About Duffy Street
About the 1989 Duffy Street Train Disaster
In the spring of 1989, the Duffy Street neighborhood of San Bernardino endured two related tragedies that became known together as the “Duffy Street Disasters.”
On the morning of May 12, 1989, a Southern Pacific freight train of six locomotives and 69 hopper cars loaded with trona lost control while descending the Cajon Pass. The train was thousands of tons heavier than its crew had been told, and several locomotives had inoperative dynamic brakes. Unable to slow down, it reached speeds of roughly 100 miles per hour and derailed on a curve next to Duffy Street, plowing into the homes below. The derailment took the lives of four people — two train crew members and two young children — and destroyed seven homes.
Thirteen days later, on May 25, 1989, a high-pressure CalNev gasoline pipeline that ran alongside the tracks — damaged by earth-moving equipment during the derailment cleanup — ruptured and ignited. The explosion sent flames over the neighborhood, killed two more people, destroyed about ten additional homes, and forced the evacuation of roughly 700 residents.
In all, six people lost their lives and seventeen homes were destroyed. In the years that followed, a proposal to turn the cleared crash site into a greenbelt park was never fully realized, and much of the area has remained vacant land where homes can no longer be rebuilt. Today the Golden Age Organization seeks to honor those who were lost and to bring this neglected ground back to life as a place of remembrance and community.
About the 1989 Duffy Street Train Disaster In the spring of 1989, the Duffy Street neighborhood of San Bernardino endured two related tragedies that became known together as the “Duffy Street Disasters.” On the morning of May 12, 1989, a Southern Pacific freight train of six locomotives and 69 hopper cars loaded with trona lost control while descending the Cajon Pass. The train was thousands of tons heavier than its crew had been told, and several locomotives had inoperative dynamic brakes. Unable to slow down, it reached speeds of roughly 100 miles per hour and derailed on a curve next to Duffy Street, plowing into the homes below. The derailment took the lives of four people — two train crew members and two young children — and destroyed seven homes. Thirteen days later, on May 25, 1989, a high-pressure CalNev gasoline pipeline that ran alongside the tracks — damaged by earth-moving equipment during the derailment cleanup — ruptured and ignited. The explosion sent flames over the neighborhood, killed two more people, destroyed about ten additional homes, and forced the evacuation of roughly 700 residents. In all, six people lost their lives and seventeen homes were destroyed. In the years that followed, a proposal to turn the cleared crash site into a greenbelt park was never fully realized, and much of the area has remained vacant land where homes can no longer be rebuilt. Today the Golden Age Organization seeks to honor those who were lost and to bring this neglected ground back to life as a place of remembrance and community.