Tag Archives: Amtrak

After Passenger Train Derailment in Philadelphia Kills At Least 7, Attention Turns to Oil-by-Rail Hazards

Repost from DeSmogBlog
[Editor:  As of Thursday evening 5/14, the death toll was increased to eight.  – RS]

After Passenger Train Derailment in Philadelphia Kills At Least 7, Attention Turns to Oil-by-Rail Hazards

This morning, investigators continue to search for missing Amtrak passengers, possibly thrown from a major train derailment and wreck in northeast Philadelphia Tuesday night. Already the casualty toll is one of the worst in recent memory, with at least seven people dead and over 200 injured after Amtrak’s Northeast Regional Train No. 188, carrying 258 passengers, derailed.

“I’ve never seen anything so devastating,” Philadelphia Fire Department Deputy Commissioner Jesse Wilson told NBC News yesterday.

For some of those living nearby, the Amtrak collision was also a grim reminder of another – even more dangerous – hazard on the rails.

“I feel lucky that wasn’t an oil train last night,” Joseph Godfrey, a retiree who lives two blocks from the crash site, told CNBC.

Between 45 and 80 oil trains – each a chain of tankers that can stretch over a mile long – roll through Philadelphia’s densely populated neighborhoods every week, mostly heading to a South Philadelphia refinery that is the nation’s biggest single consumer of the notoriously explosive crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken shale. More than 400,000 Philadelphians, and an additional 300,000 in neighboring suburbs, live within a half-mile of tracks traveled by oil trains – and a half-mile represents the evacuation zone for an oil train derailment, according to federal regulators.

Alll told, over 25 million Americans nationwide live within a half-mile of oil train tracks, one 2014 analysis found.

Locals say that tanker cars carrying oil traverse the section of tracks where the Amtrak wreck occurred daily. The Amtrak train was travelling along the Northeast Corridor, where passenger trains often share the same rails as oil trains. At the site of the derailment, oil trains run on tracks parallel to Amtrak’s rails – and in fact, the Amtrak train may have come perilously close to striking oil tankers.

Photos from the time of the accident posted on Twitter appear to show the Amtrak train came within feet of tanker cars that were stopped on tracks parallel to the passenger rails.

“It missed that parked tanker by maybe 50 yards,” Scott Lauman, who lives near the wreck site, told CBS. “An Amtrak guy came by and he was telling me it turns out those tankers are full, and if that engine would’ve hit that tanker, it would’ve set off an explosion like no other.”

Robert Sumwalt, an official representing the National Transportation Safety Board, told reporters at a Wednesday press conference the agency was told the tankers were not completely full, but did not say whether that meant they carried no crude oil or whether they were only partially full. He added that he had not verified independently how full the cars were.

The issue drew the attention of the state’s top executive, as he visited the derailment site yesterday. Pennsylvania’s Governor Tom Wolf called the nearby tanker cars “a cause of additional concern.”

And oil train activists say that the Amtrak crash could potentially have been avoided if federal regulations requiring automated speed controls had gone into effect earlier – but instead, the federal government has allowed train companies to delay installing those controls.

Just one day after Tuesday’s wreck, the American Petroleum Institute filed a lawsuit challenging new federal safety standards for oil trains.

Although investigators are still combing through the wreckage looking for a full explanation of the cause of the wreck, speed seems to have been a major factor in the disaster. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the Amtrak train that derailed was going 106 miles per hour, twice the speed limit, as it made its way around a curve that was the site of one of the deadliest railway accidents in U.S. history, a September 6, 1943 passenger train crash that killed 79 and injured 117.

The Amtrak train was equipped with Positive Train Control (PTC) equipment, that would use GPS data to automatically slow trains going over federal speed limits, but the section of track where the derailment occurred had not yet been upgraded to allow the PTC technology to work.

“A faster pace to implement federal rules requiring Positive Train Control systems on Class 1 tracks with commuter trains and high volumes of freight might have made the difference in this accident,” Matt Krogh, director of the Extreme Oil Campaign at ForestEthics, told DeSmog.

