Evacuation ends, fire out after explosion Thursday at Bailey Yard (2024)

People were evacuated north of North Platte’s Bailey Yard for several hours after a a strong acid exploded about noon Thursday inside a stationary container aboard a railcar.

The blast from the ignition of perchloric acid caused several nearby railcars to catch fire, Union Pacific Railroad said in a statement about two hours later.

“No Union Pacific personnel were injured, and our employees have been safely evacuated,” U.P. spokeswoman Robynn Tysver told The Telegraph.

The explosion did not result from a derailment, as “the car had been stationary in the yard for a couple hours,” she added.

Perchloric acid is a hazardous material used in explosives, as well as some food, drug and biocidal products, Tysver said in the U.P. statement. The railroad was continuing its investigation Thursday afternoon.

North Platte-area first responders quickly shut down U.S. Highway 30 between Front and Splinter roads, between mile markers 170 and 172 and directly north of the explosion site in Bailey’s west hump. U.S. 30 traffic was also being stopped at Buffalo Bill Avenue inside North Platte.

Residents along that stretch of the highway and up to 1 mile north were evacuated after reports of “heavy toxic smoke” coming from the yard, according to texts received from the city’s emergency notification system.

Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historical Park and State Recreation Area closed, as did the Golden Spike Tower and Visitor Center just south of the yard.

About 2:30 p.m., a follow-up notice warned people between Front and Homestead roads, U.S. 30 and West A Street outside North Platte to be prepared to evacuate “in the next one to two hours due to wind and weather changing.”

To keep people out of the broader evacuation zone, North Platte police said, Nebraska Department of Transportation workers posted barricades in late afternoon on both West A and West Front streets at Lakeview Boulevard.

But U.S. 30 reopened to traffic about 5 p.m., and a text notice was issued about 15 minutes later saying the fire was out and the evacuations had been lifted.

Winds were blowing from the southwest at about 10 mph around the time of the blasts. Shortly afterward, dark smoke could be seen billowing into the sky from atop the eight-story Golden Spike Tower.

Volunteer Gregg Robertson said he was talking to someone inside the tower when “I just saw something and I looked and it was just a big ball of flame.

“And then it was just fire, fire, fire, constant for 10, 12 minutes maybe. And then the fire went down and smoke kind of increased, and then it was just sparks coming out.”

Robertson said he saw two smoke plumes rising from the blast site. “The east plume was like black smoke. The west plume was orange smoke, something like I’ve not seen from a fire,” he said.

“There’s something was burning that — I don’t want no part of smelling what it was, because it was some kind of chemical over there going on.”

David Thornton, who was visiting the Golden Spike Tower from Great Britain, said he saw the explosions through his binoculars.

“I could see what looked like a sort of shower of sparks coming out,” he said. “Once I saw the smoke, I trained my binoculars on it and I could see (that) there was what looked like an explosion. But I didn’t hear any sort of (audible) report.”

The Nebraska State Patrol during the lunch hour was allowing limited local traffic to go westbound on U.S. 30 at its junction with Hoover Road near the old Taft School building. At least one motorist was advised to wear a mask.

Two men who live in that vicinity, talking aboard utility-type vehicles on nearby Scouts Rest Ranch Road, agreed that they heard four explosions in all.

“It just shook the ground,” Charlie Morland said. “You could feel it shake the vehicles and stuff. I knew it was a pretty violent explosion.”

The other man, a retired railroader who declined to give his name, said the blast happened across from Bailey Yard’s “mini diesel shop” about one-fourth of a mile west and south of Taft School.

“It shook our house pretty good,” he said.

This story includes reporting from Telegraph staffers Ryan Herzog, Andrew Bottrell, Joan von Kampen and Tyler Soper.