On the The Hazardous Materials Rail Transportation Safety Improvement Act of 2015: "This long overdue action will increase safety standards for the transportation of hazardous materials, like crude oil, by rail. Too many communities have seen what happens when these trains derail and explode. With these rules, I’m hopeful we can prevent future accidents and provide relief for communities that watch these trains roll through town each day.”
- Sherrod Brown, U.S. Senator (D-Ohio)
John J. O'Neill, Jr., the City of Youngstown, Ohio's fire chief, said with so many railroads in and around Youngstown, it's only natural for him and other city officials to be concerned with the dangers posed by petrol-carrying rail cars.
"I see them all the time," O'Neill told this writer. "Our main fire station is very close to a railroad track and I see them frequently. I'd guess that the shell of these tankers is only a half-inch thick or so, by the looks of things. Sharrod Brown, our Senator, wants changes to these petroleum-transport cars. But I don't know all the specifics."
With a population of around 65,000, the once prosperous steel town has the dubious honor of being America's fastest-shrinking city, according to a June 2013 report of The Hampton Institute. And in cities like Youngstown, which have a large population of families dependent on government subsidies, emergency responders might not be the best equipped at handling the horrid derailments and explosions that these "bomb" trains, or "bullet" trains, pose to residents and businesses. Rust Belt cities like Youngstown, suffering from a marginal and ever-dwindling tax base, have their backs against the wall in the ongoing quest of getting the best equipment for their First Responders.
Although O'Neill says in Youngstown there has never been a major derailment or subsequent explosion of these trains, which carry Bakken crude oil from North Dakota and the oil sands of Canada, in the late-1970s, there was a derailment of a fuel-carrying railroad car on a track in close proximity to Youngstown Fire Station 1, located at 420 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., in which one of the tankers leaked propane. And in nearby Campbell, Ohio, a tanker also leaked a little less than 1,000 gallons of high-grade diesel oil. Luckily, fire crews were able to thwart-off any threat of either of these accidents expeditiously and effectively, but that doesn't necessarily lighten O'Neill's concerns or worries regarding bomb trains.
"In Columbiana County (a rural county contiguous to the south of Mahoning County, of which Youngstown is the county seat), trains go from the city of Columbiana to Sebring (a village on the southwestern tip of Mahoning County, which sits on the Columbiana County border), these (petroleum-carrying) trains go by all day long. And they travel fast, at over 60 miles per hour. They need to slow these cars down. Speed is a major culprit to these derailments. It's my personal opinion - I've never done a study on it or anything - but it's only common sense in knowing that if you're moving a big object and there might be some problems with the rail that it's traveling on, a derailment might occur," Chief O'Neill. who has been Youngstown Fire Chief for the past 18 years and a firefighter for 30 years, said with concern.
Ohio Democrat Senator Sharrod Brown told this writer about upgrades for the public safety regarding these petroleum-carrying cars that may come to be, thanks to legislation he's been working on: "“This long overdue action will increase safety standards for the transportation of hazardous materials, like crude oil, by rail. Too many communities have seen what happens when these trains derail and explode. With these rules, I’m hopeful we can prevent future accidents and provide relief for communities that watch these trains roll through town each day.”
Sen. Brown has stated his support for the DOT ruling that calls for replacement of the DOT-111 tank cars and non-jacketed CPC-1232s. He is also fighting to pass The Hazardous Materials Rail Transportation Improvement Act of 2015, which would ensure companies replace outdated cars with more modern, safer cars. It would also provide a tax credit to companies who modernize and upgrade their cars before the DOT’s required date.
The Hazardous Materials Rail Transportation Safety Improvement Act of 2015 reduces risks posed by trains carrying large quantities of crude oil, ethanol and other flammable liquids. It gets the most dangerous cars off the tracks, gets safer cars on the tracks, and provides funding to communities at risk for these disasters.
This bill would help first responders be better prepared in the event to a derailment. Included in this bill is a fee established on DOT-111 tank cars carrying hazardous material would pay for preparedness and training grants totaling $45 million over three years for first responders in communities through which large quantities of crude oil, ethanol, liquefied natural gas or other flammable substances are transported by rail.
The bill would use the fee revenue to accelerate tank car safety improvements, prevent derailments and better prepare communities and first responders for rail accidents. It would establish a dedicated fund for clean-up costs of oil train spills, expand advanced training programs for first responders, and grant money for states and localities to reroute rail tracks carrying large volumes of hazardous materials away from highly populated areas.
