Railroad vs. Motorist Collisions - An Escalating Disaster in Southern California - 2015

 

Railroad vs. Motorist Collisions - An Escalating Disaster in Southern California

Early in the morning of February 24, 2015, Jose Sanchez-Ramirez, 54, mistakenly turned his Ford F-450 work truck and utility trailer onto the Union Pacific Coast Line railroad tracks near the intersection of Rice Ave. and Fifth St. in Oxnard, California. Soon after Sanchez-Ramirez abandoned his rig, Metrolink passenger train No. 102 struck his disabled work truck at a place eighty feet west of Rice Ave. A week later, Senior Metrolink Engineer Glenn Steele succumbed to injuries suffered in the collision. During the derailment of the five-car Metrolink train, twenty-nine other people onboard suffered moderate to severe injuries.

After firefighters extinguished the resulting fire, a work crew soon removed the coaches and made emergency repairs to the damaged railroad infrastructure. Almost two weeks later, when I surveyed the scene, all looked well at the Rice Ave. grade crossing. To the casual observer, there were few signs that a major rail collision had so recently occurred. Looking closer, I soon found many deficiencies in the hasty cleanup and repairs that had so recently concluded.

Along the northern border of the crash scene, the tail end of cab-control car No. 645 had whipped into a cinder block and wrought iron wall. After the cleanup, a gaping hole measuring almost one hundred feet remained where that substantial fence once stood. Immediately east of Rice Ave., a misalignment of the north-side rail was obvious to the naked eye. East of the grade crossing, where steel railroad wheels had bent the north-side rail and sliced into the roadbed, workers had reused damaged railroad ties during repairs. Despite the addition of many reinforcing clamps to that damaged rail, train traffic in the interim had loosened many of the railroad spikes intended to stabilize the roadbed. Two weeks after the accident and the completion of emergency repairs, the whole scene appeared to be less safe than it was prior to the wreck of Train No. 102.

In the Southern California press, many articles have discussed the overall safety of the Metrolink system and the Rice Ave. grade crossing in particular. Transportation studies have concluded that a $30-35 million grade separation is the only way to make the crossing safe. That would require a complex roadway overpass spanning both Fifth St. and the Union Pacific Coast Line. Like a freeway, the overpass would require ramps to transition from Fifth St. to the elevated portion of Rice Ave.

To date, voters in nineteen of fifty-eight California counties have approved additional, transportation-focused sales taxes. In 2004, the electorate in Ventura County defeated a levy of one-half percent. Despite the highway and rail carnage of the past decade, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors has steadfastly refused to allow or promote a new popular vote on a sales tax dedicated to transportation projects. Safety concerns at the Oxnard Plains rail crossings alone should be enough to engender a county ballot measure. I find myself asking, “When we need leadership, where are our leaders?”

As a result, there is insufficient funding to complete the design of a Rice Ave. grade separation, let alone building the $30-35 million project itself. Neither state nor federal transportation agencies tend to support projects unless the affected county defrays at least some of the cost. Unless voters approve an additional county sales tax levy, it may be a decade or more before construction can alleviate the menace of the Rice Ave. grade crossing to both rail passengers and vehicular traffic.

Rice Avenue is not the only dangerous rail grade crossing in Ventura County. Less than two weeks after engineer Glenn Steele lost his life on the Coast Line in Ventura County, there was a non-fatal collision of an Amtrak train and a passenger vehicle. This collision was on a rainy night at the nearby Pleasant Valley Road and Fifth St. grade crossing. Confused, the driver of a green sedan somehow came to a stop upon the diagonally crossing train track. Prior to the collision, which destroyed the sedan, the driver and a passenger were able to exit the vehicle without injury. Imagine getting stuck on the tracks in the rain and darkness. After a hurried departure from your vehicle, you and your passenger watch as an Amtrak locomotive crushes your vehicle into a mass of twisted metal. That could be scary.

On April 23, 2015, exactly two months after the collision of Train No. 102 at the Rice Ave. crossing, yet another fatal train/auto collision occurred on the Oxnard Plain. That morning, an unnamed 35-year-old male driver attempted to cross the tracks at South Las Posas Rd. and Fifth St. Remarkably similar in configuration to the Rice Ave. and Fifth St. grade crossing, the SUV driver’s southbound journey ended abruptly on the Coast Line tracks. There, an eastbound Union Pacific freight train struck the side of the SUV, rolling it multiple times along the tracks and into a dirt ditch. After using special equipment to remove the driver from the crumpled vehicle, first-responders declared him dead at the scene.

