Tag Archives: Dr. Fred Millar

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Evacuation zone, Explosion, Oil stabilization, Rail inspection, Rail routing, Railroad crossings, Tank car design

Reroute oil trains? History suggests it’s a long shot

Repost from The Star Tribune, Minneapolis MN

Reroute oil trains? History suggests it’s a long shot

By Jim Spencer, March 21, 2015 – 8:22 PM

Industry says reinforced cars on current routes are better than trying to avoid heavily populated areas.

A train carried Bakken oil past St. Paul. Federal rules say a single tanker car spill and fire would require a half-mile evacuation. Photo: Star Tribune

WASHINGTON – Last week, U.S. Sen. Al Franken asked the Federal Railroad Administration to consider rerouting trains carrying volatile Bakken crude oil from North Dakota so they do not pass through Minnesota’s biggest cities.

For Franken, the possibility of rerouting is an integral part of a comprehensive response to a recent rash of fiery oil train derailments that also includes stabilizing Bakken crude before it is loaded into stronger tanker cars.

For the nation’s powerful railroad lobby, however, rerouting is an unwarranted intrusion into a rail safety system that the industry says works.

Government-ordered rerouting of private rail traffic is not exactly a snowball in hell. It is more like a blizzard in Bahrain — possible, but unprecedented.

In Minnesota and around the country, “rerouting issues ought to be high on everyone’s agenda,” said rail safety expert Fred Millar, who fought unsuccessfully against railroads to move chlorine trains out of the District of Columbia. “But rerouting has been pushed off the table.”

Congress created the Federal Railroad Administration in 1966. In nearly half a century it does not appear to have forced any railroads to reroute trains around big cities for safety reasons, despite computer modeling that estimates routing changes could lower citizens’ risks to hazardous materials derailments by 25 to 50 percent and reduce casualties in an actual derailment by half.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) last week estimated that 326,170 state residents live within a half-mile of rail routes that carry oil from North Dakota across Minnesota. A half-mile is the federal emergency response evacuation zone required in the event of a single tanker car spill and fire. Multiple-car fires require up to a mile evacuation.

MnDOT data shows that 156,316 of the Minnesotans subject to evacuation in an oil train derailment live in the Twin Cities metro area. Most North Dakota oil trains enter Minnesota at Moorhead, then travel on BNSF Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway tracks into the Twin Cities before turning south along the Mississippi River and east across Wisconsin. A few oil trains travel through western Minnesota into Iowa.

Although the National Transportation Safety Board has backed rerouting in some circumstances, federal laws passed in 2007 grant private rail companies wide latitude in determining when and where trains should move, even trains carrying hazardous materials.

Canadian Pacific did not comment specifically on rerouting trains in Minnesota, but in an e-mail to the Star Tribune, the railroad said it has voluntarily complied with the federal government’s Crude by Rail Safety Initiatives and performed “route risk assessments.”

BNSF, the largest crude-by-rail hauler out of North Dakota, declined to comment on rerouting and referred questions to the rail industry’s major trade group, the Association of American Railroads.

An AAR spokesman said the industry opposes re-routing oil trains because the existing routes are the safest, even when they pass through urban areas. The industry supports more structurally secure tanker cars, track inspections and training of emergency response teams, said AAR media relations director Ed Greenberg.

BNSF also has invested heavily in track improvements to increase safety along its existing Minnesota oil train routes.

“We’re using routing technology called the Rail Corridor Risk Management System developed by the federal government,” Greenberg said. The technology measures 27 factors — including population density — to determine the safest route for moving hazardous materials, including crude oil, Greenberg said.

“Rerouting isn’t the answer,” he maintained. “All it has accomplished in the past is to force rail traffic through other communities on tracks not built to accommodate products like crude oil.”

The Federal Railroad Administration declined to discuss rerouting oil trains in Minnesota. In an e-mail statement, acting administrator Sarah Feinberg said of Franken’s request: “Over the past 18 months we have taken more than a dozen actions to enhance the safe transport of crude oil while working on a comprehensive rule that is now in its final stages of development.”

The state has little say in the rerouting debate. “The railroads are regulated by the federal government,” Minnesota Department of Transportation spokesman Kevin Gutknecht said. “The state does not have the authority to move, or reroute, rail lines.”