Federal safety investigators have known about the deficiencies of the primary workhorse used to ship oil by rail - the DOT-111 railroad tanker car - for over 20 years. In a 1991 safety memo, the National Transportation Safety Board stated that the inadequacies concerning the public's protection of the DOT-111 is evidenced by many years of accidents which the NTSB investigated. The cars' heads and shells are thin and are prone to puncture. Protective housings around valves and top-fittings are not robust enough to prevent impact damage. The handles that operate bottom outlet valves often open during derailments, spilling highly combustible crude oil, a video accompanying a Vice News article denotes.
Big Oil & Gas companies are at odds with these proposed changes. Tyson Slocum, Energy Program Director of Public Citizen, writes in a March 25 statement: "Based on the behavior of the industry, it seems that executives are more focused on their company coffers. Earlier this month, at the very moment firefighters were risking their lives to hold back the flames from an exploded train in Illinois, oil and railroad companies were meeting with federal officials to lobby for lower safety standards. In public, industry groups were calling for stronger safeguards, but privately they were still trying to undermine critical safeguards.
A CSX train carrying crude oil from western North Dakota derailed near Montgomery, W.Va., the afternoon of Feb. 16. It jumped the tracks and boomed into a firestorm right on the banks of the Kanawha River, part of the Ohio River and Mississippi River watersheds, some 30 miles southeast of Charleston. Flames were seen on the river.
Lawrence Messina, Communications Director of the West Virginia Dept. of Military Affairs and Public Safety, told this writer during a telephone interview in mid-May that the initial report indicated that one of the rail cars carrying this Bakken crude oil was in the water "but after we investigated further, no cars were in the water."
"A resident of the house very near the explosion site suffered minor injuries - mainly smoke inhalation. In the area of Fayette County where the derailment and explosion happened, it is very rural and this occurred on a stretch of track where there was only one structure nearby. If it occurred further up or down the track, it could have been devastating," Messina said.
"The First Responders did an excellent job evacuating the area using their training and best practice methods. Due to the nature of this fire, their best course of action was to let the fire burn and remove some of the cars that they could, so the fire would not spread. By not applying foam, there was no risk of the foam leaking into the river and contaminating the water," Messina said.
"Not all the cars caught on fire. My last count showed that out of 109 cars total on the train - almost all of them tankers - 19 of these cars crashed and were part of the fire but eight tanker cars were not safe from catching fire. The entire train was carrying 3.1 million gallons of petroleum and each tanker can carry upwards of 30,000 gallons," Messina said.
The photo above shows a CSX-owned train that derailed, and its subsequent explosion, in downtown Lynchburg, Va., on Wednesday, April 30, 2014, in the early afternoon. Occurring in the thick of a business-time hump day, it is an enigma why there were no fatalities or injuries from this blowup, which sent flames soaring "stories high," with some estimates as high as 80 feet, according to eyewitnesses. About 14 cars derailed, with some leaking oil into the James River, which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay.
"We're used to kind of bangs and booms," said Gerald McComas, a security officer at a foundry just up river from the derailment site. "My first thought was it sounded like one of the guys started a motorcycle and then a realized, wait a minute, no ... that was more of a boom. We walked outside and there was the smoke rolling in."
Youngstown Fire Chief O'Neill told me that the fact that this type of crude oil burns so hot and is so explosive, about the only course of action for firefighters can take is to allow rail cars that have exploded and are aflame to burn out, while trying to keep other cars nearby from catching on fire. Both Messina and O'Neill agreed that in the case of a bomb train derailment and explosion, it's key to use every available resource to bring the hellish blazes under control. And even more importantly, it's imperative to keep First Responders out of harm's way - since if these rescue teams are close to a tanker filled with more than 30,000 gallons of highly explosive fuel, they'd be decimated by the impact such a firestorm would inevitably create, if the tanker turned into a bomb. O'Neill went on to say that if he had to oversee such a disaster, he would most likely even use resources at the nearby Vienna, Ohio, air base, which has crash trucks used to dispense foam, a fire-retardant substance used to quell flames.
A few days before the explosive West Virginia firestorm, a 100-car train carrying tar sands oil from Alberta derailed in a remote area near Timmins, Ontario, and caught fire. Luckily, this derailment and firestorm by bomb train did not pose a threat to any communities, since the area of the derailment was so desolate and remote, While the remote area where the derailment occurred meant it didn’t threaten any communities, passenger rail service between Toronto and Winnipeg had to be suspended until the wreck was cleared. And another train carrying crude oil derailed in southern Alberta, Canada, on the same day as the Timmins, Ontario, derailment and explosion, but no oil leaked in that derailment, according to EcoWatch.