Remarkably, this latest deadly incident barely made news in Los Angeles. Both the Ventura County Star and the Los Angeles Times published online accounts that day. The following day, the Star headlined the story on its front page. Television coverage by Los Angeles TV stations was limited to news crawlers at the bottom of the screen. Was this latest deadly accident a suicide? Alternatively, was it one more distracted driver speeding south along the road that morning? In either event, the dismal state of rail-crossing safety in Ventura County requires an immediate and comprehensive review.

Phillips 66, which operates an oil refinery at Nipomo, in San Luis Obispo County, California has plans to build a railroad spur from the Union Pacific Coast Line to their facility. If San Luis Obispo County approves the Phillips 66 plan, “rolling bomb” trains of eighty-cars each will begin their journey by traversing the Los Angeles basin five times each week.

After exiting a train tunnel under Santa Susana Pass, each northbound oil train will encounter multiple grade crossings in the suburbs and fields of Ventura County. In Simi Valley alone, there are ten grade crossings. In Moorpark and neighboring Somis, there are twelve more. Between Camarillo and Oxnard, there are an additional thirteen grade crossings. Each train will carry 52,000 barrels of flammable, highly toxic Bakken crude oil in single-wall tank cars of dubious integrity and crash-worthiness.  
 
Explosions of Bakken crude oil trains have recently become an ongoing hazard to anyone nearby. Even with a new federal mandate to upgrade tank cars to double-walled, insulated designs, it will be 2020 before all 43,000 obsolete tank cars are retired from service. If nothing else, the February 24, 2015 Metrolink collision in Oxnard proved that if even one obsolete or deficient car is included in a train, it can compromise the integrity of the entire train. As seen in numerous crashes and explosions of oil trains in the past few years, derailment and decoupling of the older tank cars can wreak havoc on nearby towns.

There are thirty-five grade crossings between Simi Valley and Oxnard. If the oil trains run, there will be more than one hundred seventy-five opportunities for an oil train collision in Ventura County each week. Not counting the return trips made by empty oil trains, the Phillips 66 plan will present a minimum of 9,100 opportunities for an oil train collision in Ventura County each year. Annually, 13,520,000 barrels of oil will move past the makeshift memorial still standing at the Rice Ave. and Fifth St. in Oxnard. That is as much oil as the U.S. consumed on a daily basis within the past twenty years.

Whether any future train collision is the result of driver inattention, excessive speed, domestic terrorism or "suicide by train" is immaterial. Despite slower speeds now required of oil trains in populated areas, eventually a “rolling bomb” oil train will collide with a motor vehicle in Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara or San Luis Obispo Counties. If that happens, the ensuing fire and explosions could raise the casualty count exponentially.

After successfully negotiating the now decrepit and dysfunctional grade crossing at Fifth St. and Rice Ave., each proposed oil train will roll north, through the cities of Ventura and Santa Barbara. Only with incredibly good luck will all of those trains reach the Phillips 66 refinery in Nipomo. If only one more Ford F-450 high-centers on the tracks at Rice Ave., a $30-35 million grade separation there will look like a bargain. With both the county supervisors and electorate in Ventura County contemplating their own potential death in a flaming train wreck, I wish good luck to all in the path of this impending rail disaster.

This is Part 2 of a two-part article. To read Part 1, Click Here.

To read all of our Ventura County railroad safety articles in one place, please visit 5thandRice.com.

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By James McGillis at 09:52 PM | | Comments (0) | Link

The Union Pacific Railroad's Potash Local Train - 2011

 

The Union Pacific Railroad's

Potash Local Train

   

In mid-October 2011, I drove U.S. Highway 191 North, from Moab towards Crescent Junction. About half a mile south of Utah Highway 313 (to Canyonlands National Park and Dead Horse Point State Park), I saw the unmistakable glare of locomotive headlights, heading south toward Moab and Potash, Utah. With two powerful headlights lights stacked above and two more spread out below, their brightness on the landscape was second only to the light of the sun.

