About 11 a.m. Saturday, the Brewster County Sheriff’s Department was notified by the crew of a Union Pacific train that a tanker car carrying argon gas was leaking.

Apparently, the crew had noticed the leak - highlighted by smoke-like streams coming out of the tanker car - while traveling between Marathon and Alpine. The crew stopped the train on the eastern edge of Alpine, left the train and called the sheriff.

Because the train crews were not allowed to talk to anyone, it is unclear whether the train crew knew what kind of gas was leaking.

The Sheriff’s Department immediately notified the Alpine Volunteer Fire Department, Brewster County emergency coordinator Tom Santry and other agencies.

Local law enforcement agencies - coordinated by the Sheriff’s Department - immediately went door-to-door on the east side of town, advising residents to evacuate until the nature of the leak could be ascertained and addressed.

Residents were evacuated from where the train stopped - just west of the Sul Ross Equine Center - to and through the Sul Ross area on the north side of the railroad tracks, and to the Terlingua highway on the south side of town.

For the next five hours, Alpine responders worked fast and hard, while railroad officials appeared to dither. The most telling quote I heard all weekend was passed along by Santry:

“We were in a conference call with [Union Pacific] officials who wanted to pull the train on through Alpine and park it on the other side of town,” Santry said. “We told them ‘no,’ that we didn’t want a train with a leaking car (later it was discovered two other cars were leaking) going through our town. A [Union Pacific] executive got mad because we were ‘delaying commerce,’ as he put it.”

That attitude incensed Santry, who told the Avalanche, “We care about Alpine, we’re here on site and we know what’s best. They don’t care anything about us.”

Santry said he always finds the railroad company difficult to work with. For instance, he said, Union Pacific’s top man in the region - based in El Paso - said it would take him 5 hours to drive to Alpine to take control of the incident from the railroad’s end of things. Even discounting the fact that a drive from El Paso to Alpine is around 3 hours, a chartered flight could have had him here in an hour.

The crew that brought the train to the edge of town, the ones who called the Sheriff’s Department, disappeared with the train’s manifest for several hours. Santry and others said the the Union Pacific crews were uninformed and not at all helpful.

“From our end, it went fine,” Santry said. “When they first reported it, we thought it was just one valve open. As it turned out, however, two tanks had valves open and a third had a hole in compartment that houses the controls. At first, they insisted that we allow them to pull the train on through town. We quite clearly told them ‘no.’ They won’t give us credit for knowing our town. They didn’t know that the train was within 20 and 30 feet of homes and businesses. It was an inconvenience to everyone, but I’d rather have that than a catastrophe.”

Santry was irritated at what appeared to be a lack of concern for local citizens. “At the same time they are telling us that we are holding up the main lines, their man in El Paso says he can’t get here for 5 hours. I can drive it in 3 1/2 hours,” he said. “The railroad is difficult to deal with. They’re afraid of being sued.”

Bottom line, “the valves were left open,” Santry said. “They stopped here in Alpine and wanted us to take care of it.”

Fortunately, argon gas is non-toxic. If we had to have something leaking out of a tanker car, argon is probably among the safest. However, the gas does not satisfy the body’s need for oxygen and is a simple asphyxiant; in confined spaces, is known to result in death due to asphyxiation. A recent multiple fatality in Florida has been attributed to the dangers of argon.

“I talked to the train’s engineer crew and asked them if they could fix [the problem],” Santry said. “They said no. I asked, ‘Then what are you going to do?’ and they said, ‘We take the car out and leave it and then they come and fix it.”

Santry said at least two other cars in the train contained volatile toxic gases, although it took quite some time to find that out. Union Pacific did not release a train manifest to local emergency officials until mid-afternoon Saturday, several hours after the leak was discovered.

When asked how he thought the company could have allowed a valve to be left open, Santry said, “Negligence. [When we were on an early conference call] they had a man from the company that loaded the train on the phone. They were giving him heck, but that didn’t help us out here. The train was coming from San Antonio but we don’t know where the chemicals were loaded.”

The last local Union Pacific incident occurred about six months ago, on Feb. 27, when a train derailed on the city’s western edge.

“At that time, the guy took 4 1/2 hours to come from El Paso on an emergency call. At the same time, the EPA flew someone in from Omaha much quicker. Their mindset just escapes me.”

Then Santry talked about an incident three years ago.

“Just east of here, 180 gallons of butyl acetate (a colorless flammable liquid used as a solvent in the production of lacquers, enamels, inks, adhesives, thinners and industrial cleaners) was released.

“They wouldn’t tell us anything. We sat out there waiting for their crew to come in and cover this stuff up because if you don’t, the smell will never leave. So they brought in this stuff to bury it with. And that’s still out there, buried.

“If the same thing had happened in town, we would have evacuated the entire city.”

Trains and chemical spills are “our biggest concern daily,” Santry said. “We have fires, we have weather, but day and night, we worry most about the trains. We have up to 30 trains coming through town.”

In fact, “this train we had Saturday, one of the cars was carrying the same chemical that produced the spill three years ago. And another car was carrying ether.”

Santry said Marfa newspaper publisher Robert Halpern told him Tuesday morning that he had been told someone had tried to stop the train in or near Marathon on Saturday. Someone, Halpern was told, had seen steam coming out of one of the tanker cars.

The one bright spot about Saturday’s incident, Santry emphasized, was the response of local emergency officials, particularly the Alpine Volunteer Fire Department under Chief Mike Scudder.

Drawing particular praise were the four Alpine firefighters who put on the hazmat (hazardous materials) suits and went down to the leaking tankers to find out what needed to be done.

Those four firefighters are:

Craig Spencer, a sheriff’s deputy; Oscar Rodriguez, an employee of Armadillo Drilling; Jason Zapalac, a Sonic manager; Clint Holsomback, a Sul Ross student.

While they were at the site of the leaks, they found out:

After checking with Union Pacific, they were allowed to close the valves. Later that day, a new crew from Union Pacific showed up and pulled the train out into the rangeland east of town where issues could be more safely addressed. The train left Monday.

Conclusion: At least three cars on that train had not been inspected or not been inspected properly.

The Avalanche left messages with Union Pacific rep, asking:

1. What will you do to ensure that Alpine and other Big Bend cities have no more incidents?

2. What is the company doing to ensure that there will never be another derailment in the Alpine?

3. Why did the company first insist that the train be pulled through Alpine before fixing the problems?

At deadline, we had gotten no response.

Another train incident

On Saturday, Alpine residents came face-to-face with two important facts of life:

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Rangra case expunged

An appeals court has expunged the judgments against Alpine City Councilman Avinash Rangra.

La Entrada meetings postponed

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Shale issue could be divisive

Once again, outside interests are waving money in front of Big Bend citizens. And, once again it appears, folks out here will be divided on the issue.

Mois seeks to clear up confusion

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