Train derails in Northern California near site of chemical spill disaster 30 years ago

Eighteen rail cars ran off the tracks Friday afternoon near the site of a railroad chemical spill 30 years ago that killed off miles of a pristine Northern California river in what became one of the worst ecological disasters in state history.

This time, none of the north-bound train cars that derailed in Siskiyou County spilled any chemicals, said Susan Stevens, a spokeswoman for the Union Pacific railroad. No one was hurt, Stevens said, and the cause of the derailment remains under investigation.

Over the weekend, the Siskiyou County Office of Emergency Services reported that of the 18 cars that went off the rails, 11 were on their sides, including two tanker cars that were “empty with the only residual product.”

“There are no punctures to the tank cars, and nothing has entered the river,” the agency said Sunday in a Facebook post.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response confirmed Saturday that nothing spilled into the Sacramento River.

The derailment comes a month after the 30-year anniversary of one of the most gruesome chemical spills in state history.

On July 14, 1991, a Southern Pacific train jumped a hairpin curve spanning the upper Sacramento River at Cantara Loop north of the small Siskiyou County city of Dunsmuir.

A tanker that tumbled into the river leaked 19,500 gallons of herbicide that turned the water neon green and killed all aquatic life more than 40 miles downstream to Lake Shasta.

An estimated 1.1 million fish died from the chemical, a pesticide called metam sodium. Witnesses reported seeing trout leaping from the river onto its banks to escape the deadly green plume.

Residents and railway workers who responded to the accident reported suffering from respiratory and other health problems from inhaling the fumes. A flurry of personal injury lawsuits followed with many plaintiffs eventually receiving checks of up to $100,000, according to an article on the 20-year anniversary of the spill by Record Searchlight newspaper in Redding.

“The notion that you can chemically sterilize a river down to Shasta Lake, it really dealt a body blow to the little city of Dunsmuir,” said Peter Arth, a city councilman who served as the top attorney for the California Public Utilities Commission as the state fought the railroad company.

After spill, cleanup effort on Upper Sacramento River

In 1994, the state of California agreed to a $38 million settlement with Southern Pacific and the owners of the tanker car and the chemical company. Union Pacific bought Southern Pacific two years later.

The rail company spent more than $10 million to improve the tracks in the upper Sacramento River canyon and it took other safety steps to prevent future derailments such as reducing speeds, loading trains differently and building heavy guardrails along key turns to keep train cars out of the river.

Siskiyou County’s Facebook post shows the cars went off the tracks in a location near Cantara Loop that didn’t have the guardrails.

Remarkably, it took only a few years for aquatic life to return to the river, and the Upper Sacramento is again considered a prime trout-fishing stream.

Siskiyou County Supervisor Ed Valenzuela said so many new residents have moved to Dunsmuir that few now remember how terrible the spill was and its impact on the community. The river runs through town and is a key driver of the region’s tourism-based economy.

Between the wildfires and the pandemic threatening Siskiyou County, Valenzuela said he was glad to hear the derailment wasn’t worse.

“With everything that’s going on, it’s like, oh my God, that’s the last thing we need is a spill,” he said.

This story was originally published August 28, 2021 at 12:20 PM.