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Firefighters continued to battle a stubborn tunnel fire Sunday that broke out when several cars of a freight train derailed near Bakersfield.<\/p>\n
Several homes were evacuated when a tanker car carrying denatured alcohol burst into flames, authorities said.<\/p>\n
There were no injuries in the accident, which happened about 9:30 p.m. Saturday at the entrance to a tunnel on the Tehachapi Loop south of Keene, the Kern County Fire Department said in a statement.<\/p>\n
At least two cars came off the tracks and one of them caught fire, producing a toxic cloud, the statement said. At least two other cars were also on fire, said Lena Kent, a spokeswoman for BNSF Railway, which owns the train.<\/p>\n
As a precaution, authorities evacuated homes within a mile of the incident Saturday. Fewer than 10 homes were affected, said Engineer Justin Corley, a Fire Department spokesman.\u00a0 A temporary shelter was set up at Tehachapi High School.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The alcohol fire was contained to the tunnel and firefighters allowed it to burn out overnight, Corley said. But when it became apparent that a car containing plastic pellets had also caught fire at the entrance to the tunnel, they decided to move it out and spray it with foam to extinguish the flames.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlcohol is going to burn off very quickly, but the pellets will keep smoldering for some time,\u201d Corley said. <\/p>\n
Authorities extended the evacuation order Sunday to homes within a two-mile radius of the incident. <\/p>\n
Corley said the burning plastic was \u201cputting up a column of dark smoke.\u201d A car containing cornmeal was also on fire Sunday, Kent said. <\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t immediately clear whether the flames had spread to any other cars.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t get inside the tunnel to take a look because of the heat,\u201d Corley said.<\/p>\n
Authorities had not established what caused the train to derail. The train was traveling from Barstow to Stockton on Union Pacific tracks when the accident happened, Kent said. <\/p>\n
Firefighters were being assisted by the Kern County Environmental Health Agency, the Kern County Sheriff\u2019s Department, the California Highway Patrol and railroad crews.<\/p>\n
— Alexandra Zavis<\/em><\/p>\n \nPhoto: A freight train burns after derailing Saturday near Keene, Calif., about 15 miles east of Bakersfield. Credit: Kern Firefighters continued to battle a stubborn tunnel fire Sunday that broke out when several cars of a freight train derailed near Bakersfield. Several homes were evacuated when a tanker car carrying denatured alcohol burst into flames, authorities said. There were no injuries in the accident, which happened about 9:30 p.m. Saturday at the entrance to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5746,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-347491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5746"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nCounty Fire Department<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"