Cobb: Fullerton Road Train Wreck

March 08, 2005

Fullerton Road Train Wreck

I was there when it happened.

The ordinary way I take to my customer in the City of Industry is at the railroad crossing of Fullerton Road just south of the 60 Freeway. But I took a different route because I didn't want to take the chance of waiting for the train and I wanted to be in early.

This morning at 9:45, I pulled into the parking lot at Fullerton Road and San Jose Avenue and a cop car and mortorcycle zoomed by heading south on Fullerton. I took a mental note and went in. It turned out that I wasn't scheduled to work, and so I sold some Girl Scout Cookies and headed home. Just as I exited the building at 10:20 I notice that it was heavily overcast and a helo was hovering just above. Something was up.

I moved over to my car and started taking pictures. I could see that they were redirecting southbound traffic on Fullerton left and right to San Jose. So as I left the parking lot, I headed East towards Nogales and started recording notes on my Treo. I turned south on Nogales and saw that the railroad crossing was clear so I flipped around right down Railroad Ave to head west towards Fullerton. Already some security person was waving traffic off Railroad back north into the industrial park. So I ended up back on San Jose heading back to where I came from.

As I crossed Fullerton road, the crossing there was clear as well, but it was taped off and there were several fire engines and police cars at the site. The radio news said derailment and it became clear that it was between Azusa and Fullerton. I took my first left onto Lawson to head back south towards the tracks and broke out the video recorder.

It was at the corner of Railroad and Lawson that I could clearly see, down to the East, a big pile of boxcars. They were at least three high. In the few seconds I had, I could see one guy with a video camera on the corner. The Sheriff's deputy was on the loudspeaker telling folks to clear the area - evidently there was somebody East of Lawson heading to gawk. But I never saw any Hazmat personnel nor could I see a fire or smell anything in the air. I headed away and got back into regular traffic.

You can download my 1MB video file here. There's one brief look down the track at the wreck.

UPDATE: NBC reports.

Here's a satellite view from my handy-dandy Keyhole subscription. Click on it to get a bigger picture.

Posted by mbowen at March 8, 2005 11:43 AM

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Comments

I hate to sound like a kid from the sticks but is that a blimp hovering over the wreck? It's a blurry image maybe half way through the clip . . .

Posted by: Brian at March 8, 2005 06:48 PM

Actually, that's bird crap on my windshield.

Posted by: cobb at March 8, 2005 08:51 PM

And so it is. Duh.

Posted by: brian at March 9, 2005 11:32 AM

This is the kind of NEWS reporting that Jeff Jarvis and Glenn are often talking about -- you should have sent them an email heads up on this.

Especially if you want more promotion.

In fact, if the Conservative Brotherhood would DO more news reporting of what they actually see, they would all get more noticed in the blogosphere.

And it's really cool. A quick note/ link to keyhole would have been a nice touch...

IMO.

Posted by: Anonymous at March 15, 2005 02:18 AM