Fifth Ward residents live in fear of fumes coming from Union Pacific

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Tenants at the Cleme Manor Apartments in the Greater Fifth Ward area were on edge this past weekend.

Witness video captured gas pouring out of the top of a Union Pacific Railroad car.

“All of a sudden, I heard a cap just popped off. Next thing was just ‘Psshh.’ Spewing gas,” Mitchell Curl said.

According to witnesses, the train had been sitting there for a few hours before the release. Curl didn’t want his neighbors taking any chances, so he called the fire department and jumped into action.

“I looked over and told everybody, ‘Just get up and leave. Just walk away from it, because we don’t know what’s in there,'” he said.

For nearly two years, ABC13 has reported on the cancer cluster and creosote contamination at a Union Pacific railyard in Kashmere Gardens, which is about five miles from Cleme Manor. That’s why tenants assumed the worst. It’s an assumption and fear they said they wish they didn’t have to live with.