Across from the Bar-M Chuckwagon site, U.S. 191 intersected a gravel road leading west. As soon as I turned on to that road, I found an uncontrolled railroad grade crossing only a few yards away. Parking my truck, I grabbed my camera and ran toward the tracks. When I looked again at the approaching engine, it appeared stopped in a road cut, north of Highway 313. Had time stood still, was the train stopped on the tracks or was it moving too slowly for me to see?

Soon, I could see that the locomotive was accelerating toward me on level ground. From that distance, I knew that my old Sony digital camera would not show much detail. Impatiently, I waited for the train to approach. As it closed on my position, I started taking snapshots of the action. While composing my shots on the LCD screen, I did not realize how quickly the train approached.

  Watch the video, "The Union Pacific Potash Local"

When I walked across the tracks to get a different perspective, I heard a deafening blast from the Union Pacific locomotive's air horn. The engineer seemed to be saying, “Watch out. Here I come”. With a five-second delay for image processing, I had to wait for each shot to clear before I could again depress the shutter. As the lead engine passed my position, I swung the camera up to capture the power and size of the Potash Local. From earthquakes to hurricanes and tornadoes, eye witnesses will invariable say, “It sounded like a freight train coming towards me”. After standing my ground just yards from the passing engines, I understood exactly what they meant.  

With a clickety-clack on the joints of the hand-laid tracks, the Potash Local soon traveled around a bend and out of sight. In a few more miles, it would pass the “Train of Pain”, parked on a siding overlooking the Moab UMTRA Site. The Train of Pain hauls radio nucleotide-contaminated soil thirty miles from the Moab Pile to a disposal site near Brendel, Utah.

After passing through the Moab Rim within the mile-long Bootlegger Tunnel, the Potash Local enters a road cut that bisects many layers of solid rock. After emerging from those two engineering marvels, the tracks then parallel Utah Highway 279 (The Potash Road). Downstream, along the scenic Colorado River, the destination of the Potash Local is only a few more miles ahead. The end of the line and terminus of the Cane Creek Subdivision (Potash Branch line) is the Intrepid Potash Cane Creek Plant.

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By James McGillis at 11:24 PM | | Comments (0) | Link

Envisioning A New Moab Mountain Landform - 2009

 

Envisioning A New Moab Mountain Landform

In May 2009, we departed Los Angeles, California, and then traveled Interstate Highways I-15 and I-70 to our destination in Moab, Utah.  After two days and 700 miles (1125 k) of mountain and desert driving, we neared our goal.

 

As the late afternoon sunlight slanted across a desolate stretch of desert, we spotted a forest of billboards and an oasis of trees to the north of I-70.  With its unexpected splash of greenery, the City of Green River, Utah lay hidden amidst that foliage. The former railroad and mining town became famous in the 1930’s with an anti-peddler law that some say was a thinly disguised anti-vagrancy law.  Henceforth, many Western town blatantly the "get out of town before sundown" law henceforth known as The Green River Ordinance.  Well into the 1960s, official roadsigns at the entrance of many Utah towns boasted, "Green River Ordinance Enforced Here".  It was like saying that the town had "no parking", even if one did not have an automobile. Today, Green River is home to nearly one thousand people, almost twenty percent of whom call themselves Hispanic or Latino.  With "prior rights" determining senioity in western water rights, Green River's acequis (water ditches) dated back to the 1830s, when it was a shallow-water crossing along the Old Spanish Trail.  Today, Green River appears to be the most well watered town in the deserts of the West.

 

Twenty-one miles east of Green River, we reached Crescent Junction, which was our turn-off to Moab, via US Highway 191 South.  Although designated by census takers as “a populated place”, we found no population figures for this dusty crossroads.  The place supported little more than a combination gas station and convenience store.  Over the years, we have passed through Crescent Junction many times.  Although the main building has stood throughout, sometimes we find a business operating there and sometimes we do not.  On this visit, the “Stop & Go” appeared to be open for business.  Its sagging banners and many hand-painted signs gave out a halfhearted plea for recognition and recompense.  Its painted plywood cut-out characters evoke an ersatz tourist attraction.

