GILROY
– Talk about an unexpected turnout at the polls.
A freight train derailed at about 6 p.m., blocking Luchessa
Avenue and cutting off two labor camps, including one that was
serving as a polling place for Tuesday’s election.
GILROY – Talk about an unexpected turnout at the polls.
A freight train derailed at about 6 p.m., blocking Luchessa Avenue and cutting off two labor camps, including one that was serving as a polling place for Tuesday’s election.
No one was hurt, and the two derailed carloads of lumber did not tip over – although they were leaning. Voters, poll workers and labor camp residents were stranded on both sides of the tracks for more than two hours.
“It’s a real mess,” said Jane Howard, who lives in the precinct east of the city limit and found herself cut off from voting at the Ochoa camp. “There’s only one way in.”
Union Pacific, which owns the track, moved the cars enough to reopen Luchessa to traffic by 8:10 p.m., just after polls closed.
Union Pacific spokesman John Bromley, in Omaha, Neb., said poor track conditions probably led the cars to skip the rails. Railroad ties there appeared to have sunk into the ground; Bromley said old ties may have separated from the rails.
Quickly after the derailment, staff at the county Registrar of Voters came up with a Plan B. Allison Smith, a field inspector from the Registrar of Voters, stationed herself on the Gilroy side of the tracks to redirect those who hadn’t yet voted to a poll at the California Department of Forestry fire station on No Name Uno Avenue, northeast of Gilroy at Masten Avenue.
The fire station was not nearly the closest poll to Ochoa, but Smith said Registrar staff encouraged voters to go there because it and Ochoa had the same ballot type, different from those at Gilroy polls.
“If they don’t want to go all the way down there, then I’m directing them to the nearest poll station where they can vote provisionally and then have it sorted out up at San Jose,” Smith said. “We have authorization for that.”
Meanwhile, Registrar staff had planned to use a four-wheel drive vehicle to retrieve poll workers and voting machines stranded on the Ochoa side of the track.
Smith didn’t know what, if anything, was planned for voters stranded at Ochoa or labor camp residents cut off from their homes. They could walk between the boxcars blocking the crossing, but they couldn’t drive. Luchessa, which appeared to be the only street blocked, is the only road in or out of the Ochoa and Rodriguez labor camps.
“It’s insane – not how I expected to spend my day,” Smith said.
The two lumber cars and an empty boxcar derailed going around a tight curve on the rail spur from Hollister, just east of U.S. Highway 101. The train appeared to be heading to join the San Jose-Salinas line.
Local emergency crews left the problem up to Union Pacific, which owns both the main line and the spur.
Later, at the fire station poll, Howard said, “They’re getting a bit of a crowd over here from all the voters they sent over here, but it’s being handled.
“It’s the first time we’ve ever had to vote (at Ochoa),” Howard said.
“We used to be the precinct that voted at San Ysidro School before it closed.”
Last election, she voted at the Hilton Garden Inn and wished she could again vote there, where there are multiple entrances and exits.
