Repost from KETV 7 News, Omaha, NE [Editor: Note that “empty” tank cars are NOT empty, and remain volatile and dangerous. A “residue train” of 50 or 100 “empties” returning along the same tracks as arriving full trains would seem to DOUBLE the associated risk of derailment and explosion. … KMTV 3 News features witness comments, including one who described the flames after the boom: “I wouldn’t call it a ball – it looked more like a torch.” (…at minute 1:22 of the video) – RS]
At least one TWO dead after explosion at Omaha rail yard
Apr 14, 2015, 5:31 PM
Click to go to video on KETV website
OMAHA, Neb. — UPDATE: We’re learning more about a fatal explosion in a tank car at an Omaha rail yard Tuesday.
By Tuesday night, officials confirmed two men who were cleaning the tank car had died in the blast near Second and Hickory streets.
EARLIER: At least one person was hurt in a possible explosion Tuesday.
Emergency crews were sent to the area of Second and Hickory streets around 1:30 p.m. First responders found one man lying on the ground outside the tank car. He was taken in extremely critical condition to CHI Health Creighton University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Battalion Chief Tim McCaw said the explosion blew a ladder off the tank car that the workers had been cleaning, trapping a second worker inside. His condition is not known, officials said.
Fire crews were waiting for toxic limits to subside before entering the tank car; however, at this point, McCaw said it will likely be a recovery operation.
The identities of the victims have not yet been released.
GE Capital Rail Services issued the following statement Tuesday:
“We can confirm there was an accident on a track at a railcar repair shop that we operate in Omaha on Tuesday, April 14. We are not in a position to provide details of what caused the incident at this time as an investigative team is on their way to the site to assess the situation. Right now we are focused on the safety of those in the shop and our thoughts and sympathies are with those who were affected by this unfortunate accident.”
Rules on oil train, pipeline safety not moving fast enough, lawmakers say
By Curtis Tate, McClatchy Washington Bureau, April 14, 2015
A chorus of lawmakers expressed frustration Tuesday with the delays in approving and implementing various regulations related to the movement of hazardous materials by rail and pipeline.
The acting chiefs of two U.S. Department of Transportation agencies heard Republicans and Democrats in the House Transportation Committee complain that rules on railroad tank cars and oil and gas pipelines had been on the table for as long as four years.
“It’s just unacceptable,” said Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials.
Sarah Feinberg of the Federal Railroad Administration and Tim Butters of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration noted that they have little choice but to work within a multi-step process that involves public comment, industry participation and multiple layers of review by the White House Office of Management and Budget.
“It’s not built for speed,” Feinberg testified. “I wish that it was.”
Butters said that his agency had received 30,000 comments on its proposed rule to improve the safety of oil trains. He said the agency needed to evaluate them as part of its process.
“We have to go through all of those,” he said. “And that takes time.”
But a series of train derailments and pipeline failures in recent years has caught the attention of members of Congress, who are hearing concerns from their constituents.
“That’s just an excuse,” said Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., the panel’s chairman. “Four years is too long.”
Last week, Feinberg visited Denham’s district in Central California to discuss pending rules on the construction of tank cars used to carry flammable liquids, the way the trains are operated and the way the tracks are inspected and maintained.
She also visited the Sacramento-area district of Rep. John Garamendi, a Democrat who last month introduced legislation to regulate the volatility of crude oil loaded into tank cars. Texas and North Dakota, the nation’s leading oil producers, currently set such limits.
Garamendi proposed that the committee write the new rules into the larger surface transportation bill Congress needs to pass this year.
“We could write laws that protect the public,” he said. “Why don’t we do that?”
Acts of Congress don’t always make things go faster. In 2008, lawmakers mandated that railroads install a GPS-based collision-avoidance system called Positive Train Control by the end of 2015. But the nation’s freight and passenger railroads are likely to miss the Dec. 31 deadline.
Once the new oil train rules become final, it could take years to retrofit or replace tens of thousands of tank cars used to transport the country’s supply of crude oil and ethanol.