 

As with many other highway routes in the West, a narrow strip of flat terrain determined the location of Crescent Junction.  During the 1830s, Spanish Americans pioneered the Old Spanish Trail through here.  In the 1850’s, Captain John W. Gunnison surveyed a rail line through here and to the west.  In 1883, Gunnison’s dream became a reality when the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railway laid tracks through here.  During the twentieth century, US Highways 6 & 191 intersected and shared routes through Crescent Junction, followed in the 1960s by Interstate Highway I-70.  Natural gas pipelines and fiber optic communications cables now share that route, as well.  Despite the crowding of transportation and utilities through the junction, it retains the look of a sparcely populated place.

 

In contemporary American culture, we consider any place in the West with two hundred or more years of European-stock settlement to be old, if not ancient.  With its raw, dry landscape, current day travelers may have difficulty believing that this area was once inhabited by what we can legitimately call "the Ancients".  As proof of Ancient habitation, abundant Indian rockart at the nearby Book Cliffs dates from between 2000 BCE and the 1800s CE.  That span of continuous culture was almost twenty times longer than the continuum of White men in the West.

 

Before commencing the forty-mile drive south to Moab, we paused to reflect on the stark beauty of the surrounding desert.  As the setting sun illuminated the Book Cliffs to the north, we wondered what artifacts of our contemporary culture might endure at Crescent Junction several thousand years hence.  Extending our consciousness to a group of future desert trekkers, we heard them conjecture that we, who would be their “Ancients” were the creators of a then extant sandstone-clad pyramid, jutting skyward from behind the Stop & Go at Crescent Junction. 

 

Recently, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) project managers and engineers began relocating 135 acres of uranium tailings from Moab, Utah to Crescent Junction.  If they and the public have a sense of history and a sense of humor, desert travelers of the future may well see that pyramid in the desert. 

 

After decades of delay, five trainloads of nuclear-contaminated soil now move each week across the desert.  The train travels back and forth, from the fragile depository by the Colorado River at Moab to a fully-lined hardpan disposal site at Crescent Junction. 

 

If lack of imagination and traditional landfill techniques prevail, the new uranium pile will look much like the old one, which is so nondescript that it barely shows in photographs taken a mile or two away.  With its flat top and natural red-dirt camoflage, the pile is out of sight and too often out of mind.  If anyone has a mountain that they would like to hide, they should come to Moab and see if they can even locate the uranium pile.  However, if the DOE staff uses its collective imagination, they could construct a Crescent Junction Pyramid to rival the Great Pyramid of Giza, in Egypt.  With a raw material stockpile covering one hundred thirty-five acres, buried up to 200 ft (61 m) deep, they should have an easy time.  If they construct a new pyramid at least 455 ft (135 m) high, Moab, Utah, or perhaps Crescent Junction could claim bragging rights over the tallest organic, nuclear-powered pyramid in the world.

 

Why create a pyramid in the desert?  The single word, “tourism” should be enough to get residents of Grand County, Utah interested.  Imagine that place, twenty or thirty years in the future, let alone two thousand years hence.  If the DOE can mitigate radiation danger at the new site, “See the New Seventh Wonder of the World”, could become a long-term motto for the site. 

 

In order to transport materials from the existing uranium pile, the Union Pacific Railroad recently rebuilt the roadbed and upgraded the rails on the Cane Creek Subdivision between Moab and Crescent Junction.  By limiting future pyramid-access to sanctioned rail visits, Moab could create a railway excursion business, similar in scope to the long running one in Durango, Colorado.  Tourists could leave their automobiles in Moab, visit the pyramid at midday and return to Moab in time for dinner.  Although more tourists would visit Moab, highway miles driven would decline.  Since the new uranium pile is a necessity, it behooves planners to make it every bit as attractive to tourists as the natural wonders so abundant in the surrounding Canyonlands area. 

 

Currently, there are few pyramids of any consequence in the U.S.  The only stone-faced pyramid we are aware of is the Ames Brothers Pyramid, near the town of Buford, which is a bit west of Cheyenne, Wyoming.  Standing at the highest point on the first transcontinental railroad in 1869, the pyramid is of modest height.  Located less than a mile from current Interstate I-80, the pyramid's location on a grassy knoll allows it to stand out against the Wyoming sky.  Forgotten by all except locals, curious passers-bye and those who study railroad history, we note that the brothers’ teamwork in the public and private sectors made the words “Union Pacific Railroad” part of American history.  Imagine the goodwill that the current incarnation of the Union Pacific Railroad would garner if it were to cooperate once again in the building of an All American Pyramid.

