Wildfire-spurred highway and rail-line closures hobbled Southern California’s shipping industry Wednesday. The smoke-choked slowdown is expected to cost millions of dollars a day.
The mammoth Blue Cut fire’s impact swept well beyond the Cajon Pass — slowing deliveries, disrupting schedules and setting off headaches for truckers, retailers, shippers and crews staffing Southern California’s ports.
• Related: Blue Cut fire in Cajon Pass burns over 30,000 acres, ‘dozens’ of buildings destroyed
“This is a huge corridor that is being impacted,” said Eric Sauer, vice president of the California Trucking Association. “It’s going to have a trickle effect from the ports on.”
“It’s too preliminary to quantify the full cost to the trucking industry, but it could cost up to $1 million a day in additional operating costs,” Sauer said.
Interstate 15, the main route between Las Vegas and Southern California, closed down indefinitely around noon Tuesday as flames chased tens of thousands of residents from their homes. The flames forced big-rig truckers to make a tough choice — stop at rest stops and gas stations or divert hundreds of miles east or west.
• Photos: The Blue Cut fire burns 30,000 acres and is still out of control
More than 5,000 cargo trucks use the route daily, carrying everything from fresh produce for supermarket shelves to construction tools en route to Las Vegas and back.
“These are major, major corridors,” said Joe Rajkovacz, a longtime trucker and current spokesman for the Western States Trucking Association. “You are looking at something like a 200-mile diversion for truckers.”
For much of Tuesday and Wednesday, the north-south railroad lines for Union Pacific Railroad and BNSF Railway through the Cajon Pass were shut down, delaying the distribution of millions of dollars’ worth of goods.
Fire officials said late Wednesday that three of the four railway lines that run through the pass had been reopened.
Those lines belong to BNSF, which stationed flaggers and extra officers to make sure operations through the pass run smoothly, said San Bernardino National Forest spokesperson John Miller.
The fourth line, belonging to Union Pacific, sustained substantial damage to a bridge and remained closed. Miller said he was told that the damage had caused a backup all the way to Kansas.
Anywhere from 50 to 70 cargo-stacked Union Pacific trains course daily along the railroad line — the only one that goes directly to Barstow and Las Vegas from Southern California, home to the country’s busiest seaport complex — toting goods from Arizona and points east up to the Pacific Northwest. (BNSF also runs trains along the line, but it did not return calls for this story.)
• Map: Where the Blue Cut fire in the Cajon Pass is burning near the 15 Freeway
At the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, stacks of cargo containers grew. “Right now the rail lines aren’t moving,” said Michael Gold, spokesman at the Port of Long Beach at mid-day Wednesday. “(Containers) are being unloaded on to the port’s terminals and they are staying there.”
For now, the congestion is manageable, he said. But it’s unclear when all of the rails lines through the region will be fully operational.
“We are trying to reroute,” said Justin E. Jacobs, a spokesperson for Union Pacific.
Union Pacific has options. It also runs a rail line along the coast and another to the east. For trains that can be rerouted to those lines, the railroad is pulling container boxes off the main track and rolling them via side tracks or moving them to nearby rail yards in Los Angeles and Colton.
• Live updates: Follow live updates from the Blue Cut fire
When fire officials declare travel safe, engineers will check bridges and tracks to determine when trains can go back online.
Big rig drivers and transportation companies that ship cargo from the ports could face another problem.
“If this is a long fire, it can create equipment shortages at the ports,” said Weston LaBar, CEO of the Harbor Trucking Association. The hauling equipment and cargo boxes that are essential to shipping are often rented or leased by truck drivers. If they are unavailable for a extended periods of times or if drivers must prolong their rentals, it could become expensive or create scarcity.
“Folks are gearing up to be able to keep a supply of their equipment in case there are shortages,” he said.
Rajkovacz said most truckers will just keep moving.
“There is no easy answer with the road closure,” Rajkovacz said. “But truckers are savvy in making these diversions. We have just been trying to keep truckers apprised that the road is still closed and they better think about alternates if they need to go into Victorville.”
Throughout the day and night, he said, he followed truckers sharing tips on alternate routes via social media.
CalTrans warned drivers of semi-trucks and motorhomes to avoid shortcuts through state routes 18 and 138, where the road narrows and includes a hairpin turn that can cause heavy loads to flip.
At the Pilot Travel Center in Hesperia, about 20 miles from the Cajon Pass at the intersection of Interstate 15 and route 395, clerk Christina Goetz said bleary-eyed truckers waiting out the fire had been in and out all day.
“It’s packed, the most congested it’s ever been,” she said. “A lot of (the truckers) had to stay the night and still can’t sleep. They are parked in the street.”
At the Wendy’s next door, truckers gulped coffee and talked about their next move, she said. They didn’t expect a quick solution.
“The firefighters said it’s pretty crazy out there,” she said.
Staff writer Ali Tadayon contributed to this report.
