Repost from MSNBC, Rachel Maddow Show [Editor: Incredible video footage of two early October train crashes, and excellent Rachel Maddow commentary. (Live video of the train crash at minute 2:10.) Apologies for the 20-second commercial ad that precedes the video. – RS]
Rachel Maddow reports on a train derailment and subsequent fire in Canada, which follows on the heels of a dramatic train crash in Louisiana as the oil and rail industries try to push back the deadline for new federal safetly requirements.
Repost from The Canadian Press [Editor: Every source I can find uses the phrase “petroleum distillates,” but no source further identifies the substance that caught fire and exploded. Is this a “news blackout”? …OCTOBER 8 UPDATE (CBC News) “According to the provincial government, of the six cars carrying hazardous materials, two had sodium hydroxide and two had hydrochloric acid. The other two had petroleum distillates, which included a Varsol-type substance.” …Still pretty sketchy.
Later follow-up reports:
Saskatchewan derailment cars same as Lac Megantic MetroNews Canada–Oct 9, 2014 WADENA, Sask. – CN Rail says the tanker cars that derailed and caught fire this week near a small community in Saskatchewan are the same type as those …
Train derails in central Saskatchewan; village evacuated
By Clare Clancy, October 7, 2014
A CN freight train carrying dangerous goods derailed in central Saskatchewan, near the town of Wadena, on Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2014. (The Canadian Press/Liam Richards)
WADENA, Sask. — A CN freight train carrying dangerous goods derailed in central Saskatchewan Tuesday sending plumes of thick black smoke into the air and displacing residents of a tiny nearby hamlet.
The derailment happened near the community of Clair, which has a population of about 50. Police told those people to leave their homes and also evacuated farms near the scene.
CN spokesman Jim Feeny said the train was made up of three locomotives pulling 100 rail cars and that 26 of them derailed.
He said the fire came from petroleum distillates, which spilled from two of the derailed cars.
The fire had “diminished” as of Tuesday evening, Feeny said, but was still burning.
Clair is about 190 kilometres east of Saskatoon near the community of Wadena.
Alison Squires, who is the publisher of the Wadena News, went to the fire and said she has never seen anything like it in the 13 years she has lived in the area.
“I’ve seen derailments, but this is a pretty bad one,” she said. “You could see … this huge plume of black smoke. When I got there, there was a small explosion. The smoke is too thick to see what cars are involved.”
She added that there was a detour going north to pass the derailment, but not one going south.
“They are assuming the smoke is toxic,” she said.
A witness told radio station CKOM that the flames were at least 30 meters high at one point.
“The smoke is blowing from west to east and there is quite a bit of it,” Peter Baran told the station as he watched the fire from a highway.
Pictures from the scene suggested the derailment took place in a sparsely populated area. They showed the smoke billowing high into the sky.
The Transportation Safety Board said it was deploying a team of investigators to the site. CN sent in a hazardous materials team to clean up the area.
The railway industry has been under increased scrutiny since July 2013, when 47 people died after a train carrying oil derailed and exploded in downtown Lac-Megantic, Que.
Adam Scott, a spokesman for the advocacy group Environmental Defence, said Canada is experiencing a boom in the use of railways to transport petroleum products.
“The freight rail lines actually go right through the centre of almost every major urban centre in the entire country including small towns, communities across the country, so the risk of accidents is significant,” he said.
“The government has introduced measures, but they don’t go nearly far enough in terms of safety.”
He said rail companies are not required to publicly disclose the types of hazardous materials being transported on trains.
“It’s unacceptable,” he said. “The municipalities themselves, the communities have no power, no control, and in this case no information even over what’s being run through the rail lines.”
In August, the Transportation Safety Board issued a report into the Lac-Megantic tragedy that called for improved safety measures and cited inadequate oversight by Transport Canada. One of the criticisms brought forward was a lack of inspections.
Harry Gow, president of advocacy group Transport Action Canada, said the derailment in Saskatchewan shows the need for more inspectors.
“I would say that if one wants to ensure safety in moving hazardous goods, one has to have inspectors who are empowered to do the work, that are trained to do more than just check the company’s paperwork, and are sufficiently numerous and well-resourced to get out on the ground and see what’s going on,” he said.
“The incident in Saskatchewan today is fortunately not occurring in a large town,” he said. “But that doesn’t excuse the lack of oversight by Transport Canada.”