Already in Philadelphia, where a refinery surrounded by residential neighborhoods is the nation’s top destination for notoriously explosive Bakken crude, oil trains have derailed twice since January 2014. In one incident, cars filled with oil derailed on a bridge and dangled over the Schuylkill river and prompted the shutdown of a nearby expressway.

“The rapid rise of oil trains in Philadelphia and nationally parallels the rise in accidents and near misses,” Mr. Krogh told DeSmog.

“So far we’ve been lucky, but it’s just a matter of time until a major derailment happens in an urban center like Philadelphia.”

Flying Manhole Covers, Toxic Clouds

Suppose the Amtrak train that derailed had carried flammable material instead of passengers, and that flammable material ignited. An oil train explosion involves a series of escalating disasters, each posing unique dangers, particularly in urban environments.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the potential impact zone of an oil train explosion includes a one mile radius around the blast site.

Around 47,000 people live within a one-mile radius of Amtrak 188’s derailment, according to five-year estimates from the 2013 American Communities Survey.

A few blocks to the northwest is Holy Innocents Area Catholic Elementary School, which reports an enrollment of 287. A few blocks further north and toward Frankford Ave. is St. Mark’s Episcopal Church.

Map Credit: Jack Grauer, Spirit News

Let’s say there was [hazardous material] in those rail cars,” Jim Blaze, an economist and railroad consultant told NPR.   “If the cars cracked open, it could have been an explosive force and caused a chain reaction. What would the casualty rate have been as a result? Could you imagine evacuating 750,000 people? What’s that going to cost? What’s the lost business revenue?”

The recent string of oil train derailments and fires – the Feb. 17 derailment in West Virginia , the March 9 derailment in Gogama, Ontario, the May 6 derailment in the 20-person town of Heimdal North Dakota – have occurred in rural areas, away not only from dense population centers but also from the infrastructure that undergirds cities and towns.

Because of the labyrinth of sewer systems and underground utility tunnels – not to mention other industrial sites – oil train explosions in a major US city would pose unique hazards. First responders would likely contend with a broad array of surprising dangers.

For example, in the 2013 oil train explosion in the Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, population 2,000, hazards were not limited to the fireball. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of Bakken crude oil – described not like the tar balls that washed onshore following the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, but as slightly less watery than vegetable oil – spilled through the streets and down into sewers.

Explosions from the fumes that built up in those tunnels blew manholes over 30 feet into the air, investigators found. Burning oil melted streetlamps, flowed into rivers and lakes, and soaked deep into the ground after it poured from the train.

Toxic clouds from the fumes also kept first responders at bay, limiting their ability to approach the wreck initially and then also keeping them from areas close to the crash site for days.

And then there’s the train car explosion itself – not only involving the burning of the 30,000 gallons of oil carried in each DOT-111 tanker car, but also what fire engineers call a BLEVE, standing for a Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion. As liquids in a metal tank boil, gasses build up, pressurizing the tank even despite relief valves designed to vent fumes. Tanks finally explode, throwing shrapnel great distances, and spitting out burning liquids that can start secondary blazes.

In the Lac Megantic disaster, 30 buildings were leveled by the blast, and officials said they believed some of the missing could have been vaporized in the explosions and fires. Hospital officials reported that emergency rooms were eerily empty following the blast. “You have to understand: there are no wounded,” one Red Cross volunteer told the local press at the time. “They’re all dead.”

In light of these hazards and many others – the risk of a domino-like series of subsequent disasters and spills if an explosion occurred in an industrial area – emergency planners often focus on evacuation.

Philadelphia’s emergency response plans in the event of a derailment and explosion have not been made public, local activist groups complain, prompting fears that the plans may not be sufficiently detailed.

‘No Traffic Cops’

Meanwhile, an increasing amount of oil is moving by train through one of America’s largest cities, as Philadelphia Energy Solutions purchased an old Sunoco refinery – first established in 1866, long before regulations made it nearly impossible to build new refineries in urban centers – and added the East Coast’s largest railcar unloading facility.

