Errors in Derailment Described

Union Pacific dispatchers decided to switch 31 runaway freight cars off a main track in Commerce, causing them to derail onto homes, because a tanker filled with liquid propane was in their path, railway officials said Wednesday.

But the dispatchers might never have faced such a stark choice last Friday had rail yard crews performed their jobs properly and rail traffic controllers communicated better, according to the preliminary findings of a federal investigation.

The yard crew failed to apply the hand brakes to the lumber-filled cars at a depot in Montclair, causing them to roll out of control 28 miles toward downtown Los Angeles, according to an account of the accident by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Crew members called a dispatcher, but she could not provide supervisors an accurate picture of what was going on because she had taken her headphones off just as an engineer told her how many freight cars had slipped out of the yard, investigators said.

As a result, Union Pacific didn’t know how many cars were speeding down the tracks until after they had derailed, flattening two homes and damaging several others, said Bob Campbell, lead investigator for the NTSB.

Union Pacific has no policy for alerting communities to runaway trains, Campbell said. As a result, city officials along the route knew nothing about the situation until after the derailment.

Campbell said the incident began when two sets of workers -- from the rail yard and from the train -- failed to set hand brakes that would have kept the line of 31 cars from moving.

“Both crews violated procedures right there,” Campbell said. “That’s where this started. The cars began moving downhill.”

The time was 11:33 a.m. Friday.

Seeing the cars begin to move, an engineer in the yard called an emergency line at Union Pacific’s control center in San Bernardino.

As the dispatcher was being told what happened, Campbell said, she turned to tell her supervisor, taking her headset off just as the engineer was telling her that 31 cars were heading out of the yard.

At 11:34 a.m., the cars had escaped the Montclair yard. Ten minutes later, Pomona police called Union Pacific’s management communication’s center in St. Louis, alerting them that a runaway train had just passed through their town.

At 11:45 a.m., Union Pacific dispatchers in San Bernardino notified rail workers along the route to stay clear of the tracks.

By 11:49 a.m., dispatchers had looked at what was ahead of the runaway cars and determined that there were other trains in their path. Dispatchers began trying to figure out how to get workers off those trains. A minute later, the chief dispatcher had determined that the runaway cars should be diverted onto track 4, the siding at Commerce where the derailment occurred.

At 11:54 a.m., a computer-aided detection device determined that the runaway cars were traveling at 86 mph.

The device also gave information on the number of cars that were rolling free.

At 11:56 a.m., an unidentified Union Pacific employee informed the chief dispatcher that there were homes along the siding in Commerce.

The siding has a speed limit of 15 mph, Campbell said. Despite that, the chief dispatcher decided to divert the cars, telling an employee, “We have no other place to go,” according to the NTSB.

The assistant dispatcher responded: “We have to make a decision right now.”

“It’s OK,” replied the chief dispatcher. “Divert the trains to track 4.”

Two minutes later, at 11:58 a.m., 11 of the 31 cars derailed, sending tons of lumber and debris crashing down in a thundering heap on a neighborhood that sits alongside the tracks. Several homes were destroyed and about a dozen people were hurt, none seriously.

Campbell said his investigation shows that Union Pacific had no contingency plan to deal with runaways, although it does have plans to contact state officials at the Office of Emergency Services in such an event. Union Pacific did make contact with those officials, but not until about 10 minutes after the crash.

While Campbell was vague on some details and refused to offer an assessment of the accident other than a recounting of the basic facts, Union Pacific communications director Kathryn Blackwell filled in some other details.

Blackwell placed blame on the workers in the Montclair yard for not setting the hand brakes.

“The thing is, these guys screwed up,” she said. “These are safety procedures and there is no bigger issue for us. They didn’t follow procedures.”

She also specified what was up ahead of the runaway cars.

“We had a train in the yard with hazardous materials,” said Blackwell.

That material was later determined to be liquid propane gas. “There were active Metrolink trains in the area and fueling stations in the yard. There was no good option. We didn’t want this to happen anywhere.”

Metrolink officials said Wednesday that their schedule indicates they did not have any passenger trains in the area at the time of Friday’s accident.

Nancy M. Ramos, a Commerce City Council member, said she felt “like somebody just punched me in the gut” when the NTSB revealed that Union Pacific never notified local officials as the situation unfolded.

“It’s like the train just wrecked again. I am very angry at the fact that Union Pacific made public statements that they had notified local agencies and put our agencies in that light. It seems like passing the buck.”

Union Pacific officials said that a check for $35,000 was delivered to Commerce officials by the railroad Wednesday to cover city expenses related to the accident.