Tag Archives: Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF)

Oil Industry, Rail inspection, Rail Safety, Railroad workers, State regulation, Track maintenance

N.D. hires BNSF manager as inspector for state rail safety program

Repost from the Billings Gazette

N.D. hires BNSF manager as inspector for state rail safety program

By Mike Nowatzki, Forum News Service, August 10, 2015
Train derailment
Oil tank cars not damaged in a train derailment near Culbertson are removed from the area on July 17, 2015. Amy Dalrymple/Forum News Service

BISMARCK, N.D. – A manager for the railroad involved in two fiery oil train derailments in North Dakota during the past two years has been hired as the first track inspector for a new state-run rail safety program.

Karl Carson will go to work for the state Public Service Commission on Aug. 17, doing inspections to identify problems with track and worker safety.

A Minot native, Carson is a division engineer with BNSF Railway. He’s worked for the railroad since 1992, holding several positions including assistant director of maintenance production, in which he supervised maintenance and replacement of track and track components, according to the PSC. He’s worked in management for BNSF since 2004.

Commission chairwoman Julie Fedorchak said the PSC wanted an inspector with experience, and with only two major railroads operating in the state – BNSF and Canadian Pacific – hiring someone with connections to one of them was “just an unavoidable situation.”

She said she asked Carson during his interview “if he would have a hard time regulating his old friends, and he said, ‘Absolutely not.’”

“His experience helps him to understand where the strengths and the weaknesses are and will really help him engage directly with the railroad,” she said. “They know his experience and they know he knows what he’s talking about.”

North Dakota is the 31st state to partner with the Federal Railroad Administration on a state rail safety program. The FRA has primary responsibility for rail safety in every state.

The PSC began looking seriously at the need for a state program after the December 2013 derailment of a BNSF oil tanker train near Casselton, which caused a massive fireball and voluntary evacuation of the city. Six cars from a BNSF oil train derailed May 6 near Heimdal in east-central North Dakota. No one was hurt in either incident.

Carson’s new position is one of two approved by state lawmakers in April when they voted to spend $523,345 on the state rail safety program in 2015-17, with the intent of continuing the pilot program in 2017-19.

“We’re quite pleased with the caliber of the first inspector,” Fedorchak said. “He’s got more rail experience than I had hoped for, and I think in talking with other states, that was the key ingredient they emphasized.”

State Sen. Tyler Axness, D-Fargo, who first publicly suggested a state-run rail safety program in July 2014 during his unsuccessful campaign for the PSC, said he doesn’t necessarily disagree with Fedorchak that the pool of qualified applicants for the inspector job is probably limited in North Dakota, and he declined to make any judgments about the hire without seeing the pool of applicants.

But Axness and Wayde Schafer, conservation organizer for the Dacotah Chapter of the Sierra Club, both said it seems like the state has a pattern of hiring regulators with close ties to the industries they will oversee. Schafer said on such a contentious issue as rail safety, “it seems like they would want to hire somebody who was a little bit more neutral.”

“You’d think something this controversial, even the appearance of impropriety should be avoided whenever possible,” he said.

Don Morrison, executive director of the Dakota Resource Council, drew a comparison to the hiring of Lynn Helms, a former employee of Texaco and what is now Hess Corp. who now regulates and promotes the state’s oil and gas industry as director of the state Department of Mineral Resources.

“It certainly looks like business as usual, which is give the industry what they want,” he said. “Time will tell.”

Fedorchak said the PSC had 18 applicants for the job and interviewed the top five, with second interviews for the two finalists. She noted Carson was the “strong favorite” among the FRA inspectors on the interview panel.

Carson earned a certificate of completion in auto mechanics from Bismarck State College in 1990 and also served in the North Dakota Army National Guard from 1990 to 1994. He couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

His annual salary with the PSC will be $90,000.