MER ROUGE, La. (KNOE 8 News) – Tuesday 10/7 update: KNOE 8 News has learned that the two railroad employees injured in Sunday’s train derailment are now both being treated for their injuries in a Shreveport hospital.
Mer Rouge Police Chief Mitch Stevens says the train engineer has a compound fracture to his leg and some bumps and bruises. The chief says the conductor has numerous broken ribs. He had surgery to remove his spleen and heart surgery related to the broken ribs.
KNOE 8 News is back in Mer Rouge Tuesday continuing to work on this story and what possibly may be done to make this crossing safer.KNOE 8 News; KNOE-TV; KNOE.com |
Previous Story:
MER ROUGE, La. (KNOE 8 News)- KNOE has received some dramatic video from the train accident that took place Sunday in Mer Rouge.
It was shot by a couple waiting at the tracks as the tractor trailer struggled to get off.
We want to remind you this was not fatal and all involved are in stable condition.
Crystal Carter is a sales clerk at the gas station right next to the tracks where this train derailed, she saw it all happen.
She remembers hearing loud bang when the train hit the trailer.
“When I saw that everybody started running and everything and everything else just piled up back here. I was so scared I was frozen I didn’t know what to do,” Crystal said.
Crystal says she has seen this happen before, in the very same spot. The last time the bang wasn’t so loud.
Crystal says some improvements should be made at the crossing.
“I believe it’s really time to get that fixed because it’s to low. for somebody to be coming through here in a truck,” Crystal said.
“We’ve had three fatalities down here at this other crossing and this is the second 18 wheeler crash we have had right here,” Mer Rouge Police Chief Mitch Stephens said.
Initially homes around the the crash were evacuated. Once it was determined the leaking argon posed no threat, residents were allowed to go home and clean-up began.
“We’ve had louisiana hazmat here. we’ve had the department of environmental equality. We’ve had the Governors Office of Homeland Security. We’ve had state police that has been assisting,” Stephens said.
Chief Stephens says the tracks are scheduled to reopen Tuesday. A full clean-up will take several more days.
Crystal hopes something can be done to keep this from happening again.
She says this time no one died, but it may be a different story next time.
Concerned about safety, California to inspect railroad bridges for first time
By Tony Bizjak, Oct. 6, 2014
Support beams are rusted underneath the Muir Trestle Bridge at Alhambra. Jose Carlos Fajardo / Bay Area News Group
For more than a century, California has relied on assurances from railroad companies that thousands of rail bridges across the state, from spindly trestles in remote canyons to iron workhorses in urban areas, are safe and well-maintained to handle heavy freight traffic.
That era of trust is over. Concerned about the growing number of trains traversing the state filled with crude oil and other hazardous materials, the California Public Utilities Commission is launching its first railroad bridge inspection program this fall. Federal officials say it will be the first state-run review of privately owned rail bridges in the country.
The goal, the PUC says, is to end what a recent report called the “dearth of information on the structural integrity of California’s railroad bridges.” Almost all train bridges in the state are owned and maintained by private railroads. Federal rules require railroads to inspect those bridges annually.
One of those private bridges, the 103-year-old I Street Bridge in downtown Sacramento, sits in the heart of a heavily populated area, straddles an important public waterway, and also carries thousands of cars daily. Another, the dramatic Clear Creek Trestle in the Feather River Canyon, carries trains through remote, rugged terrain where the risk of derailment is relatively high. Both bridges are expected to be conduits for increased hazardous material shipments.
“I don’t mean to criticize the railroads’ programs, but for the public to have the confidence that bridges are in good shape, our role is to offer oversight,” said PUC Rail Safety Deputy Director Paul King. “Given the heightened risk of one of these crude oil trains derailing and given the projections of a significant increase in tonnage across these bridges, we need to fulfill this role.”
It will be a limited program, however. The PUC, which is responsible for assuring safe rail systems in California, is hiring two bridge inspectors this fall for the massive task of verifying the integrity of an estimated 5,000 bridges statewide. Those inspectors are expected to conduct visual inspections at bridges and to audit railroad companies’ inspection and maintenance programs.
They are among seven new rail safety division inspectors being hired from funds allocated this summer by Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration and state legislators. The funding is a direct result of growing fears at the state Capitol and in cities along the rail lines about the potential for derailments and explosions as more crude oil trains begin rolling through the state. A crude oil train explosion last year in Canada killed 47 people.
