PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – An oil train has derailed near the Columbia River Gorge town of Mosier.
Aaron Hunt with Union Pacific Railroad says 11 of the cars derailed. Oil spilled from at least one car and caught fire. It is still burning.
The 96-car train was carrying Bakken crude oil to Tacoma.
A train that size weighs 13,000 tons and is 6,200 feet long, according to sources.No one was injured.
Silas Bleakley was working at his restaurant in Mosier when the train derailed.
“You could feel it through the ground. It was more of a feeling than a noise,” he said as smoke continued to billow from the tankers.
Bleakley said he went outside, saw the smoke and got in his truck and drove about 2,000 feet to a bridge that crosses the railroad tracks. There, he said he saw tanker cars “accordioned” across the tracks.
Another witness, Brian Shurton, was driving in Mosier and watching the train as it passed by the town when he heard a tremendous noise.
“All of a sudden, I heard ‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’ like dominoes,” he said to KOIN.
He, too, drove to the bridge overpass to look down and saw the cars flipped over before a fire started in one of the cars and he called 911, he said.
“The train wasn’t going very fast. It would have been worse if it had been faster,” said Shurton, who runs a windsurfing business in nearby Hood River.What others are clicking on: