By Tony Scott
OmniTRAX railway company executives apologized to City of Yorkville officials and residents at a meeting held last Thursday in the wake of a recent freight train derailment.
A freight train carrying sand from Ottawa along the Ottawa branch of the Illinois Railway line owned by OmniTrax jumped the track on the evening of Jan. 23 near the River’s Edge Subdivision in Yorkville at Poplar Drive west of Route 47.
Several of the train cars remain at the site, and sand was to be removed from the cars before they are ultimately destroyed, OmniTRAX officials said.
The Illinois Railway line extends east from Yorkville, through downtown Oswego and into Montgomery where it connects with the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railway’s main line near Ill. Route 31.
Darcy Brede, the firm’s chief operating officer, and Tom Resch, regional vice president, were among the OmniTRAX officials at a meeting of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee last week.
Aldermen and Mayor Gary Golinski told the officials they were disappointed in how the derailment was handled, and about the lack of communication from OmniTRAX to city officials, including police.
Carlo Colosimo, chairman of the Public Safety Committee, said that, for example, he heard of the derailment from posts on Facebook.
“The biggest concern I had about the whole thing was just the pure lack of notice to the city,” he said. “I think we found out, or I did, through Facebook, just from local residents who started posting pictures. The police didn’t even know about it.”
He added, “I understand there are certain regulations as far as when you are required to notify the city. But if there’s a train derailment in our city, I think, as a courtesy, to be neighborly, at the minimum you need to contact our city, let our (police) department know so they can head out there and maybe do some traffic control by the crossing and avoid some of the problems our residents were complaining about. I think that’s why the residents were upset: they started calling City Hall and… we had no idea what was going on.”
Resch acknowledged that there were communication issues with workers at the site.
“We did some very poor assuming,” he said.
Resch said that when he arrived at the site, “Never, ever did I think about contacting the police department.”
He said that, since the derailment, he and his staff have “gone over our emergency contacts and information, what we would do if it happens again – and we hope that it never does.”
Alderman Chris Funkhouser asked about the company’s standard policy for such an incident.
Brede said that if “there is no imminent threat, no calls are made.”
“When (Resch) made the call to cut the train and clear the crossing, imminent threat was eliminated,” he said.
But Brede said the company should have called city officials when they started “the wrecking,” removing parts of the train from the crossing.
“I think when the wrecking started to occur, that’s when we started blocking the crossing, and people were having an issue getting in and out,” he said. “Obviously with (rail) cars sitting in a residential area, people are now going to start asking questions. So it would have behooved us to have made the 911 call anyway, just to let everybody know. Even though we cleared the (Poplar Drive) crossing, we should have made the call to the police, just to make everything clear.”
Track inspection,
train speed questioned
Alderman Rose Spears asked what the company is required to do in terms of inspection of the tracks.
Brede said the company is required by federal law to check the tracks via visual inspection once a week, and they do it at least twice a week. He said they are also required to do an x-ray inspection of the tracks once a year, and they perform such a check twice a year.
Mark Sinadinos, a resident near the tracks, said he’s seen inspectors drive along the tracks several times a week.
Resch suggested that the railroad is safer than driving on some state highways.
“Believe me, if you’re going from here to Ottawa, it’s easier going on the rail than on (Route) 71; it’s probably a lot safer,” he said.
Colosimo asked what kind of material is usually hauled by the freight trains on the line, and Resch said it’s sand, not hazardous materials.
Spears asked if the company would consider inspecting the tracks even more frequently.
Brede said the company wants to get a snapshot of the track at the beginning and end of a week.
“If you go every day, you’re not going to see anything different from one day to the next,” Brede said.
However, Alderman Larry Kot said he was “losing confidence” in the railway firm.
“Two derailments in the past year and a half,” Kot said. “I’ve gotta be honest with you, I’m losing confidence that this is a safe endeavor, that these tracks are safe.”
He continued, “What really concerns me is, you get into the downtown part of Yorkville, and there are some residences and businesses that are very, very close to your tracks. And – knock on wood – we’ve been lucky so far that no one’s been hurt. I want to be convinced there’s not going to be another one anytime in the foreseeable future. I don’t know if more inspections are the answer, or slowing the speed limit down or what it is.”
Brede said that the line has a maximum speed limit of 25 miles per hour.
“We’re already going about as slow as you can go; this isn’t high-speed rail,” he said.
Golinski said he hears from residents that the trains seem to be going faster recently.
Bonnie Reding, a Poplar Drive resident, said she thinks the speed of the trains varies.
“There are some that go nice and slow through there, and there are some that go a lot faster through there,” she said.
However, Brede said there are black boxes on board the trains and assured Golinski and the residents that they are “not going over 25, I can guarantee that, or they’re out of service.”
When Colosimo asked if they could slow down to less than 25 miles per hour, Brede said that if the trains go too slow they “don’t track right” and the weight isn’t evenly distributed on the tracks.
“You’re gonna get more pressure on the lower rail, which means you could end up causing a derailment,” he said.
Alderman: a ‘pretty big black eye’ for company
Kot said that one of the complaints from residents was the crews dumping sand and gravel along Poplar Drive.
“The biggest problem on Poplar was when the cleanup crew dumped the gravel on the road,” he said. “We couldn’t get a school bus through, and I believe the next day we had a car get stuck trying to get through the gravel. That’s just complete negligence as far as I’m concerned. I could even understand more if it’s a train car blocking the road, but if you come along after the fact and dump gravel in a public roadway, convince me that won’t happen again.”
Brede said the cleanup crews aren’t used to working in a residential area. He said the community relations aspect of the job was their firm’s responsibility, not the cleanup contractor’s.
“I think we can all agree that we didn’t manage that very well, at all,” Brede said. “From our standpoint, we have to be on site to make sure that anything that happens like that doesn’t happen again. Because when these guys are moving (train) cars around, they’re heavy equipment operators, they’re just trying to get the line clear; that’s all they’re trying to do. From our standpoint, as a railroad, we have an ongoing relationship with every community we work with and go through. And that’s up to us to manage that, not the contractor. We’ve already had that conversation internally.”
Funkhouser said the incident marred the relationship the firm had with Yorkville.
“I think this was a pretty big black eye for you guys in terms of community relations with this issue,” he said. “I think that’s why you’re seeing a lot of people here, and we don’t want to see something like this happen again. Plain and simple.”
Brede said the firm cares about its relationship with Yorkville.
“The reason why you have three guys here (from OmniTRAX) is because we care about it,” he said. “Every community we go through, we care about. We handled this one poorly.”
Golinski said that, in the end, communication is key.
“I can’t stress enough the importance of communication,” he said. “The sooner our guys know, we’re here to help. The more we work together, the better we can inform our residents and ensure their safety.”
Couple weeks for cleanup of train derailment site
Brede said that the firm has not yet finished the investigation of the derailment.
“I don’t know if it’s track, train handling or the car,” he said. “And believe me, cars do create issues.”
Brede said trucks were to start removing the sand from the train cars starting last weekend, and that the contractors would be cutting up the cars on site.
“It’s gonna take a couple weeks before we get it all cleaned up,” he said.
Resch said there are still eight train cars at the site. He said the firm will fix the site where the derailment occurred.
“We’ll level everything off and the site will look 10 times better than it looks now,” he said. “We’ll come back this spring and we’ll landscape. We’ll do you right.”
“Two derailments in the past year and a half. I’ve gotta be honest with you, I’m losing confidence that this is a safe endeavor, that these tracks are safe.”
Larry Kot
Alderman
City of Yorkville