On March 7, another train carrying volatile crude oil from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota derailed, this time in northwestern Illinois near the historic tourist area of Galena. Galena sits on the Mississippi River, and the railroad carrying this exploding mess sits only feet away from Ole' Man River.
Dark smoke was seen for miles around the crash. Images posted online by Dubuque Scanner showed flames shooting into the air several hundred feet. This train had 105 loaded cars, with 103 of these carrying crude oil. And this incident occurred on a major rail line that handles as many as 50 oil-trains a week, one official told Reuters.
"The sky is pretty dark down there, the smoke is pretty black," said Kevin Doyle, whose property borders the tracks. "If you're standing on the tracks you can throw a rock in the water," Doyle is quoted as saying in CommonDreams
According to Vice News, 9 million barrels of crude oil are moving over the railroads of North America at any given moment. And the volume of crude oil has skyrocketed - since 2008, there has been a 4,000-percent increase in crude oil transportation over rail lines in the USA and Canada, Vice News also reports. Fortunately, as fate would be kind to humankind, the bomb train derailments and explosions of early this year did not claim any lives, but it’s a akin to a ticking time bomb. . . .When will another derailment and explosion like the one that killed 47 in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec in July 2013, occur? On July 6, 2013, a bomb train carrying oil derailed in little Lac-Mégantic, resulting in an explosion so wild and so hot it leveled several city blocks and incinerated the bodies of many of its 47 victims. This came as a result of a runaway 74-car freight train carrying Bakken formation crude oil rolled downhill and derailed, resulting in the fire and explosion of multiple tank cars. More than 30 buildings in the town's central business district, about half of the downtown area, were destroyed. All but three of the thirty-nine remaining downtown buildings were marked for demolition sometime later. The cover photo (courtesy of www.thetakeaway.com) shows the devastation of this explosion and firestorm in Lac-Mégantic.
In downtown Seattle, Wash., the two major sports stadiums that are home to the NFL championship Seattle Seahawks and the MLB baseball team, the Seattle Mariners, sit right over train tracks that carry crude oil. On average, 20,000 fans attend each Mariners' game and at least three times that number show up for Seahawks' games. Having railroads so close to these two colossal stadiums was never a concern, until they began hauling oil, a video accompanying the Vice News article reports.
"From the Seahawks stadium, you could probably throw a rock from one of the upper decks and hit an oil train," says Eric de Place, policy director of Sightline Institute, a sustainability think tank in Seattle. "They're running right through the heart of populated areas. Right now, we're up at the tip of the iceberg. We've seen this incredible growth in oil by rail. We're up 50 or 60 times beyond oil shipments by rail of just two or three years ago. And we're seeing more and more of these derailments and explosions."
With only 27 residents in the town of Heimdal, N.D., evacuating the village on March 7, this problem wasn't much of an ordeal. But consider this: More than 150 nuclear missiles lie underneath the ground in North Dakota and even the U.S. Military is concerned over the proliferation of these freight-carrying trains, which to some are nothing less than ticking time bombs. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow
said in a recent broadcast that newly drafted U.S. military documents are expressing concern about the risk to specific sites where railroad and Minuteman-III missile silos coexist and coincide, oftentimes in dangerously close proximity of one another.
Mixing a volatile mesh of oil wells and live nuclear weapons - like Minutemen-III missiles - throughout western North Dakota, makes for a potential nightmare of horrendous proportions. "This is the cause of legitimate concern...how they move the oil around. Part of it is pipelines, large and small, but most of it is oil trains that depart from western North Dakota - stuffed with this highly flammable Bakken crude oil, and they crisscross the country, occasionally derailing and blowing up in the process," Maddow said.
Maddow then showed a map of North Dakota, with the 150 Minutemen-III missile silos designated with green dots, and the map also displayed a patchwork of railroad lines that cross all over the "Peace Garden State". Many railroads go so close to missile silos that they almost seem to swipe through the green dots. That's because many of these nuclear missile facilities are "located right along the rails," Maddow says in the broadcast.
"We often talk about these oil train fireballs being apocalyptic looking? Well something like this happening right nearby a nuclear missile silo - that's starting to make the word 'apocalyptic' seem less metaphorical," Maddow says.