Fire, Freight trains, Smoke

Sparks from train caused Portland fire near hazardous waste depot

Repost from The Oregonian

Sparks from train caused huge Northwest Portland fire near hazardous waste depot, officials say

By Betsy Hammond, June 29, 2015 at 3:30 PM
Portland Fire & Rescue responded to a three-alarm fire in Northwest Portland, as seen from a bluff on the east side of the Willamette River. This photo was taken at 5:50 p.m. (Photo courtesy of J. Jason Groschopf)

Sparks from a passing freight train caused the huge 30-acre grassland fire along Front Street in industrial Northwest Portland Friday afternoon, fire officials said Saturday.

The blaze, which burned only grass and brush, burned on land adjacent to the Metro Central Transfer Station, which accepts hazardous waste as well as garbage and recycling.

Firefighters warned Metro of the danger that smoke might cause in the area, said Lt. Tommy Schroeder, public information officer for Portland Fire & Rescue.

The fire agency mounted a huge response to the blaze, with more than 70 firefighters and other rescue officials at the scene, Schroeder said. That ensured the Metro hazardous waste depot never posed a serious fire jeopardy, he said.

The site that burned was on the south and east side of the Burlington Northern Sante Fe Railroad track, just after the track crosses the Willamette River, Schroeder said. The fire remained north and west of Northwest Front Avenue.

That land is owned by at least three parties, including the city of Portland, ESCO Corp. and Starlink Logistics, public records indicate.

It is adjacent to Atofina Chemicals, one of the world’s largest chemical companies, which has since been renamed Arkema. The company suspended operations at its Portland plant in 2001.

No one was injured and no structures burned, Schroeder said.

Fire investigators determined the fire started in multiple locations all the same short distance from the railroad tracks, he said. Witnesses also told investigators that they saw the fire start next to the tracks, said Lt. Rich Tyler, another Portland Fire & Rescue spokesman. Those two factors led them to conclude that sparks from the train started the fire.

But Gus Melonas, a spokesman for BNSF in British Columbia, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, said that workers on the BNSF train that passed through the area saw fire burning in the field far from the tracks and moving toward the track. He said the railroad is continuing to look into what happened.

Tyler said it is unlikely an individual started the fire in the middle of the field because fences and blackberry bushes made it difficult to access.

Schroeder said sparks from passing trains normally cause at least one fire in Portland every year.

Note: An earlier version of this article said, incorrectly, that the land that burned is owned by Atofina Chemicals. That global chemical company in fact owns the adjacent property, between Front Street and the Willamette.
Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Train speed

Officials: Oil train didn’t speed before Montana derailment

Repost from Yahoo News (AP)

Officials: Oil train didn’t speed before Montana derailment

By Matthew Brown, July 20, 2015

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A train that derailed and spilled 35,000 gallons of oil in northeastern Montana was traveling within authorized speed limits, federal officials said Monday as they continued to probe the accident’s cause.

The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway train loaded with crude from North Dakota was traveling 44 mph before Thursday’s wreck, U.S. Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Matthew Lehner said.

Officials have said the maximum authorized speed in the area is 45 mph.

Twenty-two cars on the BNSF train derailed near the small town of Culbertson. Lehner said the tank cars were a model known as the “1232,”which is built under a 2011 industry standard intended to be more crash-resistant than earlier designs.

But several recent oil train crashes, including some that caught fire, also involved 1232s, and federal officials said in May that the older cars must be phased out. The oil industry has challenged the timeline for the phase-out in federal court.

The stretch of track where last week’s derailment occurred is inspected at least four times a week, said Matt Jones, a spokesman for the Fort Worth, Texas-based company. Jones did not immediately respond to a request for details on the latest inspection.

Derailed oil tanker cars lie off track near Culbertson, …
Derailed oil tanker cars lie off track near Culbertson, Mont., Friday, July 17, 2015. The tank cars were hauling fuel from North Dakota and derailed Thursday in rural northeastern Montana, authorities said. (AP Photo/Richard Peterson)

The accident triggered a temporary evacuation of nearby homes and a camp for oil-field workers.

