human error,” Furtney said, when some crews were moving the tanker cars. Monday night’s incident happened after vandals loosed or played with the hand brakes on some of the five tanker cars, Furtney said.

Hazardous materials crews from Newport Beach and Huntington Beach determined one of the tanker cars on Monday night was carrying glycol, a component of anti-freeze, and four others had residue of styrene monomer, which is used in production of coatings and insulators, railroad officials said.

The derailment happened along a branch line of track, just south of the main line, which moves freight trains owned and maintained by Southern Pacific Railroad.

Police closed the La Palma Avenue overpass Monday night as officials determined what chemicals were involved. By Tuesday morning the overpass was opened and railroad crews had righted the three overturned cars with a crane and were inspecting the track for damage.

The railroad cars will be put back into use because they were not damaged, railroad officials said.

It was not clear when the cars derailed, officials said. A conductor aboard a switcher engine reported the incident when he passed through the area late Monday. Railroad officials said they did not know how long the line of cars was stationed along the branch line or where they were headed.

Standing on her lawn near the branch line, neighborhood resident Toni Johnson said she worries about the possibility of a chemical spill with all the tanker cars that move along the tracks.

But, she added with a laugh, she can imagine living under more hazardous conditions.

“I would rather live by the railroad line than under the LAX flight pattern. You know what it’s like to look up at one of those things and be able to see the passengers wave at you?”