There is always the argument that Big Oil & Gas corporations are working to make America less energy dependent. And there's also the argument that workers employed in oil fields; along with those working for freight-hauling companies, like railroads; and those laboring at refineries, all hold high-paying jobs. And these jobs are important to the domestic economy. And there's also all that economic psychobabble about the spinoff jobs - in retail, restaurants, even real estate, that are dependent on the jobs directly tied in to the jobs being created through Big Oil and Gas and the quest of the energy giants to create an energy-sufficient America. But sometimes, the interest of Big Oil & Gas goes against the interest of business. Such is the case at Ruszel Woodworks Inc., in Benicia, Calif., which has rail lines on three sides of its plant in an industrial park.
Valero's Benicia Refinery is working towards increasing crude-oil-by-rail shipments and this is a grave concern of Ed Ruszel, facility manager of his family's Ruszel Woodworks' plant. With the eastbound main line of the Union Pacific Railroad only fifty feet behind Ruszel's family's plant, Valero's plans to have 100 or more crude-oil-carrying tankers pass by Ruszel Woodworks daily is a threat Ed Ruszel isn't taking lightly. And on two other sides of his company's building, railroad spurs used to maneuver and/or change cars are present.
"We have 30 full-time employees, plus some temporaries. The plant operates 14 hours a day, with the workers working 10-hour shifts (that are staggered)," Ruszel said in a telephone interview with this writer on May 22.
So far, crude oil via rail line is not being transported nearby the Ruszel Woodworks facility, but on the tracks behind the plant, a high-speed line that goes into Oakland and south into San Jose, will see a dramatic change when the Valero Crew By Rail project comes full swing, The train traffic will create complications for doing business in the industrial park, since with 100 cars going through this corridor daily, 100 cars will also depart from there. Even now, it's hard to leave the plant by motor vehicle, since with the rail spurs and all the rail freight traffic, it's a challenge just to get out of the industrial park, Ruszel says.
Right now, about a half-dozen railroad cars carrying propane are seen whizzing by on the Union Pacific rail line behind Ruszel Woodworks daily. "But rail cars used to transport propane are very different than those used to carry crude oil. Crude oil cars are not as safe nor as strong. And we see at least 100 cars a day carrying ethanol through this corridor, too."
When the term "bomb trains" was mentioned by this writer, Ed Ruszel's voice wavered a bit and he replied that "Yes, that's their nickname," and although he admitted he's never seen the devastating effects of witnessing an oil-train explosion first-hand, he's well aware of the dangers and horrors they pose when they derail and ignite through sundry news accounts.
Ruszel mentioned in an email to this writer after the story appeared that he is very concerned about ethanol being shipped in the same outdated class of tank cars as the Bakken crude-carrying bomb trains, and as he sees it, these cars carrying ethanol are even more volatile than those carrying crude oil.
Ruszel said that he's had many encounters with railroad officials, and they always seem "standoffish," and when confronted with a problem concerning railroad transport, these railroad men, whether they be sitting on a piece of heavy machinery or behind a desk at corporate headquarters, always fall back on arguing using the federal regulations that govern and control railroads.
"They call it federal preemption," Ruszel said. "And it keeps local and state authorities from having any authority in the operations of railroad companies."
Many of the rules and regulations governing and controlling railroads were set in place by President Abraham Lincoln, and in Ruszel's opinion, railroad companies almost have an entitled status in the American political sphere. "It's a very old and protected utility. These rules and regulations were created around the time of the Civil War and many of them are old and outdated. That's not to say that there haven't been new regulations added, but the way things work today, railroads can pretty much stay out of any debate. They let a refinery like Valero, which needs to get all its permitting in place just to be able to construct its facility, do the legal work, with Union Pacific's stake in the legality game of crude oil transport virtually non-existent.
"They can move whatever they want, or whatever they're able to carry, wherever they want to carry it, whenever they want to - and this is happening all over the country. My family's business isn't the only one that's affected," he said.
Bakken oil is typically lighter than Alberta crude, rendering it more flammable when exposed to heat. And Bakken crude is harvested from shale formations - and is comprised of volatile gases. It's more like jet fuel than conventional crude oil, it's citizen beware time. And considering that much of this stuff is being shipped by an antiquated old tanker rail car - the DOT-111 - these trains have aptly and rightly garnished the nickname "bomb trains". This potential volatility is raising questions about whether railways and regulators are taking sufficient precautions when transporting the oil. Shortly after the (Lac-Mégantic) derailment of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway Inc. train, the Canadian Province of Ottawa unveiled a series of tighter safety rules that call for more rail staff, supervision and safety precautions for trains carrying hazardous materials, according to The Globe and Mail. But with the constant gridlock any set of safety regulations may encounter with the big money and political clous of Big Oil & Gas, how many more catastrophes like Lac-Mégantic will it take before we're safe?