Railroads working with area firefighters to contain wildfires
Western U.S. railroads Union Pacific and BNSF have been grappling with wildfires in California and Oregon that have closed portions of their networks.
Current weather conditions aren’t helping either: The next couple of days will be hot and dry in the intermountain West as severe drought conditions persist, reports FreightWaves meteorologist Nick Austin. There’s a chance of thunderstorms in parts of the Northwest, Great Basin and Northern California areas. However, many of these could be dry thunderstorms, so lightning could spark new fires, according to Austin.
UP said more than 80 large fires have been burning in 13 states across the western U.S., totalling more than 1.3 million acres of damage to date, according to a Tuesday service advisory. That includes multiple locations on UP’s network, the railroad said.
“While those figures are startling, the good news is we have a resilient network with dedicated employees who are working very hard to address our current service interruptions as fast as possible,” UP said. “Our operating team has been both protecting and rebuilding our rail lines and are doing all they can to keep operations running during this record-breaking fire season.”
The wildfires have affected a number of areas on UP’s network.
UP temporarily stopped trains from running on its main line near the California towns of Keddie to Portola over the weekend due to wildfires. The outage has limited one of its reroute paths for UP’s I-5 traffic, the railroad said.
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Source: Freight Waves
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