Wrong place - right time, or vice versa?

My son Sam and I were on our first trip to the Tehachapi Loop area when things became a bit more exciting than we had planned. We enjoyed two days of railfanning in this beautiful area and saw plenty of trains. On Saturday evening in our hotel in the town of Tehachapi, CA we turned on our scanner around 9:45pm and heard the UP dispatcher talking about a train on fire at Tunnel 9. We looked at the map and saw that is the tunnel at Tehachapi Loop where we had been earlier in the day. Only a few miles away, we decided to see what was happening. No sooner did we leave the hotel, we saw a red glow in the mountains to the west.

We headed up Highway 58 and as we approached The Loop we could see flames shooting high into the air. We exited at Keene and headed towards The Loop on Woodfords-Tehachapi Road. As we arrived, a few fire fighters were leaving the site of the fire, apparently having decided to let it burn out. We did not know it at the time, but it was one or two tank cars filled with distilled alcohol that had derailed and ruptured right at the west portal of Tunnel 9. The flames were shooting up at least 30 feet into the air. There were box cars adjacent to the tank car, which appeared to still be upright. I took a few photos and we headed up to the monument overlook. From the overlook we could see the large plume of white smoke billowing into the sky and lit from below by the flames. Fortunately due to the damp weather and green grass, the fire did not spread into a grass fire as it probably would have in a drier season.

We headed back to Keene and road was now closed by the sherriffs department. Back at the hotel, two of eight families that lived near The Loop were checking in after being evacuated by the sherriff's department. This was done by sherriffs in full gas masks knocking on their door around 10pm.

On Sunday morning the county road was still closed and black smoke was billowing skyward. The wreck contractor had arrived and were staging in Keene, two and a half miles from the fire. The huge buldozers with side cranes were unloaded, but it would probably be a while before they could get in to the wreck site.

Fortunately, there were apparently no injuries and the evacuations were just precautionary. We ended our weekend and headed home. For obvious reasons there were no trains running today between Tehachapi and Bakersfield.