A Union Pacific train carrying coal derailed Sunday night, sending at least five cars into Denton Creek.
Roanoke police said 26 cars of the UP train went off the tracks in the 3000 block of North U.S. 377 at about 6 p.m.
No injuries were reported.
A Union Pacific spokesman said the train was traveling from Wyoming to Central Texas at the time of the incident. The Roanoke Fire Department said the cars carried coal and not any hazardous materials.
Part of the bridge collapsed but Union Pacific does not know if the bridge caused the derailment or if the derailment caused the collapse.
Police confirm to NBC DFW that there are no injuries after a Union Pacific train derailed on Sunday evening. At least five rail cars fell into Denton Creek. (Published Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016)
Union Pacific spokesman Jeff DeGraff said half of the 26 derailed cars were cleared by Monday morning.
DeGraff said about 1,600 feet of rail will be replaced and that repairs to the bridge will take multiple days.
DeGraff said U.S. Highway 377 will be closed into Monday evening as heavy equipment moves in and out of the site. Roanoke police said they expect U.S. 377 to be open at about 8 p.m.
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Train derailment cause still unknown
Courtesy photo/Sandy Pettigrew, Roanoke Police Department/Courtesy photo
A Union Pacific train hauling coal from Wyoming to Central Texas derailed Sunday, sending three cars into Denton Creek just off U.S. Highway 377 near Roanoke in southern Denton County.
By Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe
Staff Writer
pheinkel-wolfe@dentonrc.com
Published: 22 August 2016 10:55 PM
Railroad officials still aren’t sure what caused a Union Pacific freight train to derail off a bridge over Denton Creek on Sunday, sending tons of Wyoming coal bound for Central Texas power plants onto creek banks and into the water.
Whether a bridge failure triggered the derailment or the derailment caused the bridge to fail, the bridge spans came down Monday. Demolition and clean-up work that began Sunday night continued all day Monday. Officials expect the work to last at least a week, according to Union Pacific spokesman Jeff DeGraff.
Crews removed 22 of the 26 cars that derailed as of mid-afternoon Monday, including the three that fell directly into Denton Creek, DeGraff said.
U.S. Highway 377, closed from FM1171 to Bobcat Boulevard, may not re-open fully until Wednesday. However, crews will open U.S. 377 today from 6 to 9 a.m. and from 3 to 6 p.m. for morning and evening commuters, DeGraff said.
“We are not expecting to need to close the highway beyond [today], but again, time lines can be fluid,” DeGraff wrote in an email, citing the availability of construction materials and weather disruptions.
State highway officials closed the highway to accommodate the crews and heavy equipment. The rail line and two-lane highway run side by side for about 2 miles along a causeway and bridges, where the Denton, Henrietta and Harriet creeks converge with the Graham and Catherine branches into the headwaters of Grapevine Lake.
Dallas, Fort Worth, Grapevine and other cities south and east of the lake get their drinking water from Grapevine Lake.
State environmental officials confirmed receiving reports of the derailment and spill from Union Pacific and the Roanoke Police Department by about 7 p.m. Sunday.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality noted three rail cars fell directly into the water. Coal and railroad ties also fell into the water, but no other materials of concern, according to agency spokesman Brian McGovern.
Neither state nor railroad officials specified how much coal fell directly into the water, only that it was “minimal.” Most of the coal fell on land north of the bridge, McGovern said.
In addition, no fish kills have been reported in the area, he said.
The railroad hired United Professional Services and GHD Services, third-party environmental firms, to monitor and assist with clean-up efforts. TCEQ is checking in with them, McGovern said, to make sure the soil and water cleanups are handled properly.
The land is owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who also were notified of the spill and subsequent clean-up efforts, according to agency spokesman Clay Church.
According to DeGraff, repairs were well underway Monday with new bridge materials already arriving to the site. Crews will need to build temporary gravel pads alongside the track to facilitate the repairs.
Once repairs are completed (which will take a week or more), crews will be able to collect the coal that was spilled and resume rail traffic along the line.
The traffic pattern change actually helped the first day of classes at Byron Nelson High School, according to Detective Sandy Pettigrew, spokeswoman for the Roanoke Police Department.
“We were prepared for the worst,” Pettigrew said. “But for Roanoke, it was almost better that we didn’t have the thoroughfare. It lightened the traffic considerably.”
The change affected the traffic flows in Flower Mound on the north side of the incident — along FM1171, FM407 and Interstate 35W. However, no major crashes were reported there, according to town spokeswoman Molly Fox.