Here is a photo of the explosion in Antelope on April 28, 1973. Photo courtesy of Citrus Heights Historical Society

CITRUS HEIGHTS, CA (MPG) - Can you remember where you were when the bombs went off?

Citrus Heights Historical Society President Larry Fritz during a May 1 presentation somberly took some 70 attendees at a Citrus Heights City Hall conference room back to 8:03 a.m. Saturday April 28, 1973. On that fateful day, 21 Department of Defense (DOD) boxcars loaded with some 7,000 bombs suddenly exploded on a Southern Pacific Yard track in Roseville.

The 70-plus audience members at the May 1 presentation at Citrus Heights City Hall recalled the day quite vividly. Many who were wounded by flying glass were childhood witnesses to the event and evacuated their homes with their families.

A map of the same yard showing the blast impact area and evacuation zone. Photo courtesy of Citrus Heights Historical Society Photo

The freight train, carrying munitions to the former Concord Naval Weapons Station, hurled chunks of shrapnel high into the sky, causing extensive property damage and injuries to 350 people. 

When the explosions were over, the small town of Antelope, right across the tracks from the train yard in Roseville, which would later become a bustling city, was leveled, Fritz said.

The cause of the explosions has never been officially determined, Fritz said. 

A California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer observes the April 28, 1973 explosions at the Southern Pacific railyard in Roseville on Interstate 80. Photo courtesy of Citrus Heights Historical Society

Fritz, a 1973 graduate of San Juan High School, had just turned 18 years old when the explosions at the Roseville Railyards happened. He still has a copy of the original accident investigation report.

Continuing for hours, the massive explosions sent huge plumes of smoke rising into the air, destroyed buildings, mangled rail sections and left huge craters in the ground. Windows were shattered some three to four miles away.

About 5,500 structures were damaged in varying degrees, including a newly-opened fire station in Antelope. No deaths were reported. Many of the reported injuries were due to broken glass as windows blew out from the blasts, residents recalled.

Here is one of the 250-pound general purpose aerial bombs that split without exploding. Photo courtesy of the Citrus Heights Fire Department

In the explosion’s aftermath, a helicopter inspection of the railyard showed a mass of craters and twisted debris.

Fritz acknowledged the courage of the many first responders who responded to the disaster and the members of the original Citrus Heights Fire Department that later merged with Sacramento Metro Fire when the city was incorporated.

In one of the slides which Fritz presented, he pointed to and recognized a “Lady in White” wearing white coveralls among first responders on the scene.

The “Ladies in White” provided volunteer emergency-response services throughout the greater Citrus Heights area from 1951 to 1986, pioneering the concept of medical response teams working in conjunction with local fire departments.

In all, about 30,000 people were soon evacuated from the nearby towns of Antelope, Roseville and Citrus Heights, Fritz said.

Nine emergency-service agencies, local, state and federal; responded to the explosions. 

Shown are two pieces of rusty twisted shrapnel recovered after the April 28, 1973 explosion. Bomb debris littered the railyard in Roseville and the surrounding area of Antelope. Photo by Tomas J. Sullivan

 

The California Army National Guard also maintained a heavy presence within a two-mile radius of the explosions, which extended to Sylvan Corners.

Paul Lucky, then 24, and three months into his career as a Citrus Heights Fire Department firefighter, later wrote an account of his experience that day for his family, “The Day the Trains Stood Still.”

Lucky was assigned to Citrus Heights Fire Station Three, which was three miles away from the sudden explosion. The blast was so loud and strong that it knocked him off his feet. Still wearing his turnout gear, Lucky clung to the back of the fire truck, Engine Nine, which sped to the scene.

“A large piece of a boxcar was stuck in a railroad signal pole about 15 feet up the pole. The piece of metal was about 10 or so feet long, and a foot or so wide, and about an inch thick,” Lucky wrote. “My jaw dropped, if this explosion is throwing that size and weight of metal around with enough force to stab a telephone pole, I wondered just what I was doing there.”

After the presentation, resident Jeffery Flores held two scarred rings which typically attach to a bomb nose cone which he found and kept that day.

Flores was a young boy at the time, living with his 12 siblings. Injured by flying glass inside his family home which was heavily damaged, Flores and his family soon became evacuees.

Flores vividly recalled the blasts.

“We started seeing rolls of fire going up, then it formed a mushroom,” Flores said. “Then here comes the blast. Boom! Then the sound was terrible; it blew our eardrums out. That wasn’t the worst of it; the scrap metal started coming down, bam, bam, bam, everywhere.”

A map of the Southern Pacific Roseville railroad yard shows the position of a munitions training before it exploded. Photo courtesy of Citrus Heights Historical Society

Citrus Heights resident Bobbie Gibson, then living on Vernon Way in the Country Club Center area in Sacramento County, was finishing classes at Sacramento State University for a teaching credential when the explosions started. She welcomed a friend from Antelope who stayed with her for three days while being evacuated. 

“So many of us wanted to help and opened our homes to those in Antelope who needed a place to stay,” Gibson said. “I was glad to do so.”

In the explosion’s aftermath, U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) personnel recovered as much of the shrapnel and unexploded bombs strewn over the disaster area as possible.

Many of the bombs were scattered half a mile from the explosion site. Two were found embedded in a street one and a half miles away.

“A lot of them were just thrown free and without exploding. So I'm sure they cleaned up as many as they could. But, you know, there were so many of them; they didn't catch them all,” Fritz said in an earlier interview.

The Roseville rail yard, operated then by Southern Pacific Railroad before its merger with the Union Pacific Railroad, was back in operation three days after the initial incident, resuming regular freight traffic.

Southern Pacific eventually paid out $23 million (in 1973 dollars) for the damages. Of the 32 buildings in the town of Antelope that were closest to the blasts, 12 were slightly damaged, 11 received heavy damage and nine were completely destroyed, which included the Citrus Heights Fire Station Six in Antelope.

Original Citrus Heights Fire Station 6, circa 1980 in Antelope, similar to the station that was demolished in the 1973 explosions. The fire station was relocated to U street (present day Antelope Road) about 1.5 miles further away from the railroad yard. Photo courtesy of the Citrus Heights Fire Department

In October 1997, eight more unexploded bombs were discovered by Union Pacific crews who were grading land at the rail yard north of Sacramento in preparation for new track construction.

Another unexploded bomb was found in the Union Pacific railyard in Roseville in December 2024.

It’s possible that other unexploded bombs or bomb fragments might still be found, according to Fritz.