“We’re now the single largest buyer of crude from the Bakken in North Dakota,” Philip Rinaldi, the refinery’s chief executive, told a Drexel University conference last December. “We bring in nearly six miles of train a day for unloading at our facility.”

Unlike passenger trains, heavy axel trains like oil trains can cause rails to flex ever so slightly – prompting concerns that rails used by both oil trains and passenger trails could be at greater risk of broken welds or rails.

And damaged welds and rails are the number one cause of train derailments nationwide, Federal Railroad Administration data shows, responsible for rought 40 percent of overall derailments. This means that the sharp increase in oil train traffic could make it more likely that passenger trains using the same rails could crash.

Oil trains travel on parallel rails on the section of track where Amtrak 188 crashed – but over Amtrak’s entire Northeast Corridor, the nation’s most heavily traveled passenger railways, oil trains at times travel on the same rails as passenger trains.

With risks like these in mind, Philadelphia’s railroad unions called for tougher rules in April.

“The industry arrogantly claims they cannot afford to maintain the tracks to a higher safety standard,” Freddie N. Simpson, president of the Maintenance of Way Brotherhood, which represents workers who inspect and maintain railroads, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “My question to the nation is, Can we afford for them not to?”

Trains are generally required to run at slower speeds on tracks that are less frequently inspected.

But oil train activists point out that speed limit enforcement is left up to railroad companies themselves, meaning that there is no available data on how often trains exceed speed limits.

“There’s no tracking or recording,” Mr. Krogh told DeSmog, “there are no traffic cops on the rails.”

Public officials say that efforts to regulate oil trains locally to prevent explosions are hamstrung by the fact that train regulation up to the federal government. Philadelphia City Council passed a resolution in March urging the federal government to enact new rules – but can do little otherwise, local politicians say.

“It is very frustrating, because on a local level we have very limited powers to regulate the railways,”City Councilman Kenyatta Johnson told the Philadelphia Inquirer in February. “The federal government needs to step up. The Department of Transportation needs to do more to hold these railroads more accountable.”

Photo Credit: Joshua Albert, Spirit News

NPR: What’s in those tank cars near the Amtrak derailment?

Repost from State Impact Pennsylvania, NPR.org
[Editor:  Quote: “Conrail knows what’s in the cars on their tracks but considers it proprietary information, not to be revealed unless there’s an emergency.”  – RS]

What’s in those tank cars near the Amtrak derailment?

By Susan Phillips, May 13, 2015 | 6:12 PM

Emergency personnel work at the scene of a deadly train derailment, Wednesday, May 13, 2015, in Philadelphia. The Amtrak train, headed to New York City, derailed and crashed in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, killing at least six people and injuring dozens of others. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Emergency personnel work at the scene of a deadly train derailment, Wednesday, May 13, 2015, in Philadelphia. The Amtrak train, headed to New York City, derailed and crashed in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, killing at least six people and injuring dozens of others. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

News footage of the Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia Tuesday night shows nearby tank cars that look similar to the rail cars carrying crude oil or other hazardous material across the country each day. In aerial photos, it looks as if the Amtrak train, traveling at 100 miles an hour, nearly missed creating an even greater catastrophe, if it had struck an oil train, say, or a train carrying chlorine gas. Residents quickly took to twitter, wondering what about the content of those tank cars, and whether it was hazardous.

“This could be just one more in a litany of near misses,” said David Masur, director of PennEnvironment, an activist group working to ban oil trains.

It wouldn’t be far-fetched for a passenger rail car to collide with an oil train, dozens of oil trains run through the state on their way to Philadelphia and South Jersey refineries each week. In fact, Norfolk Southern runs oil trains on a track that runs above Amtrak lines, close to the derailment. Bakken crude oil from North Dakota crosses those lines daily, traveling across the Delaware river, and down to refineries in South Jersey. WHYY reporter Tom MacDonald says he saw the black tankers about 50 yards from the derailed Amtrak train.

But it’s still unclear what is in those tank cars.

“It could be corn oil, it could be very benign stuff,” said Conrail spokesman John Enright.

