Tag Archives: Derailment

AMTRAK, Bakken Crude, Derailment, High Hazard Flammable Trains (HHFTs), Rail Safety

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, Derailment, High Hazard Flammable Trains (HHFTs), Rail Safety

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.

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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.”

AMTRAK, Derailment, High Hazard Flammable Trains (HHFTs), Rail Safety

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

Bakken Crude, Bridge safety, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Rail infrastructure, Rail inspection

Major oil train risk: bridge infrastructure – who will be the next Quebec?

Repost from FOX6Now, Milwaukee WI

“This needs to be fixed:” FOX6 finds a new “risk on the rails,” could Milwaukee be the next Quebec?

By Brad Hicks, May 12, 2015, 10:00pm


MILWAUKEE (WITI) — Last year, the FOX6 Investigators were the first to expose a new risk on the rails — a steady stream of long oil trains trekking across the state from North Dakota. The crude oil they carry from what’s called “The Bakken” is highly explosive. Since then, there has been growing public concern about these so-called “bomb trains” in Wisconsin. Now, there’s a new concern, in a neighborhood in Milwaukee.

When the mile-long oil trains lumber by Milwaukee’s Fifth Ward lofts, the cars come roller-coaster close to a renovated building. A sliver of light between brick and steel.

Fifth Ward railroad

From his fifth floor window, Brian Chiu has a front row seat.

“It’s so loud,” Chiu said.

But it’s not the noise that concerns him. The fear is five floors down.

Fracking technology has opened an oil spigot in North Dakota.

“It’s increased the amount of traffic on the railroads exponentially,” Wisconsin Railroad Commissioner Jeff Plale said.

The railroad traffic has increased by several thousand percent.

Bakken crude oil has a very high vapor pressure, meaning it can easily explode. And the tank cars carrying it?

“(They) were not designed to haul crude. A lot of them were designed to haul corn syrup,” Plale said.

When these trains have derailed, the cracker-thin tank cars have ruptured, with disastrous results. By far the worst incident occurred in Lac Megantic, Quebec. Forty-seven people were killed in the fireball.

Quebec train derailment

Three times this year, trains carrying crude have derailed in the United States. Last week in North Dakota, the sky turned gray with smoke.

In March, a train derailed across the border in Galena, Illinois. The wreckage burned for four days.

A week before that, a train derailed in West Virginia. Hundreds had to evacuate.

The train that derailed in North Dakota was headed toward Wisconsin. Two trains before that had just been here.

“We’re kind of at the epicenter of where this stuff is coming,” Plale said.

That brings us back to Brian Chiu and his Fifth Ward home — and those oil trains just feet from the Fifth Ward lofts, going over the S. 1st Street bridge.

FOX6 first photographed the concern in February — but it wasn’t until the snow and ice melted that we saw the full extent. “I beams” that support the bridge have rusted away at the base to wafer-thin strips of steel. In some spots, entire sections are just gone.

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Chris Raebel, an engineer at Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) agreed to take a look at what the FOX6 Investigators found.

“My focus is on steel design — just like the bridge,” Raebel said.

Unlike most railroad bridges, which have elevated foundations, the piers on this century-old span reach right to the road — where every winter, salt eats away at the steel.

“That’s hit the base of the bridge and that`s corroding the metal,” Raebel said.

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In the past, some of the rusted piers supporting the bridge have been reinforced, but several columns have been corroded right through.

“At some point this needs to be fixed. This is not acceptable,” Raebel said.

FOX6 News received similar comments from other structural and civil engineers who saw the photos, but they didn’t want to be identified because they may do business with the railroads. They said things like:

“The level of rust and deterioration is a serious structural problem. They should be contacted immediately.”

And: “I would definitely report these conditions to the owner of this bridge without further delay.”

Canadian Pacific Railroad should already be aware. Canadian Pacific owns the bridge and is required to inspect it each year. In a written reply to a FOX6 request for those records, the company said it “meets or exceeds all federal requirements,” and that the bridge was last inspected in the winter. Canadian Pacific wouldn’t tell us exactly when that was — and whether there was snow on the ground. Canadian Pacific refused to show FOX6 News any of the inspection reports.