 

The City of Moab, Utah’s Grand County, the Union Pacific, the State of Utah and the United States DOE together have the opportunity to transform a nuclear pariah into a beautiful and sacred place.  By studying and using as models, other remote, spiritual sites, DOE planners could borrow the best aspects of each and create a monument to peace and nuclear safety that would endure beyond our time. 

 

Hotel and casino planners created the pyramidal Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.  Why should we not create a real pyramid in Southeastern Utah?  By combining the windswept, solitary feeling of the Ames Brothers Pyramid with the remote magnificence of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, contemporary planners could create a monument of lasting value.  When completed, the Moab/Crescent Junction Pyramid should stand-alone, with nothing more than a railroad siding, an interpretive center and a footpath near its base. 

 

Imagine a post-nuclear age when schoolchildren from all over the world might visit the pyramid.  Docents familiar with the history of “Moab Mountain” could tell the story. 

 

The story would begin with man’s lust for power, in the form of nuclear weapons.  After World War II, nuclear frenzy was so strong that men and machines moved mountains of uranium ore to Moab Utah.  There, they extracted the Earth’s most dangerous and unstable elements.  During the course of its operation, the not-ironically named Atlas Uranium Mill utilized over 420,000 tons of sulfuric acid and unknown amounts of caustic soda to leach radioactive isotopes out of the raw ore.  When the mill shut down in the 1980s, all of the chemicals, buildings and equipment utilized during its thirty-year operating life were buried at the site.  Although extraction wells later dotted the site, a natural stream running beneath the pile continued to conduct unknown quantities of radioactive material, chemicals and heavy metals into the adjacent Colorado River. 

 

Over the following twenty-five years, group consciousness slowly shifted from fear of the “Other” to fear of our own powers of self-destruction.  As consciousness continued to evolve, fear of immanent nuclear disasters became stronger than the ephemeral security possession of the nuclear weapons offered us in the first place.  Beginning in the late 1980s, a coalition of government agencies, private citizens, environmental groups and the press identified and publicized the scope of the nuclear dangers at Moab.

 

In 2005, we learned more about ancient, paleofloods on the Upper Colorado River near Moab, Utah.  A DOE study determined that “the geometry and position of ancient Colorado River gravels buried under the surface of Moab Valley show(ed) that the river has shifted back and forth across the mill and tailings site in the recent geologic past”.

 

Our future docents' parable would include both historical and ancient information.  If a flood the size of at least one that hit the Moab Valley since 2000 BCE were to occur in the near future, much if not all of the uranium pile could wash downstream towards Lake Powell.  As we know, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles all rely on Colorado River water for a significant percentage of their water supplies.  If a megaflood were to hit Moab prior to the removal and relocation of the uranium pile, release of its carcinogens and mutagens could render much of Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California uninhabitable.

 

As the docents said to their future visitors, the megaflood held off until early spring 2015.  By then, DOE engineers had protected the pile with a riprap rock casing, similar in construction to the Castaic Dam in Southern California.  At the time of its construction, Castaic Dam's conservative design was considered to be a "overkill" solution to contain Castaic Reservoir.  After the 1928 collapse of the nearby St. Francis Dam, engineers and the public alike demanded that the Castaic Dam be built to the highest seismic standards.  Tested soon after completion by the nearby 1971 Sylmar Earthquake, Castaic Dam stood undamaged.  Not ironically, the cross-section of Castaic Dam is similar to the profile of the Great Pyramid at Gisa, Egypt.  Both are expected to last for a long time into the future. 

 

In 2018, the Colorado River tested the uranium pile’s temporary encasement, but it held fast against the flood.  By 2035, when the original pile was gone, workers who had started their careers moving the uranium pile used their final working years to remove the old Moab containment dam.  As their final contribution, they reused all of its boulders as cladding for the new Crescent Junction Pyramid.  If that stone encasement could withstand the force of a megaflood along the Colorado River, they felt confident that its reuse at pyramid could shelter that new mountain for millennia to come.

 

As the docents of the future ended their tale of fear and hope, students reflected on how we humans had used and abused Mother Earth.  Old Moab Mountain was a monument to ignorance, greed and fear.  New "Moab Mountain" stood as proof that the wisdom of the Ancients revealed itself to mankind in the early twenty-first century and that we listened.

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By James McGillis at 05:23 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link