Alleged vandals have been tampering with the Union Pacific railroad track crossing arms, snarling the arms for several hours, and causing traffic havoc.
The most recent incident occurred last Sunday, the same day as when hundreds of people were attempting to get to Stearns Wharf for the Parade of Lights.
“That was an extraordinary event,” said Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse. “You see people do crazy things to get out of the queue.”
The Santa Barbara Police Department received dozens of dispatch calls with the arms stuck and as the bells chimed.
User comments on John Palminteri’s social media pages reported people lifting the arms manually so vehicles could cross, and people driving over the tracks. Rowse said he saw people flipping U-turns and driving over medians.
“I have heard it happening before but not for that kind of duration,” Rowse said.
It is unclear how long the arms were down, but reports suggested at least two hours.
Although the tracks are in Santa Barbara, and Amtrak runs the trains, the infrastructure — the tracks and the arms — are owned by Union Pacific.
In a statement from the organization, provided by the city of Santa Barbara’s public information officer Bryan Latchford, vandals caused the problem.
“I was able to get a report from our Signal Department, and vandals pulled what is called rail bonds,” said Lupe Valdez, spokesperson for Union Pacific. “These are made of copper and are electrical jumpers used to relay signal currents. So, indeed, this was due to vandalism.”
Valdez added: “the vandals took out several crossings worth of bonds that needed to be replaced. This happened early morning hours of Sunday at approximately 5:14 a.m.”
Santa Barbara City Administrator Kelly McAdoo expressed frustration with the situation.
“It is a Union Pacific issue,” McAdoo said. “Our police dispatch center called their center every hour that afternoon/evening to get a technician out to address the issue. My understanding was they had one technician available for most of Southern California that day.”
Sgt. Bryan Kerr, spokesman for the Santa Barbara Police Department, said the department doesn’t know exactly how many calls it received that day.
“For dispatch, when they receive a call and it warrants a call for service, they create one call for service and put it on the board,” Kerr said “Every subsequent caller, unless they are providing new information, are told that we have been notified and working to fix the problem. So dispatch does not track how many calls they received for that specific incident.”