As a sign of how slowly the process moves, Capuano noted that BNSF, the nation’s biggest hauler of crude oil in trains, has gotten ahead of regulators by voluntarily lowering train speeds, increasing track inspections and encouraging shippers to use better tank cars.
“Whose butt do we have to kick?” he asked. “Whose budget do we have to cut? Whose budget do we have to enhance to make this work?”
State House bill: Report volume, contents of oil trains
By Joel Connelly, April 14, 2015
A bill that would require “comprehensive reporting” of the volume and specific contents of oil trains crossing Washington was passed on a bipartisan vote by the state House of Representatives on Tuesday.
Oil tanker cars derailed under the Magnolia Bridge. No harm done, but not the case elsewhere.
The legislation goes to the Republican-run state Senate, where key committee chairs enjoy much closer relationships with railroads and oil refiners.
“The House has passed these urgently needed policies with bipartisan support, twice. Delay on the part of the Senate is unacceptable,” said Joan Crooks, CEO of the Washington Environmental Council and Washington Conservation Voters.
(Washington Conservation Voters tried in 2014 to defeat several oil industry allies in the Senate, but lost every high-profile race.)
The legislation, passed on a 58-40 vote, requires that shippers and receivers give cargo data to first responders, but goes further and establishes a website for members of the public to access the information.
Washington Fire Chiefs, in letters sent last month to railroads, asked BNSF, Union Pacific and Canadian National to supply “Comprehensive Emergency Response Plans” and “Worst Case Scenarios” on an oil train accident.
BNSF has responded by offering the chiefs a meeting.
If there is such a response plan or plans, “I haven’t seen it,” new Seattle Fire Chief Harold Skoggins told a news conference with Sen. Maria Cantwell and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray last week.
“It would be nice were there a system created where we would be notified when this material is traveling through our city,” Skoggins added.
The railroads have been reticent about releasing cargo information, citing national security concerns and privately voicing fear of protests.
A fire burns Monday, Feb. 16, 2015, after a train derailment near Charleston, W.Va. Nearby residents were told to evacuate as state emergency response and environmental officials headed to the scene. (AP Photo/The Register-Herald, Steve Keenan)
BNSF has, however, released information on the upgrading of tracks and investment in newer, safer oil tanker cars.
The House legislation goes further, directing rule making for such measures as tug escorts when hazardous cargoes are transported by water. It directs the state to inspect rail crossings and push for repairs.
And it would require oil companies to pay for increased oil spill prevention, preparedness and response.
Just two and a half years have passed since the first oil train, carrying Bakken crude oil from North Dakota, passed through Seattle en route to refineries in northern Puget Sound.
The state now sees about 19 oil trains a week. At least a dozen pass along the Seattle waterfront, through a mile-long tunnel, and past the stadium homes of the Seattle Seahawks, Seattle Mariners and Seattle Sounders.
The BNSF has trained Seattle firefighters on oil tanker cars brought to a site in Interbay. But any serious fire would require a major response from numerous fire departments.
The legislation in Olympia has been inspired, in part, by the long delay in getting new oil train safety rules — such as getting old, unsafe tanker cars off the tracks — out of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The U.S. and Canada have seen a series of oil train fires in recent months. A runaway train wiped out the center of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing 47 people. A train blew up near New Casselton, North Dakota, luckily in an unpopulated area. In February, there were major accidents and fires in West Virginia, Illinois and Ontario.
Sen. Cantwell is sponsoring federal legislation that would require railroads and oil companies to disclose routes and vapor content of trains to first responders.
Eventually, the senator warned last week, Puget Sound population centers could see up to 16 trains a day.
Federal officials devise scenario involving a train explosion to prepare officials for the worst
By Russell Gold, April 13, 2015 7:54 p.m. ET
Oil trains traverse Jersey City, N.J., where officials are concerned about the potential for a spill. Photo: Joe Jackson/The Wall Street Journal
Imagine a mile-long train transporting crude oil derailing on an elevated track in Jersey City, N.J., across the street from senior citizen housing and 2 miles from the mouth of the Holland Tunnel to Manhattan.
