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The San Bernardino Train Disaster
🕑 Added 2023-07-18 10:15:01 +0000 UTCOften when researching a disaster, it can be interesting to “visit” the place where it happened using Google Earth or Google Maps. In this case it’s particularly fascinating. Looking at San Bernardino from above there’s a very clear open space in a residential area where the derailment and subsequent explosion took place.
Looking closer, or exploring at street level, you can see that there are just one or two houses left within this area. As far as I can tell these aren’t houses that survived the disaster, but instead houses that have been built there in recent years. From listings online it looks as though one of them might have been built around 2008 – just prior to the 20-year anniversary of the crash.
It must be a strange experience to live in a neighbourhood that’s otherwise an almost empty lot – particularly when you know the reason why! I wonder if, as time goes on, more houses will be built there and the neighbourhood will return to what it was before… or if there will always be a gap at this site.
Comments
Fascinating Horror
Another interesting and quite unusual plane crash. Will take a look and add it to the list!
Fascinating Horror
Given just how much trona was dumped on the area it wouldn't surprise me if the soil was in some way polluted. I'm inclined to your idea, though, that after building a couple of houses developers simply decided people didn't want to live in the area, and they'd get better value elsewhere
Michael Rutherford
How about a video on Northwest Airlines Flight 255? It was a plane that crashed shortly after takeoff in 1987 due to pilot error and confusion. Although 2 people on the ground were killed when the plane crashed, there was a single survivor among the 155 people onboard the plane itself: a four-year-old girl named Cecilia Cichan. Here's the episode of Mayday covering the disaster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4s_uIjxJ5U
Jennifer Durham
I am intrigued by your comments about the rebuilding. After the no-build order ended, I wonder if they built a couple of structures to test the market. If the properties didn’t earn what they wanted, they could leave the rest undeveloped for a while longer. California is perceived as quite different from the rest of the USA when it comes to State laws and regulations. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the area had failed soil tests or is under similar restriction.