The other new hires will be used to bolster existing utilities commission teams of track, equipment and train inspectors. Track and rail car inspections are one of the few regulatory functions states are allowed in dealing with railroads, working in conjunction with the Federal Railroad Administration, which maintains regulatory control over rail operations nationally.
The launch of a bridge inspection program comes amid ongoing criticism of the PUC after a catastrophic 2010 gas line explosion in San Bruno in which eight people were killed and 38 homes destroyed. Critics say the PUC wasn’t adequately overseeing Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s pipeline maintenance and inspection efforts. The National Transportation Safety Board cited “CPUC’s failure to detect the inadequacies of PG&E’s pipeline integrity management program.”
Mindy Spatt of The Utility Reform Network, a consumer advocacy group and PUC watchdog, said she is not familiar with the rail bridge inspection program, but that the commission needs to be proactive and independent to protect the public.
“We would hope one thing the PUC has learned is its job is not to trust utility companies, but to oversee them,” Spatt said. “When the PUC doesn’t do its job, there can be really disastrous results.”
Bridge failures are rare, safety officials say, but consequences are potentially huge. The largest chemical spill in California history, in Dunsmuir in 1991, involved a train derailment on the curving Cantara Loop bridge that poisoned more than 40 miles of the Sacramento River. The bridge structure did not fail, but it has since undergone major modifications to reduce chances of another derailment.
The PUC bridge inspection program faces a notable upfront challenge. The commission does not yet have a comprehensive list of railroad bridges in the state, and may struggle to come up with one that includes detailed design specifications and load capacities on all bridges. PUC officials are negotiating with Union Pacific and BNSF railroads to gain access to their in-house bridge inventories.
To help fill out its inventory, the PUC said it may resort to Google searches, including tapping an amateur bridge fan website, www.bridgehunter.com.
The two bridge inspectors likely will work as a team. PUC officials calculate that the two of them can view two bridges a day, two days a week. The other three days will be for travel and report writing. “At a rate of 98 bridges per year, it would take approximately 50 years to complete inspections,” the PUC said in a report last month on its bridge review plans.
Those numbers are “intimidating,” but the job is not as improbable as it seems, King said. The PUC inspectors, like federal bridge inspectors, will serve largely in a safety review role, making sure the railroad companies are doing their jobs. Although they will visit bridges and look them over, they will not have the time or equipment to conduct full, detailed inspections.
“This is an oversight situation,” King said. “We are looking at the railroads’ inspection program, trying to verify it. Our inspectors’ role is to do spot checks. We may find that we need more inspectors. It is hard to tell at this point. We are plowing new ground.”
For their part, Union Pacific and BNSF, the state’s two major railroads, say they spend substantial time and money making sure bridges are in good shape. Union Pacific said it has six full-time, two-person crews supported by more than 50 bridge maintenance employees in California.
“Safety is just as important to Union Pacific as it is to anyone,” the railroad said in an email. “Our hope is that the CPUC continues to recognize and support this important element of our safe and efficient freight transportation efforts.”
BNSF officials say they inspect their 1,100 railway bridges in California two or three times a year, more than required by the Federal Railroad Administration, as well as after major events such as earthquakes and storms.
“BNSF is committed to ensuring that we operate on a safe and reliable rail network and therefore invests millions of operating and capital dollars annually into routine and major rehabilitation, repair, and upgrading of railway bridges and structures in California,” BNSF spokeswoman Lena Kent said in an email.
The PUC plans to come up with a priority list by year’s end of 30 key bridges for initial visits next year. This list will include bridges that have the highest probability of failure based on age, materials, design, traffic and other risk factors, such as proximity to an earthquake fault. The PUC will merge that list with an analysis of which bridges have the highest potential for negative outcomes if they fail. Those may include bridges used frequently by trains carrying hazardous materials, as well as bridges near schools, hospitals and population centers.
The calculation also will include bridges that cross sensitive waterways, such as the Feather, American and Sacramento rivers that carry drinking water for Northern California.
PUC officials say they hope to have inspectors looking at the first 10 to 15 bridges in the first half of 2015. The rest in the priority group would be inspected by the end of 2015.
A Federal Railroad Administration official said his agency welcomes California’s decision to inspect bridges.
“California already has the largest involvement in our safety program and we welcome the addition of more state assistance,” said spokesman Michael Booth. “It’s what we call a force multiplier.”
