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Train derails in Arkansas contaminating creek with beer, damaging new pickups

by | Jun 20, 2024 | Railroads

Crews using heavy equipment tear boxcars apart on May 26, 2024, one day after the Union Pacific freight train derailed near Emmet, Arkansas. All photos by Michael Hibblen

A Union Pacific freight train derailed near the southwest Arkansas town of Emmet on May 25, 2024, with the railroad reporting 51 rail cars were involved. The wreckage blocked the busy double-track main line between Little Rock and Texarkana, which is also used by Amtrak’s Texas Eagle, with two passenger trains scheduled each day between Chicago and San Antonio. No injuries were reported.

Reports obtained from the state said 10 of the rail cars involved were loaded with cases of bottled beer, which broke during the derailment and clean up, flowing to a nearby creek where hundreds of fish and other wildlife were killed. State and federal environmental and wildlife officials were soon at the site assessing the impact and efforts to mitigate the spillage. Dozens of autoracks carrying new Dodge pickup trucks made in Mexico were also involved, with the vehicles being heavily damaged or destroyed. No hazardous materials were involved, reports said.

The derailment occurred behind a Foster Farms feed mill along U.S. 67, with most of the wrecked rail cars in a wooded area that required temporary paths to be cleaned to access the cars. If the derailment had happened a mile or so up the tracks, it would have been in a residential neighborhood. I arrived the following morning as a major response was underway with trucks carrying heavy equipment like bulldozers lining both sides of the highway. Also brought in were pieces of prefabricated railroad tracks loaded on trailers. 

A worker walks in front of a pile of spilled boxes of Modello.

Talking with some of the workers who were employed by contractors or consultants for the railroad, I was told they had been laboring through the night and were exhausted. Crews would continue clearing wreckage until the tracks could be repaired and reopened. Workers used backhoes to break apart boxcars and move them off the tracks. In the process, especially when cars were being moved or lifted upright, I could see boxes of beer falling out and hear the sound of breaking glass. The contents were cases of Modelo and Corona wrapped in plastic on wooden pallets. A strong smell of beer was in the air.

Union Pacific spokeswoman Meg Siffring said in an email that “beer inside some of the boxcars was discharged into a creek and traveled downstream about a mile. Union Pacific’s Hazmat team is working to contain and remove the beer. The incident has been reported to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and the Dept. of Environmental Quality as some fish have perished. The cause of the derailment is under investigation.”

Reports from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality said because of recent rain and the soil being saturated, the beer was not absorbed into the ground, with an estimated 10,000 gallons of beer flowing downhill to a ditch that feeds into the Terre Rouge Creek. An inspector from the Office of Emergency Management followed the creek eight-tenths of a mile from the initial derailment location, finding a log in the creek had provided a natural barrier with water behind it being clear and no dead aquatic life being found.

Vacuum trucks were brought in to suck up the contaminated water, collecting about 6,000 gallons. Additional pumps would be added in the coming days to aerate the waterway, but state biologists said they continued finding more dead fish each day, totaling about 400 by May 29. They also discovered dead mussels, crayfish and turtles. Attorneys for Union Pacific requested the state keep any dead fish for legal reasons.

Word that beer was in many of the boxcars spread through the community, with the Hempstead County Sheriff’s Office posting to social media on May 30 that its deputies and Union Pacific Railroad Police “have been stationed at the site to deter any looting of the cargo. You will face trespassing and theft of property charges if you enter the feed mill lot or take anything from the site of the derailment.” 

The sheriff’s office also said a recent Facebook post claiming there was “free beer” at the site was not true and asked people to stay away as the railroad and contractors “have heavy machinery and workers trying to clear the site and it is not a safe environment for anyone not involved in the cleanup.”

Crews worked in extreme heat for several days to remove the damaged rail cars and clear the tracks.

Workers methodically removed the pickup tracks from the autoracks and stacked them in neat piles.

A staging area was established for removing and stacking the damaged pickup trucks that were inside autoracks. All were new and showed very dramatic damage like entire roofs being ripped off. The monetary loss of the vehicles was likely very high.

I’m not sure exactly when all the damaged rail cars were removed and the track repaired, allowing the resumption of trains. Weeks later, most of the damaged trucks were still alongside the right-of-way, showing what a long process a cleanup like this can take. 

With tracks reopened, a train passes through the site of the derailment on June 16, 2024.

