Haz-Mat Information Hard to Locate When Three Freight Trains Pile Up
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Photo by the author.
Santa Barbara County, Calif., fire agencies combined forces early on the morning of last May 22 after they responded to an unusual railroad derailment involving three different freight trains and nearly 200 rail cars. The accident occurred at a small Southern Pacific Railroad Company switching station at Surf, Calif.
The Surf depot is a small island of property surrounded on three sides by Vandenburg Air Force Base and by the Pacific Ocean on the fourth (west) side. The nearest population center to the depot is 15 miles to the east in the City of Lompoc.
Conflicting reports
At 4:18 a.m., Santa Barbara County’s emergency communications center dispatched Engine 51 and Battalion Chief 413 (McGready) and requested a full assignment from the Vandenburg Fire Department to conflicting reports of a train collision at the Surf depot. The initial reports to the communications center were very unclear as to injured, fire, chemicals and number of trains or cars involved.
Fire fighters first arriving on the scene at 4:23 a.m. were confronted with a massive panorama of twisted and piled wreckage of railroad cars directly in front of the wooden depot. The immediate concern was to locate anyone who was injured in the accident and to locate, if possible, train personnel who could indicate how severe the potential problem was. The obvious problems were chemical and fuel cars that were either ruptured or overturned among a confused wreckage of 55 other derailed cars.
The search for the train’s manifest, once completed, was of little value due to the mixing of debris in an unrecognizable pattern.
At 4:51, the first good picture of the scope of the emergency was transmitted from the scene. A northbound freight train traveling at 55 mph had derailed and collided with two other trains. Fourteen persons were injured, and chemicals were leaking from at least two different tank cars with unknown amounts of toxic materials involved.
Contents unknown
Until members of the Southern Pacific Transportation Company hazardous materials control unit responded to the accident, fire personnel and railroad company employees could only make guesses about the contents of the different cars involved. Railroad personnel assured fire fighters that all of the cars involved were not loaded and that only residual amounts of hazardous materials remained within any of the tank cars. (Residual contents in an unfilled tank car are usually 250 to 300 gallons of substance.)
One of the two tank cars that was leaking was reported to contain ammonia gas. Its actual content was chlorine gas leaking from a bent valve at the dome of the tank car. The car was resting on its top, directly on the dome.
The second tank car was initially reported to be carrying anhydrous hydrochloric acid; however, it was later confirmed that the contents were actually a more dangerous hydrofluoric acid. An undetermined amount of acid was able to escape through a large 4footX6-inch hole in the 30,000-gallon tank car which was ripped after hitting the locomotive of one of the idle trains involved in the collision. Fire fighters and Southern Pacific experts used over 2000 pounds of dolomite lime, delivered by the Lompoc City Fire Department, to neutralize the acid before the tank car could be moved, nearly 12 hours after the collision occurred.
A smaller 1500-gallon cylinder being transported piggy-back was marked bromine gas. It was a source of great concern that this container was not able to be verified by Southern Pacific as to actual substance or content level. The cylinder had been ejected from a flatcar and was not listed on any manifest as being on the train.
Brake beam broke
The derailment was found to have been caused by a broken brake beam on a box car of a 131-car northbound freight train. The brake beam was dragging between the track rails until it struck a switch track. On either side of the main north-south track were trains sitting idle.
Combined operations of the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, Lompoc City Fire Department, and the fire department at the Vandenburg Air Force Base—using four engines, two rescues, one tanker, and one air utility vehicle along with hazardous material experts and railroad company personnel—successfully evacuated eight injured people and contained the hazard with no additional injury or increase in the dangerous situation beyond what was found on arrival.
All fire agencies in Santa Barbara County have been focusing on hazardous materials in the past several years (see Fire Engineering, October 1980) in the face of the United States space shuttle program activity in the county. All suppression captains on duty in the division where the accident occurred were transported to the scene late in the afternoon so they could experience first hand a hazardous materials incident of this magnitude.
Lessons learned
Some important lessons were learned by fire fighters as a result of the incident:
- Southern Pacific trains which carry any cars full of hazardous materials are known as “K” code trains in the railroad computer system. Trains which carry no loaded hazardous material cars, only unloaded ones, are not noted as “K” trains nor distinguished from any other ordinary content train in the system. (Remember that an “empty” tank car may contain up to 300 gallons of substance.)
- Although a serviceable rail network computer was located at the Surf depot, the system is designed with no priority messages possible. Because of this, no urgent information could be requested or received by fire fighters or Southern Pacific personnel regarding train contents.
- As found in other train derailments in the county, obtaining accurate and meaningful manifest data during an emergency probably will be very difficult. For example, materials carried piggy-back on a train will not be listed on the train’s manifest.
- The cause of this derailment was found to be a frequent malfunction with trains. It can be expected that derailments with similar causes will most frequently occur at switching tracks.
