Record Midwest Floods Force Embargoes

Announcement Number: CN2019-16
Categories: General Announcements
Posted Date: March 17, 2019

To Our Customers,

As you are probably aware from numerous news reports, the Midwest has been hit hard by severe weather and record floods. Unfortunately, this series of weather events has caused significant damage to our rail network, which has made it necessary to issue embargoes for traffic originating, destined or moving through our network.

Network Conditions
Numerous Union Pacific subdivisions and corridors continue to be out of service due to flooding and track washouts. The immediate effects of these storms include the following subdivisions:

  • Omaha Subdivision (Missouri Valley, Iowa, to Fremont, Nebraska)
  • Blair Subdivision (Fremont, Nebraska, to Missouri Valley, Iowa)
  • Columbus Subdivision (Fremont, Nebraska, to Grand Island, Nebraska)
  • Lincoln Subdivision (Valley, Nebraska, to Lincoln, Nebraska)
  • Falls City Subdivision (Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Kansas City, Kansas)

Due to widespread flooding across our network, we have very limited reroute capability. As a result, Union Pacific is issuing embargoes. Because of the large number of impacted stations, please refer to the published embargo notices for the specific parameters.

Additional operational impacts may include delayed movement of manifest, bulk and intermodal trains through the impacted areas, including trains holding at strategic locations until service can be restored.

Your Marketing and Sales rep will be in touch with you to discuss any unique impacts from these weather and flooding events in relation to your business with Union Pacific.

We appreciate your understanding and cooperation as we work through the vast impact of these weather and flooding events. We will continue to post updates on changing conditions as information is available.

To view the latest map of the flooding impact to our network and the best practices to follow during flooding events, please visit our Flood Planning and Recovery web page.

Tucumcari Subdivision Reopens
Union Pacific has reopened service over the Tucumcari Subdivision where we previously had an outage associated with weather and a derailment. Customers should expect continued delays over the next 48 hours as we begin to move traffic over the previously impacted area.

If you have any questions, please contact Customer Care & Support at 800-272-8777 or your Union Pacific representative.

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