Former North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays dies at 76

by | Oct 5, 2023 | Arkansas History, News, Railroads, Rock Island Railroad

Former North Little Rock Mayor Patrick Henry Hays, a third generation railroad worker who later became an attorney and entered politics, died Wednesday, Oct. 4. He was 76. The cause of death was cancer, his family said.

I interviewed Hays twice over several decades about his work to preserve the Rock Island bridge over the Arkansas River, which at one point was slated to be torn down. Below is audio and a transcript of our final interview, which also delved into his experiences working as a Missouri Pacific fireman and brakeman while in college. He was always a pleasure to speak with.

Former North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays speaks during the dedication ceremony for the renovated Rock Island Bridge, which was renamed the Clinton Presidential Park Bridge. Photo: Clinton Foundation screenshot

In the mid-1990s, Hays, Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey and Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines oversaw the revitalization of the cities’ downtown areas. One component of that, as I reported in 1996, was to keep the century-old Rock Island Railroad Bridge from being removed. The three took part in negotiations with Union Pacific, which acquired the bridge after the 1980 bankruptcy shutdown of the Rock Island. Union Pacific had said in 1989 that it planned to dismantle the bridge which hadn’t been used in about five years and was considered a liability because it was a hazard to river navigation.  

As part of my research on the Rock Island, I interviewed Hays at his law office on Nov. 23, 2017 about why he felt it was important to save the bridge. After reaching an agreement with Union Pacific, the bridge remained largely untouched — seemingly abandoned to unknowing eyes — until $10.5 million in work was finally completed to convert it into a pedestrian and cycling bridge that is at the eastern end of the 14-mile Arkansas River Trail. I covered the dedication ceremony for the renovated bridge on Sept. 30, 2011, in which Hays spoke alongside former President Bill Clinton, whose presidential library is adjacent to the bridge.

In my interview, Hays also talked about his five years working for the Missouri Pacific, which his father and grandfather had also worked for. It was a typical story for young people in railroad families. 

“Back in 1965 when I graduated from high school, I started taking my student trips the next morning — graduated one night and then I was up at 4 or 5 the next morning,” Hays said. “They needed folks to work during the summer because a lot of the folks would take vacations. We would work off of what they called the extra board and that was just simply a rotation of regular jobs that people had that they wanted off.”

North Little Rock has always been a railroad city, with a sprawling rail yard that today belongs to the Union Pacific. The Rock Island’s primary yard for the state had also located in the city until 1918, when Biddle Yard was constructed in south Little Rock. North Little Rock was also served by the Cotton Belt Railroad, with a passenger station that Hays recalled sitting on top of as a kid to watch circus trains pass. We also talked about his appointment to be chairman of Amtrak’s Mayors Advisory Council, as well as rail transportation elsewhere in the world.

It was a rather informal interview as I primarily wanted to document his recollections and ask for any additional details he could offer regarding the Rock Island. I had grown up in North Little Rock and explained to him my vantage point as a child seeing the final trains of the Rock Island passing in front of my elementary school. Hays was very generous with his time and I’m happy to share audio of the interview here. You can also read a transcript with much of the interview, while I have highlights of our conversation below.  

AUDIO: Part 1 of my interview with former North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays on Nov. 23, 2017, discussing working for the Missouri Pacific Railroad.
AUDIO: Part 2 of my interview with Hays on his work to save the Rock Island Bridge and other railroad topics.

Hays served longer than any other North Little Rock mayor, in office from 1989-2012. He previously represented the area in the Arkansas House of Representatives. A funeral service is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 12, 3 p.m. at North Little Rock First Pentecostal Church at 1401 Calvary Road.

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:

Hays discussed the expansion of railroads in central Arkansas and how that led to multiple railroads building rail yards and shops in North Little Rock.

When the rails finally… They came over from Memphis and came down from St. Louis, and they obviously stopped initially in North Little Rock because there wasn’t a rail bridge at the time, or any [Arkansas River] bridges at the time. Because they were ferried across the river, and that obviously was somewhat of a slow process, from what I understand from a historical standpoint, they would take that time and tinker with some of the maintenance issues that they had to do. One thing led to another, and that’s in large measure why North Little Rock became somewhat of a railroad town. When the rails reached here, they paused in going across the river because they had to ferry them.