The accident occurred on Amtrak’s rail lines, but the scene is very close to a Conrail yard, which Enright says is used for local transport.

“I know the sensitivity to the whole crude oil situation,” said Enright. “One shouldn’t presume anything.”

Enright says Conrail knows what’s in the cars on their tracks but considers it proprietary information, not to be revealed unless there’s an emergency.

“If there was an incident then that information would be readily available to [first responders],” he said.

In this case, the Amtrak train did not hit any nearby freight cars, so the contents of the blank tankers remains a mystery.

Norfolk Southern, which operates the oil trains that cross the Amtrak line, did not respond to requests for comment. And the American Association of Railroads would also not comment on the freight rail traffic in the area. Philadelphia’s Office of Emergency Management would not comment on the contents, saying they were focusing on the accident itself.

But rail safety experts say the accident could have been much worse if the Amtrak train did hit those black tank cars, and if those cars were carrying explosive or flammable material.

A passenger is carried following an Amtrak train crash Tuesday, May 12, 2015, in Philadelphia. Train 188 was traveling from Washington to New York City. (AP Photo/Paul Cheung)
A passenger is carried following an Amtrak train crash Tuesday, May 12, 2015, in Philadelphia. Train 188 was traveling from Washington to New York City. (AP Photo/Paul Cheung)

Fred Millar is an independent rail safety expert.

“Having the oil train sitting there is not necessarily an undangerous situation,” said Millar.

Millar says, although it’s rare, trains have been known to run into each other. Federal investigators recently released a report about an oil train explosion in North Dakota in 2013, where the train hit a derailed freight train.

“One kind of industrial accident can set off another,” he said.

Not only would the death toll be higher, but the neighborhood would need to be evacuated.

Jim Blaze is an economist and railroad consultant who worked in the railroad industry for 30 years.

“Let’s say there was [hazardous material] in those rail cars,” said Blaze. “If the cars cracked open, it could have been an explosive force and caused a chain reaction. What would the casualty rate have been as a result? Could you imagine evacuating 750,000 people? What’s that going to cost? What’s the lost business revenue?”

Not only is it unclear what’s in those nearby tank cars. It’s unclear if Philadelphia’s first responders would be ready. The city’s Office of Emergency Management says it’s done exercises to prepare. But it’s not clear if the exercise has included passenger rail cars.

Pennsylvania’s Emergency Management Agency spokesman Cory Angell says that’s not a scenario he’s heard discussed.

Delaware County’s Office of Emergency Management says the risk of an Amtrak or regional rail line hitting an oil train is low because the passenger rail cars don’t run in close proximity to the oil trains as they do in Philadelphia. Ed Truitt runs Delco’s OEM.

“We’ve looked at a lot of different scenarios and that was never conceived as being a threat in Delaware County,” said Truitt.

Truitt says the rail cars only travel between midnight and 5 AM through the county.

Meanwhile, the American Petroleum Institute filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to block the implementation of new oil train safety rules.

 

Amtrak accident in Philadelphia: could’ve been much worse, the tank cars were full, missed by 50 yards

Repost from CNN [Editor:  The reporter interviews Scott Lauman, a nearby resident: “‘It missed that parked tanker by maybe 50 yards,’ he told KYW. ‘An Amtrak guy came by and he was telling me it turns out those tankers are full, and if that engine would’ve hit that tanker, it would’ve set off an explosion like no other.’”  NOTE: The videos only work on CNN’s website – see tweets, photos and video at CNN.com.  – RS]

Witness to Amtrak 188 crash: Train missed ‘tanker by maybe 50 yards’

