“It’s just a mess. They must’ve been bunched up there and they hit them all in one spot,” David Zeller, who works for the Union Pacific Railroad, said.
During a thunderstorm Monday night, about ninety head of cattle from the Robert Walker ranch spooked and broke through a fence.
Thirty one head ended up on a stretch of train tracks west of Kismet, Kansas.
The train’s driver didn’t have enough time to stop and smashed into all of them.
“We had to get a lot of it out of the center of the track. It’s just scattered everywhere down there. It’s a pretty big mess,” Zeller said.
And even though it’s not in his job description, he and his crew are responsible for cleaning it all up.
In addition to the 31 head of cattle found dead on the tracks, another sixty or so had to be rounded up in places all over the county.
Cowboys caught two a mile east of Kismet. By noon Monday, thirty were still missing.
Zeller said he’s never seen anything like it. - Audrey Martin, KBSD-TV6, Dodge City, KS, courtesy Larry W. Grant
You want to see a picture of that? Oh, no you don’t, use your imagination, that’s plenty good enough.
I once took out seven cows at once that had wandered away and out onto a bridge, the other four got off somehow. Thought that was bad enough, can’t imagine 90. 90?!?!? Whoa.
If that state has the same laws that Wyoming does, which is most likley the case…
UP has to pay for this accident, weather or not they got loose, or it was open range or other. They must pay for each beef, and every calf that the each cow would have had in her lifetime. This is the case with highway accidents as well, if your car were to hit a cow, you must pay for the cow, and every calf that it may have had, as well as all the repairs to your vehicle.