The Baring Cross Bridge became the first rail bridge built across the Arkansas River, opening in 1873. Just to the east, the original Junction Bridge was constructed in 1884. At the easternmost end of the bridges between Little Rock and North Little Rock, the Choctaw, Oklahoma & Gulf Railroad constructed a 1,200-foot bridge that opened in 1899. In 1902, that railroad was taken over by the Rock Island. Hays told me about his work for the Missouri Pacific, which primarily involved crossing the Junction Bridge.

I used that bridge when we were working on the Valley Division. There was a rail yard — I guess it’s pretty much where the Clinton Library and the Heifer Project are now — and we would go over there when the job picked back up in terms of needing substitute folks. We had what we called the full crew law back in the 1960s, and perhaps before then, where you had to have an engineer, a fireman, a conductor and two brakemen. So you had to have five employees on each freight train. On the yard jobs, you had to have an engineer and a fireman. [The full crew law] was tied to public crossings. If you crossed a public crossing, that’s what kicked the law into effect, in large measure for safety reasons. So I would go over there, and of course there’s a lot of crossings that go up and down on the east side, along the right-of-way going out toward the airport. The Valley Division went through Pine Bluff and then down to McGehee and then on into Alexandria, Louisiana. So the Junction Bridge was the bridge we used primarily.

Hays spoke about what he, Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey and Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines envisioned for the unused Rock Island and Junction bridges.

In the early ‘90s, I was part of a program called the Mayor’s Institute of Urban Design. There’s several of them around the country and the one that I was a part of spent two or three days in Atlanta, then we spent two or three days in Chattanooga. While we were in Chattanooga, they have what they call the Walnut Street Bridge, and they had converted that bridge to a pedestrian bridge — totally pedestrian — and so I saw what they had done with that bridge. And I took a trip to Portland, and I think they converted a rail bridge and/or road bridge to a pedestrian — partly-pedestrian bridge. I’m not sure what the name of it is. So the concept of turning a bridge into a modern public use was not a foreign concept to me in recognizing what other communities had done and how they did it. Obviously, there are all sorts of different ways for them to do it.

We had a pretty unique opportunity here in central Arkansas. Buddy and Jim and I worked on a variety of things that jointly could make central Arkansas a much better place — we felt — to live. And the unique opportunity we had were the six bridges that joined Little Rock and North Little Rock. We thought a lot alike about creating an urban environment, trying to redo a downtown environment, how if the core of the community was unhealthy that the entire community was unhealthy. We started learning about different things, about why you wanted to revive an urban lifestyle.

Transportation — the interstate system started in the ‘50s, and really, to me in many respects, destroyed the urban vitality of areas all over the country. So, you were having challenges in trying to provide a healthy and livable place in the urban core for people to live and work and learn and play and do all the things that really made a community much better. And North Little Rock was particularly challenged in many respects because we were surrounded by other jurisdictions: Little Rock in the south across the river; Maumelle out west; Camp Robinson to the north; Sherwood to the north-northeast; and then, in some respects, a lot of improvements have been made, but the flat Delta land had some flood-prone issues. If there are large mosquitoes as there are on the eastern side of our city, the Delta kind of land was more challenging to grow. So we were pretty well surrounded. Fort Smith, maybe, was the only other city in Arkansas, perhaps a little bit in Texarkana, but they still had areas to grow. They weren’t hemmed in by other cities, and then had some geographic challenges or topographical challenges.

So it was real important for me to try to develop the kind of urban environment that would cause people to want to live in that environment. North Little Rock, we had a census one year after I arrived at City Hall in 1989, and we grew a little bit, but for the first time in the city’s history, I think it was the census of 2000, we lost population. We’d been pretty flat since the 1960s. We’d grown by 8,000 to 10,000 people up until the 1960s, but then we pretty well flattened out, and a large reason was because we didn’t have areas to grow by annexation. So I saw my responsibility was to try to create it because we were probably one of the more urban cities because of what I just mentioned.

So [I was] trying to do anything that I could, and the city of North Little Rock could do, to create the kind of an environment that would fertilize growth. And quality growth to me was what other areas were then starting to do to try to revive their urban cores. So, the heart of our urban core and the major asset that we neglected for 50 years or more, maybe 100 years or more, was the Arkansas River. Water has historically… that was our first highway. The rails obviously were second, and then the highways were basically our third — the interstate system particularly.