The oil ignites, creating an intense explosion and a 300-foot fireball. The blast kills 87 people right away, and sends 500 more to the hospital with serious injuries. More than a dozen buildings are destroyed. A plume of thick black smoke spreads north to New York’s Westchester County.
This fictional—but, experts say, plausible—scenario was developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in one of the first efforts by the U.S. government to map out what an oil-train accident might look like in an urban area. Agency officials unveiled it as part of an exercise last month to help local firefighters and emergency workers prepare for the kind of crude-by-rail accident that until now has occurred mostly in rural locations.
“Our job is to design scenarios that push us to the limit, and very often push us to the point of failure so that we can identify where we need to improve,” said FEMA spokesman Rafael Lemaitre. He said a second planning exercise is scheduled in June in a suburban area of Wisconsin.
Jersey City’s mayor, Steven Fulop, said the drill showed participants that they need to improve regional communication to cope with an oil-train accident.
“It would be a catastrophic situation for any urban area and Jersey City is one of the most densely populated areas in the entire country,” he said.
Railroad records show that about 20 oil trains a week pass through the county that contains Jersey City, and Mr. Fulop said the trains use the elevated track studied in the FEMA exercise. Even more trains hauling crude pass through other cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia and Minneapolis.
Rail shipments of oil have expanded to almost 374 million barrels last year from 20 million barrels in 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Although low crude prices and safety issues have recently led to small declines in such traffic, trains carrying volatile oil from North Dakota and the Rocky Mountains continue to rumble toward refiners on the East, West and Gulf Coasts.
Edgardo Correa, of Jersey City, N.J., beneath railroad tracks that pass by his home. Photo: Joe Jackson/The Wall Street Journal
Several oil-train derailments have produced huge fireballs, including two in March in rural Illinois and Ontario. In 2013, a train carrying North Dakota crude derailed late at night in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing 47 people.
Regulators worry more about a serious accident in a densely populated area. “The derailment scenario FEMA developed is a very real possibility and a very real concern,” said Susan Lagana, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Transportation. She said her agency was considering emergency orders to address such risks.
Firefighters at the FEMA workshop in Jersey City discussed the difficulty of battling a crude-oil fire, which can be explosive and hard to extinguish. One problem: limited supplies of the special foam required to smother the flames.
Jordan Zaretsky, a fire battalion chief in nearby Teaneck, N.J., who attended the presentation, said the scale of such an accident was sobering. “This isn’t a structural fire that we can knock down in an hour or two,” he said. “This is something we’d be dealing with for days.”
Ideas discussed at the workshop included devising a system to allow local officials to know when an oil train was passing through, developing public-service messages to tell residents what to do in case of a derailment and providing more firefighters with specialized training.
There have been many calls for changes to how crude oil is handled on the railroads, including new speed limits for trains and requirements to treat the crude oil to make it less volatile.
Earlier this month, the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board urged the rail industry and federal regulators to move more swiftly to replace existing tank cars with ones that would better resist rupturing and fire.
A spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group for oil producers, said the companies are committed to “greater efforts to prevent derailments through track maintenance and repair, upgrades to the tank car fleet, and giving first responders the knowledge and tools they need.”
The Association of American Railroads recognizes that “more has to be done to further advance the safe movement of this product,” a spokesman said.
FEMA chose for the location of the derailment scenario a stretch of track adjacent to the New Jersey Turnpike and about a mile from downtown Jersey City. One side of the track is industrial and includes an electric substation. The other side is residential.
Edgardo Correa, a 59-year-old retired sanitation worker, lives in a house close to the tracks in Jersey City. He said he was aware that trains full of crude pass by his home. “It’s an alarming thing,” he said.
Emergency crews were sent to the area of Second and Hickory streets around 1:30 p.m. First responders found one man lying on the ground outside the tank car. He was taken in extremely critical condition to CHI Health Creighton University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
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