Dec. 17, 2006 Photo - Star Tribune.No injuries or deaths, this time. Strib has the full article, which is extensively excerpted because of archive policies for "old Strib news":
About 30 containers from derailed rail cars spilled out near homes in Coon Rapids. A broken piece of track may be to blame; no one was hurt.
By Randy Furst, Star Tribune, 612-673-7382 • rfurst@startribune.com
Last update: December 17, 2006 – 10:07 PM
The booming sound of railroad cars plunging into each other at high speed rocked a Coon Rapids neighborhood Sunday morning.
"It sounded just like thunder," said Jerry Johnson, who lives next to the tracks. "The whole house shook."
He rushed outside to see six flat cars buckling, giant containers standing on end and spilling off the tracks with railroad ties flying in the air. "It was unbelievable," said Johnson.
The railroad line between Hanson and Egret Boulevards NW. was strewn with about 30 40-foot containers, each the size of a semitrailer. Hanson Boulevard, an artery through Coon Rapids, was shut down at the railroad intersection for about eight hours.
The derailment stopped rail traffic on the main line between Seattle and Chicago, the busiest line of the Burlington-Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF).
Containers tumbled to both sides of the track, missing houses and power lines but landing near back yards. Some containers came within about a dozen feet of an apartment house garage.
The train carried no hazardous material and no one was hurt. "We were lucky on this one," a police dispatcher said.
"The investigation is focusing on a possible broken angle bar ... something that holds rail together on a track," said Steve Forsberg, a BNSF spokesman in Kansas City, Mo.
Track like 'spaghetti'
Sean Novack was sitting on a sofa with his wife, Cheryl, watching the movie "Wizard of Oz" when the derailment occurred. In the movie, Dorothy's house had just landed following the tornado when his house started to rattle. He jumped up and ran to the kitchen window to see the derailment.
"The track was being torn up and strewn across like spaghetti," he said. He rushed to another window and saw the back of the train still moving forward, pushing cars off the track. "It was quite spectacular."
John Piper, Coon Rapids fire marshal, walked through the brush alongside the track Sunday, taking photos of the wreck. "I've been with the city of Coon Rapids for 25 years and we've never had a derailment like this," he said.
A busy train route
Forsberg said that about 45 trains travel the route daily between Seattle and Chicago. While some trains were being diverted, most were delayed because there's a limit to how many trains can be detoured.
Crews brought in large cranes Sunday to clear away derailed cars and containers, with the top priority being to open one of the two tracks.
Forsberg said the BNSF hoped to clear the tracks by midnight, then begin repairing and replacing the damaged rails to get at least one track open by 8 a.m. today and the second between 3 and 5 p.m.
Although there were no hazardous materials aboard, some trains that run on the track carry hazardous materials, said Coon Rapids Fire Chief Tim Farmer.
Farmer said two workers were on the train, an engineer and a conductor, when the specially designed flat cars, known as intermodal cars with containers stacked two high, derailed at 9:38 a.m.
If it turns out damaged track was the cause of the wreck, Novack said, he would favor having all track in Coon Rapids inspected. "Sooner or later, the North Star line will be on this track, and we have to make sure this doesn't happen again if we have passengers riding on it on a daily basis," he said.
We haven't had one like this before the one official said. That means this is worse SO FAR, yet, it is probable that worse incidents will happen, as rail and ties age and train traffic inevitably increases. You wonder why anyone would put dense housing next to a ticking timebomb.
Just think of a series of liquified natural gas or liquified ammonia tanker-cars derailing around a built out densely populated Town Center. Or insecticide or herbicide spillage, from "approximately 30 cars."
Or a single car from Federal Cartridge, full of shotgun shells: It could level the Taj Majal and ramp to the ground and then tax dollars would have to buy yet another new grandiose building for bureaucrats and police.
It could spew more lead around a densely populated Town Center than ever needed or needs to be cleaned up at the Gun Club to remediate pollution there before putting in urban density housing - housing that is at a lower density than at Town Center.
That kind of possibility motivated, I believe, some past councilmember thinking about warehouse and other less dense commercial occupancy along the tracks -- that safety concern being even more eminent than wanting manufacturing and warehouse proximity to rail, or worry over noise tolerance/intolerance of residents next to speeding trains.
And is the school far enough away from harm's way?
Was there a safety flaw in the Town Center planning from the start - putting publicly owned and maintained buildings too close to the tracks? A hazard is always present, but not a problem until after the derailment crisis. Then everyone will second guess things.
Yet this is NOT a line of questions in hindsight.
I asked all of these questions in email and at citizens input at council meeting sessions before any of Town Center was ever built, at AUAR stages, and well before City Hall was moved from the convenient central roomy campus site at Alpine and Hwy 5. That move put taxpayer dollars on the ground and in harm's way, less safe than at the prior more sensible location.