Rerouting trains away from the Twin Cities is not part of a rail safety initiative unveiled March 13 by Gov. Mark Dayton. That proposal calls for spending $330 million over 10 years, much of it in greater Minnesota, mainly to make road-rail crossings safer and to improve emergency response.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Fire

Expert on first responder decisions to ‘let it burn’

[Editor: I recently received an email from Fred Millar, a well-known independent consultant and expert on chemical safety and railroad transportation.  Millar gives convincing and documented testimony that many first responders admit they do not have the skills and equipment needed to address a major derailment and explosion of a train carrying hazardous materials such as Bakken crude.  Here he addresses the tactic of “letting it burn itself out.”  Reprinted here with permission.  – RS]

Fred Millar on emergency response:

NTSB Rail Safety Forum 4.23.2014 (webcast at 8min05sec)_opt
Testimony at NTSB Rail Safety Forum April 23, 2014: Decision to Let Burn, (webcast at 8min05sec), http://ntsb.capitolconnection.org/042314/ntsb_archive_flv.htm

I recently commented on Emergency Response capabilities and cited some of the most authoritative sources I rely on regarding the impossibility of any effective ER to a crude oil unit train derailment:

I viewed online and transcribed for interested parties some parts of the NTSB Safety Forum in April, 2014.   One early session involved first-hand analyses of accidents and unchallenged authoritative judgments by prominent US Fire Chiefs [one representing the International Association of Fire Chiefs] and emergency planning representatives  asserting that they cannot handle a major flammables unit train derailment. which they said was “way beyond our current capabilities.”  [See video webscast, note presentation at 7:50]

Instead, they conceded that all they could implement were “defensive firefighting tactics,” i.e., evacuate to a safe distance.  The Federal government recommends a 1/2 mile evacuation and isolation distance in the Guide 128 of the venerable DOT Emergency Response Guidebook.  This guideline is based on only one railcar of crude oil involved in a fire, hardly a reflection of real-world accidents already experienced.  Since many experienced accidents have involved many railcars and unit trains on average have 100+ cars, some fire chiefs and emergency managers with crude oil unit train traffic are doing their pre-planning based on potential evacuation zones of 1/2 and 1 mile on each side of the tracks [e.g., statement by Seattle Emergency Management director Barb Graff] or even have pre-loaded their fire service vehicles with GIS maps showing emergency zones of 1/2, 1, 2, and 5-miles [e.g., James City County VA].

The US DOT Emergency Response Guidebook says both ethanol and crude oil trains are “highly flammable and explosive” under some conditions.  The main danger is not so much a “blast,” not technically speaking an explosion of a whole tank car, and the damages at Lac-Megantic were not mainly from blast.  The main risk is extensive fire and fireball events [which can feel to survivors like blasts on their faces] involving first the most volatile components of the cargo and then the main railcar cargo itself ———“rivers of fire”.

[I could elaborate and quote here from the cf UIUC academic study….]

Some US fire chiefs and emergency managers, who almost always prefer to maintain that their communities are “prepared” for even serious emergencies, have asserted [irresponsibly, I would maintain] that with adequate regional cooperation to combine strategically pre-positioned trailers with stocks of fire-fighting foam, they could “fight” crude oil train derailment fire events.   The Pittsburg CA Fire Department [crude oil unit train unloading project proposed] and the Boston MA metropolitan area fire chiefs [ongoing ethanol unit train shipments] thus recently separately submitted wish lists of  the different types of foam supplies needed for laying down a smothering blanket on relatively quiet and level crude oil or ethanol pool fires [useless for burning and exploding tank cars or raging “rivers of fire”], and for fixed foam spraying equipment at the unloading terminals and mobile foam vehicles for the line haul communities.  Along with desired training, etc., the chiefs estimated the cost at $1.2 million in the Boston case.

But in several post-Lac-Mégantic forums [again, see the NTSB Safety Forum, beginning around 8:40 on the webcast of Day Two] and in many media articles, the majority of fire service experts have been clear that the ongoing crude oil rail disasters are beyond their capabilities to handle.  “Even with an infinite amount of costly foam”, letting them burn is the only sensible approach (and this is what was done in all the major crude oil disasters in North America).  They note that major derailments would require enormous amounts of foam, there is not enough water to apply it especially in rural areas, and anyway, [from 1/2 mile distance or more] they cannot get close enough to the fires to apply it.  Derailments in urban areas would pose significant operating risks that go well beyond current operational capabilities for emergency responders.

Crude By Rail, Draft EIR, Valero Benicia Refinery

Highly critical reviews at close of public comment period: Valero DEIR fatally flawed

Check out these AMAZING critiques of Valero’s Draft EIR.

Here in Benicia on Friday, September 15, the final day of the public comment period, we congratulated Benicians For a Safe and Healthy Community’s DEIR subcommittee for their extraordinary effort – it’s long, but you have to at least scan through it a bit.  Incredible detail and thoroughness, representing untold hours of expert volunteer labor!

If that wasn’t enough, as the day went by we were astounded when we received copies of critical comments from nearby environmental groups.  In light of these studies, no one will be surprised if the City and Valero choose to re-write and recirculate the document.  Some are saying Valero might simply withdraw the proposal.  These highly technical reviews are overwhelming, and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Valero’s DEIR is fatally flawed.  See below…  (note: many of these are very large downloads – please be patient!)

A number of individuals also submitted comments and questions at the close of the comment period.  These will be made available on our Project Review page when they are collated and published by the City.