By Eliott C. McLaughlin, Holly Yan and Don Melvin, CNN, May 13, 2015, 4:41 PM ET

Philadelphia Amtrak Crash 2015-05-12CNN1c(CNN) Rebecca Bibb awoke alongside the mangled Amtrak commuter train with no recollection of the carnage and chaos that had just unfolded.” The shoes, my shoes — are not my shoes. I lost my shoes. A lady gave me my shoes,” a distraught Bibb told CNN affiliate KYW. She recalls being on the train, in the third car from the back — and then, nothing. “I don’t remember anything. I did not hear any noise, did not see anything. When I started hearing people, I was on the side (of the crash scene), and someone told me I’d been delirious and that they had carried me off,” she told the station. When Amtrak Northeast Regional Train 188 derailed in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, it tore apart passenger cars, sending seven of them careening off the tracks. At least four toppled over, and some cars were smashed like aluminum cans. The rails were uprooted, and the badly damaged engine was left standing upright. At least seven people were killed and 200 more were sent to six area hospitals — some with critical injuries, authorities said. About 76 passengers were treated and released. Journalist Beth Davidz of Brooklyn was one of those fortunate enough to be released. To hear her Twitter feed tell it, she was on the phone when she boarded the train and thus chose not to sit in the “quiet car,” which was one of the most damaged in the wreck. Around 3 a.m., she tweeted she had been released from the hospital — “no wallet, one shoe, so grateful” — and later thanked CNN affiliate WPIX for helping her find a ride home. (CNN)Rebecca Bibb awoke alongside the mangled Amtrak commuter train with no recollection of the carnage and chaos that had just unfolded.”The shoes, my shoes — are not my shoes. I lost my shoes. A lady gave me my shoes,” a distraught Bibb told CNN affiliate KYW. She recalls being on the train, in the third car from the back — and then, nothing. “I don’t remember anything. I did not hear any noise, did not see anything. When I started hearing people, I was on the side (of the crash scene), and someone told me I’d been delirious and that they had carried me off,” she told the station. When Amtrak Northeast Regional Train 188 derailed in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, it tore apart passenger cars, sending seven of them careening off the tracks. At least four toppled over, and some cars were smashed like aluminum cans. The rails were uprooted, and the badly damaged engine was left standing upright. At least seven people were killed and 200 more were sent to six area hospitals — some with critical injuries, authorities said. About 76 passengers were treated and released. Journalist Beth Davidz of Brooklyn was one of those fortunate enough to be released. To hear her Twitter feed tell it, she was on the phone when she boarded the train and thus chose not to sit in the “quiet car,” which was one of the most damaged in the wreck. Around 3 a.m., she tweeted she had been released from the hospital — “no wallet, one shoe, so grateful” — and later thanked CNN affiliate WPIX for helping her find a ride home.

Speed a factor?

Scott Lauman, who lives in the Port Richmond neighborhood where the train crashed, told KYW that the tracks curve around a warehouse, and when the train reached the bend, “it looks like the engine just kept going straight, right off the curve, right down the hill and all of the cars just followed with it. And the engine was all the way over into the train yard.”

'Violent scene' near Amtrak train crash site
‘Violent scene’ near Amtrak train crash site 02:56. Click will take you to CNN for video.

The train hit power lines and wiped out a support for a pedestrian bridge, leaving it hanging, Lauman told the station.
“They were pulling people, just lifeless,” he said of the rescue efforts.

But it could have been far worse in Lauman’s estimation.

“It missed that parked tanker by maybe 50 yards,” he told KYW. “An Amtrak guy came by and he was telling me it turns out those tankers are full, and if that engine would’ve hit that tanker, it would’ve set off an explosion like no other.”

Khaled Kayed, a volunteer with the Muslim-American Society, lives near the crash site and was on the scene before police began taping off the area. He saw many passengers with head injuries amid the chaos, he told CNN in an email.

“When we first got on to the scene we could see people laying on the ground covered in blood,” he wrote. “The scene was very disturbing! It looked like something straight out of a movie. When we got on the tracks you could see the carnage. The train could only be described as a tin can that was crushed & ripped apart. Anywhere you look you could see pieces of the train all around you. You could see some people trying to crawl out due to the train cars upside down & on their sides.”

It has not yet been established whether speed was a factor in the crash, which happened around 9:30 p.m. But passenger Janna D’Ambrisi said she thought the train was going “a little too fast around a curve.” “Then there was a jolt. And immediately you could tell the train derailed,” she said. “I was thrown into the girl next to me, sitting in the window seat. The train started to tip that way, to the right. And people on the other side of the train started to fall on us.” Moments later, she heard a banging from the bathroom. A man inside was screaming. “He was trying to unlock the door, but it was stuck,” D’Ambrisi said. The metal must have been bent.”

