May 28, 2026 — Mendota, Illinois
The Incident
A BNSF freight train stopped and blocked every downtown rail crossing in Mendota for nearly four hours. During that time, emergency vehicles could not cross. The only alternative route — the 4th Avenue Viaduct — cannot accommodate larger fire apparatus, which means a structure fire or cardiac arrest on the wrong side of the tracks could turn fatal.
Mendota Fire Chief Dennis Rutishauser described the situation plainly in an interview with the LaSalle NewsTribune on June 23, 2026:
"Whenever trains are stopped, all downtown crossings are blocked for a considerable amount of time."— Chief Dennis Rutishauser, Mendota Fire Department
Why It Matters
4+
Hours — longest single blockage recorded in 2026
4
Crossings blocked simultaneously during the May incident
25%
Increase in average freight train length since 2010 (GAO, 2019)
Other Chiefs. Same Problem.
"Fire can sometimes quadruple in size every minute."— Chief Scott Etheridge, Princeton Fire Department
Ottawa, Princeton, Streator, La Salle — every Illinois Valley community that depends on rail crossings for emergency access faces the same vulnerability.— Chief Brian Bressner, Ottawa Fire Department
What ClearPath Does
🚦Live Train Tracking
Polls Amtrak positions every 30 seconds via amtraker.com. Calculates ETA to each crossing using haversine distance ÷ speed.
📷Freight Detection
Computer vision (YOLO) watches the Steel Highway railcam. Writes CLEAR or BLOCKED every 30 seconds. Best-effort — not authoritative.
🚨Dispatch View
High-contrast tablet screen for fire trucks: blocked crossings, ETAs, and live community reports — no map clutter.
Free. Open Source. Forkable.
ClearPath is free, open source, and forkable for any town. Edit one config file and deploy on Vercel in under 30 minutes.
View on GitHub →Meet the Builder
KC
Kevin Champlin
Built in Mendota, IL. Kevin is a software engineer and founder at Champlin Enterprises. ClearPath started as a response to the May 28 incident and grew from there.
kevin@kevinchamplin.comSources: LaSalle NewsTribune, June 23, 2026 — reporting by the Illinois Valley news team on grade crossing safety and the May 28 Mendota blockage. GAO Report GAO-19-443: Freight Railroads — National Train Length Data.