Hays, Dailey and Villines worked together to negotiate with Union Pacific to address liability concerns to keep the Rock Island and Junction bridges from being torn down so that they could eventually be utilized in a new way.

It was a natural for me to want to encourage the city to be a part of the effort to preserve those bridges because once they’re down, they never would come back. And the Corps of Engineers, because of hazards to navigation, mandates that after a certain period of time — with some exceptions, which I think were granted in the cases of the Junction Bridge and the Rock Island Bridge — are mandated to be taken down. So that hammer was hanging over us and the cost was also hanging over Union Pacific; so there was some opportunity to negotiate with them because of trying to utilize those bridges, and then once they’re utilized again, then they’re no longer a hazard of navigation and there’s not a mandate to tear them down. So we obviously became quick allies.

The fenced Rock Island Bridge over the Arkansas River in January 1994. At that time, Union Pacific was planning to scrap the bridge with the lift span to be used for a bridge in the state of Washington. Photo: Michael Hibblen

Preserving those bridges was a no-brainer, if you want to put it that way, and so the three of us started working together when the site was picked for the [presidential] library. Part of the appeal of that site was because there was an abandoned rail bridge that could be used to be a part of the campus. And they had hoped to raise enough money, the [Clinton] Foundation did, to open the bridge at the same time they dedicated the library, [but] they weren’t able to do that. So they took on the primary fundraising, the foundation did, to try to do the rehabbing of the bridge. I know that they had, I think, a $1 million contribution from Little Rock. I’m not sure exactly how the ownership issues were at the time, whether Little Rock owned it. I don’t think the foundation ever owned it. So when the foundation sort of took the lead in saving it, I took the city council a request for $750,000.

With plans underway to raise money and eventually renovate the Rock Island Bridge, Mayor Hays began working to prepare the North Little Rock side of the bridge for what it would become.

At the time, the city’s ownership of the land came to the seawall, and then it was in private hands for about two blocks until it got to Riverfront Drive. I didn’t want something to be built there at the end of the bridge that would block public access to our end of the bridge, so when I went to the city council and asked for $750,000, I put two conditions on our donation. One: that we would be able to use some of those funds to acquire the land that was at the north end of the bridge up to Riverfront Drive, and I think we acquired that for somewhere in the $300,000 range. The second condition that I wanted, because I had been familiar with the landings of the Big Dam Bridge, and they were pretty well straight — and because I’m a bicyclist at heart and in many respects, in reality, bicyclists and pedestrians don’t mix real well unless they each respect each other. Bicyclists sometimes would go pretty fast down the Big Dam Bridge on both sides of the river. North Little Rock, we have one [ramp], in Little Rock [there are] two, but they’re pretty well straight shots. So I wanted to try to do something that would minimize that kind of a conflict — to be able to curve [the ramp off the Rock Island Bridge] so that it would have some natural tendency to slow people down and provide a little bit more of an aesthetic kind of an ending to our side of the bridge. And so both [conditions] were agreed to.

The change of design probably was somewhere between $100,000 and $150,000 in additional cost. So, for our $750,000, we’ll say somewhere between $450,000 and $500,000 was because of those two requirements, and then the other $250,000 to $300,000 was to help fund some of the remaining obligations of rehabilitation of the bridge for pedestrian use. So we put some of our money where our mouth was to — in my mind — enhance the north side of the bridge.

There were a couple other things that I did which I thought were appropriate. Just before the bridge was dedicated, there was a little two-block stretch that runs parallel to our end of the landing on the bridge. It had a name, but it wasn’t a name that had a whole lot of history to it, maybe a tree designation. So I went to the city council and got them to agree and the landowners, made sure nobody objected to naming that Virginia Kelly Drive, which was Bill Clinton’s mother.

When we dedicated the bridge, I told him, “Mr. President, any time that you’re telling anybody directions to come to the north end of the bridge, it’ll be easy to remember.” And I had a street sign made up that had his mother’s name on it. And I said, “Just tell them to come along Riverfront Drive until they get to Virginia Kelly Drive,” and there’s your end of the bridge.