‘Everything flying’

Jeremy Wladis was on the last car of the train. He had been in Washington for work, and he was returning home to New York. Then he felt the jolt. The train was leaving the tracks. Wladis, 51, saw “phones, laptops, everything flying,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “There were women launched up in the luggage rack,” he said. “I don’t even know how they got there.” Once the train came to a rest, he and others helped the women down and they made their escape. Another passenger, Daniel Wetrin, 37 of New York, told the paper that the initial shock was gentle “compared to what came next.” “Within two seconds, it was chaos,” he said. Andrew Cheng, visiting from Singapore, was traveling with 14 relatives when he was thrown to the ground like a rag doll, along with other passengers, he told KYW. “Some were piling on top of the others,” he said, adding that he and his family members were able to walk away from the incident. “We know that we counted all the members. They’re all there. I can’t ask for more. That’s good enough.” Joan Helfman thought her ribs were probably broken, but, as a nurse, her mind was on the others who were hurt. “I saw so many head injuries and bloody faces,” she told KYW. “There were a lot of fractures — arms, shoulders, all kinds of fractures.” Helfman couldn’t believe the destruction. “This is a nightmare,” she recalled thinking, “and it can’t be happening.” People caught in luggage rack Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor is 363 miles of track connecting Washington to Boston. It is the busiest railroad in North America, as three times more people take the train between Washington and New York City than fly the route. Train 188 was on its way from Washington to New York, carrying 238 commuters and five crew members at the end of another workday. The trip was routine until the train passed through the Port Richmond neighborhood in Philadelphia. That’s when Wetrin saw passengers catapulted from their seats. “There were two people above our head in the luggage rack asking to be helped down,” he told CNN. “It was just unbelievable.” A video posted on Instagram showed people trying to help passengers out. “Keep crawling, OK?” one man tells a passenger. “Where am I crawling to?” the passenger asks. “Crawl forward, sir,” another man says.

Power cables add extra danger

Many passengers walked away, some with bloodied shirts or head wounds wrapped in bandages. But the journey from the crash site was also treacherous. “All the power cables that run parallel to the track caved in,” Wetrin said. “There were cut cables hanging around.” Many passengers, including former U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy of Florida, praised the firefighters and police, who arrived within minutes. “Thank you so much to all the first responders-there w/in minutes,” Murphy tweeted. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Not all the rescuers wore uniforms. “My son went back and got everybody off our one car,” Helfman, the nurse, said. “There was a very small opening in the door, and we were able to get out.” Her son, Max, told KYW that his first priority was getting his mother off the train. Then he went to help the strangers. “Luckily I’m still here, I’m still walking,” Max Helfman said. “So I figured I would do my best to help because I saw everyone — I could see the blood on people’s faces. They can’t move. … So I just tried to do my best to help people get out of that car.”

Photos of deadly Amtrak derailment: hazardous tank cars a close call?

PHILADELPHIA AMTRAK CRASH SCENE: IS ANYONE QUESTIONING THE CLOSE PROXIMITY OF TANK CARS?

By Roger Straw, The Benicia Independent, May 13, 2015 9:54 a.m. PDT
Philadelphia Amtrak Crash 2015-05-12b50
Maybe 15 feet from a tank car involvement?

With courage and strength to survivors and the grieving … it looks like this tragedy might’ve been much worse.  Check out the photos.  What was in those tank cars at the time of the accident?  What is typically stored in tank cars in that railyard so close to the tracks?  The Philadelphia Enquirer: “Gov. Wolf, who visited the scene overnight, said later that the trains derailed near a row of tanker cars ‘and that is a cause of additional concern.'”

Philadelphia Amtrak Crash 2015-05-12e50Philadelphia Amtrak Crash 2015-05-12cPhiladelphia Amtrak Crash 2015-05-12d