No one was hurt, and no fire or explosion occurred. But oil leaked from four of the cars. Officials said the spill was quickly contained, and there was no immediate evidence that any crude reached a waterway.

Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Michael Cole said Monday the train was bound for the Cherry Point refinery, operated by oil company BP near Ferndale, Washington. The agency had said previously that the shipment was headed to a refinery in Anacortes, Washington.

The spill marked the latest in a series of wrecks across the U.S. and Canada that have highlighted the safety risks of moving crude by rail.

In recent years, trains hauling crude from the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana have been involved in fiery derailments in six states. In 2013, a runaway train hauling crude from the Bakken derailed and exploded in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, incinerating much of its downtown and killing 47 people.

North Dakota regulators in April began requiring oil producers to treat their crude before it can be loaded onto rail cars, to reduce the concentration of volatile gases that can trigger an explosion. Statoil, which was shipping the oil involved in last week’s crash, was in compliance with the new regulations, company spokesman Peter Symons said.

Cleanup work along the BNSF line near Culbertson continued Monday, said Daniel Kenney, an enforcement specialist with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.

BNSF has been asked to sample underground water supplies in the vicinity of the crash as a precaution, Kenney said. For most spills, the state expects cleanup work to be completed and a final report submitted to regulators within 90 says, Kenney said. He added that might not be the case with Thursday’s derailment given the large volume of oil spilled.

Speed restrictions put in place following the derailment were lifted Monday on nearby U.S. Highway 2, the region’s main artery.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Oil spill

LATEST DERAILMENT: Tank cars leaking Bakken oil after second derailment in two days

Repost from The Grand Forks Herald
[Editor:  Updated report by the Associated Press / ABC: “35,000 Gallons of Oil Spills After Montana Train Derailment.”  For additional coverage on these and other derailments, see The DOT-111 Reader.  – RS]

UPDATE: Oil tank cars leaking oil after another derailment near North Dakota-Montana border

By Forum News Service on Jul 16, 2015 at 10:10 p.m.

CULBERTSON, Mont. – A train carrying oil derailed in northeast Montana Thursday, hours after the tracks reopened from another train derailment that occurred on Tuesday in the same county.

The westbound train derailed about 6:05 p.m. Mountain Time east of Culbertson, Mont, said BNSF Railway spokesman Matt Jones.

The westbound train contained 106 loaded crude oil tank cars and two buffer cars loaded with sand. Twenty-two cars derailed and two of those remained upright, Jones said.

The other rail cars were still on the track in the desolate area near the North Dakota and Montana border.

Roosevelt County Sheriff Jason Frederick, who said he was expecting another long night, said about that two of the cars were verified as leaking oil, but there were no fires as of about 11 p.m. Central Time.

No injuries have been reported. Local firefighters  and law enforcement officers are at the scene as a precaution, Jones said.

Also as a precaution all of the rural ranch homes within a mile radius of the derailment were evacuated, said Frederick.

Also traffic has been rerouted off of U.S. Highway 2, which is only about  50 yards from the derailed oil tankers, said the sheriff.

Frederick said a hazmat crew from BNSF was on a jet and on its way from Fort Worth, Texas,  to the scene of the derailment.  They had not arrived yet at 11 p.m.

“It’s absolutely going to be a long night,” the sheriff said. “It’s very unfortunate.”

Nine rail cars derailed Tuesday afternoon near Blair, Mont., about 20 miles to the west of the Thursday derailment, said the sheriff.

Both derailments were within about 50 miles of Williston, N.D.

The tracks had reopened about 12:15 p.m. Mountain Time on Thursday after crews repaired 1 mile of damaged track from Tuesday’s accident.

Tuesday’s derailment disrupted Amtrak service between Whitefish, Mont., and Minneapolis, and the sheriff said he expects more delays are likely.