Freight Train Jumps Tracks

A Union Pacific freight train hurtled off the tracks Saturday morning on the edge of Whittier, pitching more than 30 cargo containers into the backyards of homes and damaging four houses amid a string of mangled rail cars.

No one was seriously injured when 11 cars and four locomotives derailed about 9:40 a.m. One boy received minor cuts from flying glass. Two dozen families were evacuated as investigators combed the wreckage for clues to the cause of the derailment. Power was knocked out, and the adjacent 605 Freeway was briefly shut down as a precaution.

Union Pacific spokeswoman Kathryn Blackwell said Saturday afternoon that a broken rail may have caused the crash. The accident sent metal wheels, glass and debris flying toward squat ranch houses in a neighborhood hemmed in by railroad tracks, the freeway and the San Gabriel River.

Blackwell did not give details about what might have been wrong with the track, but she said there was “no reason to believe that foul play” was involved in the accident. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.

Residents of the blue-collar neighborhood said they felt their homes shake as if an earthquake had struck and heard the roar of an engine, which sounded to some like a low-flying plane. One locomotive toppled onto its side, and train cars slammed into each other in a pileup collision.

Elijah Terrazas, 13, was in his backyard with his dog when he saw “this big freight train coming at me.” He grabbed the dog and ran.

“There were rocks flying at me. There was a lot of screaming, dogs were crying, bricks were smashing windows, and there was dust everywhere,” the boy said. “Everybody had to cover their mouths with their shirts.”

Another resident, Rafael Velasco, 35, had been outside chatting with a neighbor when a screech cut through the morning air, followed by a loud crash. “We thought maybe a trailer had fallen off the freeway,” he said.

Acrid smoke tinged with the smell of diesel fuel stung their eyes as the men raced toward a row of houses alongside the tracks. One called for help on a cellphone. Others, some still in their pajamas, streamed out of their houses to see what was going on.

Velasco said he and a few others jumped a fence and headed to the most seriously damaged home on Croton Avenue. There they found that 19-year-old Adriana Ocegueda, who had been sleeping inside with her baby boy, had already escaped with her parents and child. Debris had pounded the house with such force that the living room ceiling collapsed.

“It’s pretty bad,” Ocegueda said. “There’s a train in my backyard.”

Velasco and other witnesses said they saw a woman who appeared to be a crew member escape from the wreckage, looking distraught. Union Pacific officials said the train’s conductor was a woman but did not identify her or the male engineer.

Charles Saavedra, 26, said that train cars smashed through a 12-foot-high wall in his backyard, catapulting bricks through a glass door and into his kitchen.

“I heard my mom shout, ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’ So I got up and I saw a plume of dust,” Saavedra said. “My mom was hysterical. She thought our neighbor had been killed.”

The train -- 38 cars pulled by four locomotives -- had left the East Los Angeles yard and was traveling 57 mph en route to Marion, Ark., near Memphis, Blackwell said. The speed limit in the rail corridor is 60 mph. The train was loaded with containers of consumer merchandise, including disposable lighters. One car carried a small amount of nitrogen, which prompted the evacuation, she said.

Freight trains were diverted to other lines. Metrolink commuter trains, which use the same line, do not run on weekends. Officials will survey the damage today and decide Monday’s schedule. Crews were working through the night using cranes to remove the wreckage, and the tracks could be back in service late today, Blackwell said.

Both crew members were tested for alcohol and drugs, as required by federal regulations after a crash. “We want to extend an apology to members of this community for this accident and for the imposition on their lives,” Blackwell said. “We are going to do what we can for them.”

The scene was reminiscent of another Union Pacific derailment, last year in Commerce, a blue-collar community bisected by busy rail lines and industrial thoroughfares. In that accident, a runaway train hit speeds of 80 mph as it barreled toward downtown Los Angeles before railroad officials derailed it without warning. The train jumped the tracks and slammed into nearby homes, injuring 12 people. Investigations concluded that rail workers failed to set brakes, causing the train to break loose.

In September 2003, the state Public Utilities Commission called on Union Pacific to clean up its safety record after a series of accidents and near-misses. At the time, Blackwell said the railroad had stepped up its efforts, adding: “Ours has been a full-court press of safety education and follow-up.”

At Saturday’s crash scene, the freight cars were so crumpled that it took investigators hours to determine how many cars were involved. One car looked as if it had been peeled open by a can opener. Wheels, axles and railroad ties were flung in all directions. About 500 gallons of diesel fuel leaked out of the damaged engines, said sheriff’s spokesman Luis Castro.

The impact of the crash expelled so many cardboard boxes -- some of them labeled Dell or Canon -- that a police officer was posted to guard the cargo from potential looters. A UPS official showed up to survey the company’s damaged parcels.

Asked about similarities to the Commerce crash, a Union Pacific spokesman said that living beside a rail corridor is inherently hazardous.

“Obviously, you have to question the zoning laws that allow residential development next to heavy industrial uses such as railroads,” said spokesman John Bromley. “With the housing situation in Southern California, we can understand how it happens. But there is a risk.”

Most of the homes along Croton Avenue, which lies in unincorporated county territory, were built in the 1950s.

After the crash, officials set up a Red Cross evacuation center at a nearby high school. Union Pacific arranged for displaced families to spend the night at two nearby hotels. A spokeswoman for county Supervisor Gloria Molina, who dispatched two aides to the wreck, said that the incident “seems to be managed a lot better than the Commerce matter.”

The spokeswoman, Roxane Marquez, voiced concern that “they were both Union Pacific trains. That’s an angle we’re going to explore.”

As displaced residents, carrying suitcases and bags of groceries, made their way to hotels, some fretted over their neighborhood’s future.

“Who’s going to want to live here now?” Saavedra said. “There goes my inheritance.”

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Times staff writers Hector Becerra, Sue Fox and Jean Guccione contributed to this report.