Your magazine may have been blown off-track

Your magazine may have been blown off-track

Train derailment in severe thunderstorm delays 2,730 UU World copies bound for California.

Firefighters walking toward a train

A freight train carrying copies of UU World magazine was knocked off its tracks by a storm. (AP Photo: Matthew Fowler/Emporia Gazette)

AP Photo: © Matthew Fowler/Emporia Gazette

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Extreme weather in Kansas knocked a freight train off its tracks—and in the process destroyed 2,730 copies of UU World on their way to subscribers in parts of California. Our printer in Wisconsin is reprinting the lost copies, which should reach the affected subscribers by the middle of June.

The severe thunderstorm the night of May 16 knocked 34 freight cars off a stopped train in rural Lyon County, Kansas. No one was injured, but barns and other buildings in the area were destroyed by tornado-strength wind.

Copies of UU World were packaged with a variety of other periodicals bound for addresses in central California and the Bay Area. To save on postage costs, the Unitarian Universalist Association ships copies of UU World as freight to local postal zones, a practice known as comailing. Among the other periodicals interrupted by the train derailment were 50,000 copies of a Seventh-day Adventist magazine.

We are reprinting the Summer issue of UU World this week and shipping copies again to the affected addresses in California, but it may take two weeks before the magazines arrive in mailboxes. Readers can access the Summer issue’s contents online in the meantime.

UU World business manager Scott Ullrich is notifying the leaders of congregations whose members are most affected by the interruption. The lost magazines were headed to subscribers in such cities as Berkeley, Davis, Sacramento, San Jose, and neighboring communities. UU World currently has 121,107 subscribers, including 10,276 in California.

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