Service Update from Kenny Rocker, EVP, Marketing & Sales
Announcement Number: CN2019-17
Categories: General Announcements
Posted Date: March 18, 2019
To Our Customers,
As a follow up to the recent weather impact announcements we’ve issued over the past few days, I wanted to give you an update on our service challenges and what we are doing to restore service as safely and quickly as possible.
Historic Weather Events
Our Operating team is fully engaged and working around the clock to normalize service throughout our network. The service issues you are experiencing are driven by a series of unprecedented weather events, one after another, that have significantly impeded our ability to get back to the level of service we saw earlier this year.
To recap what we’ve seen from Mother Nature during these past few weeks, some of the inclement weather incidents include:
- Heavy Midwest snow and ice storms, including a major winter storm with record snowfall through Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois February 23-24, which were the primary cause of more than 20 service interruptions in February
- Heavy snowfall in central Oregon on February 24, which caused more than 100 trees to fall on tracks, along with mudslides and washouts from heavy rains in Northern California on February 27
- Record sub-zero temperatures and major snowdrifts in Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota on March 5
- Heavy snowfall in Colorado, Wyoming and western Nebraska, and heavy rain and historic flooding across Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, eastern Nebraska and Kansas March 14-17
Service challenges from one region of the network may bleed over to other areas of the network where extreme weather may not have impacted local operations. As we hold trains due to unsafe or inoperable track conditions, this will slow down the entire network due to our resources becoming imbalanced.
Recovery Efforts
First of all, I’d like to give a shout out to our Operating and Engineering teams, who have been working tirelessly over the past six weeks to restore service to you. Over the weekend, we issued embargoes in these areas that have been impacted by the record flooding. Our maintenance of way forces are keeping a close watch on additional areas of our network where we are experiencing widespread flooding. Advance preparations have been made to transport materials and resources to be ready in order to restore the network as quickly as possible.
We are using all alternative routes available to us to the maximum extent possible. Once the water recedes, we can assess the damage caused by the flooding and begin the necessary repairs to restore operations.
Additionally, we have a Flood Task Force working 24/7 to monitor our situation and work with customers impacted by the flooding. We established a flood hotline and a comprehensive Flood Planning and Recovery web page to provide you with real-time updates on track outages, current news impacting our rail network, and the ability to notify our Customer Care and Support team of any service issues you are facing.
Thank You
Thank you for your patience and cooperation. Our Sales and Customer Care & Support teams will be in close communication with you. We will continue to provide additional updates as we work to restore service and return to the level of service you expect.
Kenny Rocker
Executive Vice President, Marketing & Sales