Police, rail workers and a Hazmat response crew were deployed to the location of a train derailment near Gothenburg, Nebraska early Tuesday morning after a dozen or more freight cars laden with coal went off the rails.
Footage shot from the scene shows cleanup vehicles, tractors, rail workers, and a crane-fitted engineering train engaging in cleanup as piles of coal and badly mangled train car wreckage lays to the side of the track.
The derailment was said to have occurred in Dawson County, Nebraska about 3 miles (4.8 km) southeast of Gothenberg, a community of 3,400 people, at around 1:45 am. Some reports say the incident involved as many as 31 Union Pacific train cars.
A Union Pacific spokesperson said one of the main line tracks was cleared and reopened at around 8 am local time.
No injuries were reported in the incident. Union Pacific said "the cause of the incident is under investigation."
The area appears to be a hotbed of train derailments, with another Union Pacific train carrying coal going off the rails southeast of Gothenberg in May of 2022, and yet another, this time near Lexington, in November 2022.
Tuesday morning's derailment is also at least the third major incident in the US Midwest in February, with a Norfolk Southern Railway train derailing near Detroit, Michigan last Thursday (fortunately, no hazardous materials were aboard), and another Norfolk Southern freight train going off the rails in the Ohio-Pennsylvania border town of East Palestine on February 3.
The latter train had thousands of tons of toxic chemicals onboard, and a controversial decision by the railway to 'burn off' its contents following the disaster sparked health concerns after local wildlife and farm animals began dying off en masse. Residents were told they could 'safely return' to their homes just days after the burn, and were offered virtually no immediate assistance, sparking outrage in Ohio, and political infighting in Washington about alleged incompetence, callousness and potential criminal negligence on the part of the railroad, state and federal authorities.