10 train cars derail on Chicago's Southwest Side

Crews on Chicago's southwest side, they are currently working to clean up a train derailment in Ashburn. Brittany Chulas has been there all morning and is live with an update for us. Brittany? Hey guys, crews are starting to get to work. We're not seeing a lot because they're behind one of the completely tipped over trains, but we're hearing a lot of banging here. I'm going to get out of the way so you can see because the cranes have also slightly moved. You see one has its little mouth open over one of the freight cars. that has moved and we have our drone team here if we could take that shot because we can get a better look at what's going on behind these tipped over cars now according to CSX that's who owns these trains it's a freight company there are 10 cars total that's part of this derailment five of those cars are completely tipped over to their side four of them are leaning and then there's one car that still has some trucks on the tracks some trucks off the tracks you can see the crews right there are kind of at where the derailment started a little bit. The first car is on the tracks and there's one that's completely off. And then you can see the kind of accordion behind that. They have the mouth open. It looks like they're kind of have a crane on either side with a hook and then the mouth in the middle, possibly the cranes on the side stabilizing it the mouth in the middle, going to lift it back up right onto the track. And then behind the flattened cars, the cars that are completely on their side, there were crews that were kind of banging and working on the wheels the train wheels and the trucks the trucks are what the wheels are attached to to give you an idea think of a skateboard you have the skateboard part then that metal part underneath that the wheels are attached to those are the trucks so that they're working on the trucks in the back of these completely tipped over cars as well it looks like they got one of the trucks that's off and are back on the rails there you can also see where this car was going where this train was going um it was going off to that curve These tracks either go north, running alongside Central Park Avenue, or curve into what looks like a rail yard. And it looks like these cars, these trains, may have been either going to or coming from that rail yard. But there are workers behind these tipped-over trains, and we do get a look at them so we can see what they're doing. But according to CSX, again, that's who owns these cars, this all happened around 4 in the morning at 10 cars, completely tipped over. There's those crews right there. You can see them kind of working. But all of the cars that did tip over were empty. There's nothing inside these train cars. They were empty. There are no hazmat spills or leaks related to this. There are also no injuries related to this. But you can kind of hear that banging. That's what we've been hearing for the last about hour. And the crews are just behind those cars working on it. Also throughout the morning, we've seen people just coming out and taking a look because they've lived next to these rails for a long time, but they all say they haven't actually seen a derailment happen before. Just take a listen to what one senior in high school said to us before he took off to school this morning. I'm knocking my door. She told me that let's go see it because she said my brother told her because it was the put up on the Citizens app and I told her this and it looks it looks crazy. It was like a little kid was playing with it and just knocked it over. Cars is moving too. Oh, it is? Well, it did for a minute. All right. Now look back at the workers. You can see the trucks right there. they got taken off on the bottom left of your screen. That is what the wheels are attached to. We watched them get those off and they're working on this setup here on the front part of the train. We're also hearing some movement here as well. And it sounds like metal scraping on metal. We're not sure if it is a train car that's been derailed that's being moved or if it's another train coming. But you can see what they're doing here. They're working to get the trucks off of these cars here. The trucks are kind of now back horizontal on the ground. Potentially they're gonna move these trucks back to the tracks, then lift the cars onto those trucks. And you can see them kind of banging. If we can come back live to ground level here, you can see them kind of banging straight through this gap here. What you're looking at right now, we're looking at from the ground. They're kind of just banging and getting these things loose. And this is what we've been seeing for the last about hour. They've been working on this first tipped over car here. Again, there is no cause yet of this derailment, but according to the Association of American Railroads, about 70% of derailments happen in low-speed rail yards. And again, this looks like it was either going to or coming from a rail yard, but the exact cause has not been determined yet. Also, this cleanup is expected to be back a righted by about this afternoon sometime, no exact time on when, but it's expected to be cleaned up at some point this afternoon. And again, no injuries, no spills, and there are no crossings that are impacted as well from this. So traffic is not impacted from this derailment. I'll send it back to you guys for now. All right, definitely a long road though ahead, looks like to get that train back upright so right i mean the work to loosen you don't even think about you think like let's just bring in a crane and get them upright yeah no hard labor for sure so shout out to those folks we got more good day chicago as the show rolls on stay with us we'll be right back