September 18, 2008

Letter from Jack Koraleski - Hurricane Ike Recovery Efforts

To our Customers,

While there is still work to be done, we've been able to make some significant progress over the past few days in restoring service to areas impacted last weekend by Hurricane Ike and I wanted to give you a quick update.

Following the storm, nearly 2,000 miles of track across our Southern Region had been impacted. Crews have been working around the clock to clear downed trees and other debris and place generators to power signal systems. As you can see from the attached map, most of the impacted subdivisions are now back in service.  Service has been restored west of Houston to San Antonio and beyond, as well as south to Angleton, Bloomington and Brownsville.  All north-south routes between Houston and Longview, Hearne and Palestine, Texas, as well as to Shreveport, Louisiana are now open.  The route east of Houston to New Orleans was reopened last night.

In the Houston area, operations at Union Pacific's Settegast, Englewood and Strang yards are resuming, along with several industry-serving yards, as water levels recede and as employees are able to return to work.

The route to Galveston remains out of service with no estimated timeframe for reopening, until water levels recede and inspectors can access the area and assess damage to our infrastructure.  We also continue to experience sporadic signal and power issues across the Houston area as commercial power remains out in many areas.  We continue to stay in contact with those customers who have been able to return to their facilities to assess the individual levels of damage and the necessary repairs required to become fully operational. 

With the reopening of key routes out of Houston, we have lifted the embargo for the following:

  • All shipments origininating or terminating between Algoa (just south of Houston) and Brownsville, TX.
  • All outbound shipments originating between Algoa and Dayton, Texas, with the exception of Galveston. 

The embargo remains in place today for all inbound shipments - between Algoa  and Dayton, TX, and for all shipments between Dayton and Orange, TX (east of Houston) - with the exception of automotive and intermodal.  Automotive and intermodal shipments are being handled by our Premium Operations personnel through direct contact with the affected customers.  Our embargo page will provide you with more detailed information.

We also continue to reroute some traffic normally interchanged with the CSX at New Orleans over the Memphis and St. Louis gateways, as CSX continues to repair damage on its line following Hurricane Gustav earlier in the month.  The balance of traffic with the CSX is moving over the regular interchange route, as is the Norfolk Southern interchange traffic.

Union Pacific employees are working with customers on their plans to resume operations, and are helping them identify any rail cars held at their facilities that were flooded in the storm.  As a reminder, rail cars that are damaged will be placed in a mechanical hold status until repairs can be made - in accordance with AAR requirements. For more details about this process, please see the guidelines provided on our web site. 

Thank you for your cooperation and patience as we work to resume normal operations in this area and across the Midwest, where we're dealing with flooding caused by Ike as it moved across the country. We will continue to provide further updates on our web site as information is available.