6/28/2003: LA derailment

This derailment happened on the 20th and until yesterday's MSNBC Week in Pics I didn't see a good image of it. This is remarkable -- the "stuff" on the ground there, looking all like a handful of straw, is actually <i>lumber</i>. Only a few people were hurt and no deaths.

Not much else to say except that someone said they had earlier been trying to put in a process to avoid derailments leading into populated areas.

OMG. Syc's been censored.

They knocked down a few houses but the brought lots of lumber. Thro a Habitat for Humanity crew in there and they'll end up with a net plus.

I just clean up my messes.

Simply amazing. Notice that some of it landed <I>on top of a two-story building</I>!!

When a brake line breaks or when pressure is lost, then brakes on all cars are suppose to apply. The more interesting question will be why those rail car brakes did not automatically engage on all railcars. Picture are important because they demonstate how fast those railcars must have been going. But those speeds are suppose to be not possible without a locomotive to put pressure into those brake lines.

Looks like the fire dept is there, in the top left..... If they were smart, they'd be hosing that damn thing down ASAP... the only way to make that train wreck worse I think would be to make it into a fiery explosive train wreck.

That accident was in the news while I was out there. I wasn't paying much attention but it occured as Bruce describes it. The interesting thing was that they had a chance to catch it but couldn't get permission before it had accelerated too much. The radio news interviewed an old trainman who had successfully caught a runaway back in the day.

I can't even begin to imagine the clean up.

I can. Lots of poor Mexicans picking up wood for the next two weeks.

I can remember two truck crashes in the last couple years. One loaded with hams and the other potato chips. Within an hour there was nothing to clean up but the trucks. Isn't it nice the public is willing to lend a hand in emergencies. Oh, and the day after the ham crash, there were cheap hams for sale at work.

Do Not Hump