Union Pacific Railroad - Accidents

Accidents

On June 28, 2004 in Macdona, Texas a UP train collided with an idle BNSF train resulting in the puncturing of a 90-ton tank car carrying liquified chlorine. As the chlorine vaporized, a toxic “yellow cloud” soon formed which killed 3 (the UP conductor and two residents nearby) and caused 43 hospitalizations. The costs of cleanup and property damaged during the incident exceeded 7 million dollars.

Another derailment in November 1994 killed a bystander in a neighboring business in San Antonio. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson demanded a federal investigation in the Union Pacific crashes around Bexar County. Area civic leaders called for the rerouting of Union Pacific’s hazardous chemicals around the city altogether. In March 2005, Texas Governor Rick Perry supported a plan to reroute trains around large urban population centers in the state of Texas, including San Antonio

Various investigations of the Macdona incident have revealed several serious safety lapses on the part of the Union Pacific and its employees; specifically, Federal Railroad Administration officials in 2004 have reported that the Union Pacific had "notable deficiencies", including its employees not following the company's own safety rules. While initial reports blamed "fatigue" of the crew of the UP train, many other contributing factors have been cited. Among those, the chlorine tank cars were improperly placed near the front of the train. Cars containing hazardous materials have traditionally been placed away from the front of the train, an operational measure used to safeguard against the likelihood of the such cars being among the first affected in a derailment and to reduce their likelihood of colliding with heavier steel cars.

In the aftermath of the Macdona and other incidents, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) signed a compliance agreement with the railroad in November 2004 in which the railroad promised to rectify the "notable deficiencies" that regulators found. Specifically, the agreement mandated increased training for railroad managers and increased the number of FRA inspectors in the region by 10. United States Assemblyman Charlie Gonzalez questioned if the agreement went far enough; he and other Congressional delegation members questioned the FRA's "partnership" approach as being "too cozy a relationship to the railroads" and cited an article in The New York Times that reported that the acting FRA administrator, Betty Monro, and the chief lobbyist for Union Pacific, Mary E. McAuliffe, had vacationed several times together on Nantucket.

The railroad’s San Antonio Service Unit (SASU) has had other derailments, including a Schulenburg, Texas incident in June 2009 where tank cars containing chlorine and petroleum naptha xylene derailed but were not punctured.

On June 24, 2012, three crew members were killed when two Union Pacific trains slammed into each other just east of Goodwell, about 300 miles northwest of Oklahoma City. One of the trains should have been waiting on a side track for the other train to pass. The crash triggered a diesel-fueled fireball that appeared to weld the locomotives together.

On November 15, 2012 the Midland train wreck occurred, with four United States military veterans were killed when their parade float was struck by a train in Midland, Texas.