FOX6 asked them again earlier this months at a Common Council meeting in Milwaukee.

“We`ve given you a statement on that and we won`t have anything to add,” a Canadian Pacific representative said.

Canadian Pacific had been invited to Milwaukee to answer questions about the oil trains. Canadian Pacific’s brash brush off didn’t sit well with some Common Council members.

“You don`t give that image to the community that your facilities are safe. You don`t give us that confidence,” Milwaukee Alderman Terry Witkowski said.

Ken Wood knows what these inspections entail.

“I’m a structural engineer. My main focus is bridges. I`ve been working with bridges for 20 years — bridge design, bridge inspection, bridge rehabilitation,” Wood said. “You`re going to be looking for fatigue cracks, and the other thing you`d look for is corrosion, certainly, on a bridge — because corrosion is basically taking away the cross section.”

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If you look at the base of the “I beams” on the bridge in the Fifth Ward, you’ll see layers and layers of flaking — in some places, more than an inch thick. That doesn’t happen quickly.

“It`s been some time, that`s for sure,” Wood said. “What happens during corrosion is the steel expands, sometimes seven to eight times what it is, so you can see that actually happening in the base here,” Wood said.

FOX6’s Brad Hicks: “How do you even inspect this with that much flaking on there without removing the flaking?”

“They would have to remove flaking to see what`s underneath and take some measurements with calipers to find out how much area they perceive is left,” Raebel said.

So that’s what the FOX6 Investigators did.

The beam is nine-tenths of an inch thick, but at the base, only four-tenths of an inch is left. The column is just over an inch thick. Corrosion has eaten it down to less than half that.

FOX6’s Brad Hicks: “The kind of thinning we`re seeing here, does that impact the load capacity of a bridge like this?”

“Yes,” Raebel said. “They have a certain amount of steel they need to resist the load from above.”

And that load is greater than ever.

Engines alone weigh three times what they did when the bridge was built in 1914. And a one-mile train weighs more than 25 million pounds.

“Now a two-mile long train is relatively common,” Plale said.

And with trains like that moving over the bridge daily — metal fatigue adds up.

“Is the bridge really built, with all that rust and all that corrosion, to support that kind of weight?” Chiu wonders.

Officials in the state of Wisconsin had the same question. In 2006, a study was commissioned on the impact heavier trains have on state-owned railroad bridges. That study concluded “many within the railroad industry are concerned that the aging bridge infrastructure will no longer be able to withstand the increased loadings.”

One bridge engineer who examined FOX6’s pictures said the problem may not be that bad, because in theory, you could cut a vertical pier in two horizontally, and it would still hold up the bridge. But that’s assuming you still have inch-thick “I beams” — not corroded columns.

The concern here isn’t that the bridge will completely collapse — but that if a column gives way and the load shifts and the train tips — with the Fifth Ward lofts just feet away, could Milwaukee become another Quebec?

“I would encourage the owner of the bridge to seriously look at this and consider repairs. And it seems like it should be done soon,” Raebel said.

To their credit, the railroads, including Canadian Pacific, have been at the forefront — pushing the federal government for stricter tank car standards. The railroads don’t actually own the tank cars — the oil companies and third-party leasers do.

Eleven days ago, the federal government announced new cars need to be thicker, and the old ones need to be retrofitted within five years.

The federal government is the only entity that can demand the railroad turn over its inspection reports on the bridge. For two months, FOX6 News repeatedly asked the Federal Railroad Administration if it has any of Canadian Pacific’s inspection audits for the S. 1st Street bridge. The agency hasn’t responded.

Local municipalities like Milwaukee are pretty powerless when it comes to regulating the railroads.

On Tuesday, May 12th, the Milwaukee Common Council approved a resolution urging federal regulators to immediately inspect all tracks, bridges and crossings on which Bakken crude oil is carried — but at the end of the day, that’s simply a request.

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