Then the last thing I did — in fact, the last day I was in office — I was working on this on December 31, 2012. There’s another street that’s three or four blocks. It was named Brother Paul Drive. Paul Holderfield was pretty much an institution, had the Friendly Chapel Soup Kitchen and Church of the Nazarene down there. So his name was on that street — it still is on part of it — but I’d gone to his son, Paul [Holderfield] Jr., and told him what I wanted to do about that two or three block stretch that runs east and west. I thought it’d be nice to name that after Hillary [Clinton’s] mother Dorothy Rodham. So the city council, everybody went along with it, and shortly after I left office — all of the nods had been put in place, so the city council renamed that street Dorothy Rodham. So now we have Virginia Kelly and Dorothy Rodham that meet together right at the north end of the Clinton Bridge, a la the Rock Island Bridge. And I went ahead and put a little bench there — or my successor Joe Smith did — but it was something I wanted to do, and I call that my Forrest Gump bench. So there’s a little bench there that is at the north end of our bridge. So that’s part of the success.

Hays expressed great satisfaction with the project to preserve the former railroad bridges.

I don’t know if when we started the efforts that we felt like we would be able to do it — the cost was pretty significant. It was a dream and a goal and a desire, but certainly some of the things that helped make that happen, probably one of the largest of which was the president selecting that site for his presidential library. Now on the Junction Bridge, we were much more of a financial player, the two cities and the county — still are, for that matter, in terms of the operation and maintenance of it. But the Rock Island Bridge, the partnerships of the Clinton Foundation and the two cities and the county, the asset is, I won’t say greater than the Junction Bridge, but because of the design [with a ramp not requiring people to take stairs or an elevator up to the lift span like on the Junction Bridge] makes it a whole lot more pedestrian friendly in many respects. So that’s a no brainer, you know, a goal, a desire, a hope that because of a variety of circumstances, the reality happened and the public is, I’m sure, very enjoyable in having those two structures available and can be used.

Hays speaks during a dedication ceremony for the bridge on Sept. 30, 2011. Photo: Michael Hibblen

AUDIO: Hays’ remarks during the dedication ceremony for the Rock Island Bridge on Sept. 30, 2011.

UPDATE: A few weeks after Hays’ death, former Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines — who served in the position from 1991 to 2014 — died on Oct. 21, 2023, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He was 76. Some referred to Villines, Hays and Dailey as “the three amigos” for their collaborative work to improve the region while they were in office.

Discussing the History of the Baring Cross Bridge

by | Jan 11, 2021 | Arkansas History, Railroads

The Baring Cross Bridge over the Arkansas River linking Little Rock and North Little Rock has a fascinating history going back nearly 150 years. I was happy to be invited to talk about the history of the railroad bridge for the Division of Arkansas Heritage’s program Sandwiching in History. The series had been in-person events held at places being discussed until the pandemic arrived in Arkansas last year, which led to the program now being produced videos available online. The episode on the Baring Cross Bridge was released last Friday and can be viewed below.

The Cairo and Fulton Railroad announced plans to construct the bridge in 1872, but didn’t have money to complete the project. So the Baring Cross Bridge Company was formed, which completed the bridge the following year, opening on Dec. 21, 1873. Within a few years a highway deck was added, charging tolls for carriages and pedestrians. Dr. Bill Pollard shared several images of toll booth passes and vintage photos of the bridge from his collection, which I was able to include in the presentation.

During historic flooding of the Arkansas River in April 1927, the bridge was washed away by the swift-moving, rising current. An attempt to anchor the bridge down with loaded coal cars had failed. The Missouri Pacific Railroad, which had acquired this stretch of track by then, rebuilt the bridge to more modern standards, making it a double track bridge for the busy mainline that cuts from the southwest corner of Arkansas to the northeast corner. The only major modification since then was replacing the swing span with a lift span, which was done to all three railroad bridges over the river at Little Rock, as part of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System.

Interview with Union Pacific CEO During Visit to Little Rock

by | Jul 10, 2019 | Railroads

Union Pacific CEO Lance Fritz on Monday announcing a donation by the railroad to a Little Rock museum. Photo: Michael Hibblen

This is a time of change at the nation’s largest railroad. The key thing I’ve been hearing about and not completely understanding is something called Precision Scheduled Railroading. The change is prompting widespread job cuts and the closing of many facilities, including the hump at the Pine Bluff, Arkansas yard. What is Precision Scheduled Railroading? I put that question to the head of Union Pacific on Monday.

Company President and CEO Lance Fritz was in Little Rock to join Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson for a pair of news events. After one press conference, I introduced myself to Fritz and recorded a brief interview, which you can hear or read a transcript of on the link. You can also find links to stories about the events in the state that Fritz look part in.