Repost from 6 ABC Action News, Philadelphia, PA [Editor: The derailment happened in the CSX Corp. rail yard, and was very near to Interstate 95, Lincoln Financial Field and the Philadelphia Naval Yard. NBC Philadelphia reported that the tank cars remained upright but were “leaning.” See also The Morning Call, Allentown, PA. – RS]
11 train cars derail in South Philadelphia
January 31, 2015
Philadelphia firefighters and Hazmat crews swarmed the area near Lincoln Financial Field and the Philadelphia Naval Yard after 11 train cars went off the tracks early Saturday morning.
The derailment happened after 3:00 a.m. near South 11th Street just south of Interstate-95.
The cars were carrying crude oil.
After it was determined, there were no ruptured cars, crews turned the incident over to CSX.
CSX officials brought in cranes to upright the cars.
Lac-Mégantic disaster by the numbers: Catalogue of a tragedy
54% of town’s residents suffered from depression, PTSD after explosion: health report
Jan 28, 2015
A report into the health effects of the Lac-Mégantic, Que., train derailment and explosion indicates people living there are four times more likely to drink to excess following the disaster.
Two-thirds of the 800 people studied suffered human loss, and over half experienced negative feelings such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Marie-Claude Arguin, the town’s deputy manager, said children are among those still showing signs of PTSD, including trouble sleeping and hyper-vigilance.
“Essentially, children have taken care of their parents in the last year,” she said.
“They don’t have all the fears and worries that adults have … But they’ve seen the images, they’ve seen friends losing their parents, they’re living it.”
Lac-Mégantic Mayor Colette Roy Laroche says the town’s residents will need long-term support to cope with life after the tragedy. (CBC)
She said the community needs a firm commitment that help will continue, and hopes part of the assistance will be devoted to further studies on the population.
In July 2013, a freight train carrying 72 cars of oil derailed and exploded in the centre of Lac-Mégantic.
The explosion killed 47 people, and hundreds of thousands of litres of oil spilled into the Chaudière River as a consequence of the derailment.
Lac-Mégantic Mayor Colette Roy-Laroche said Wednesday the recovery period will be extensive for residents.
In the direct aftermath of the tragedy, resources were rushed in to meet the town’s immediate needs and its citizens were well cared for, she said.
The fear, she said, is that those services may not be there in the longer term. She urged officials to recognize ongoing mental-health support residents will require.
Human and material losses
Estrie public health director Dr. Mélissa Généreux, public health specialist Dr. Geneviève Petit and Danielle Maltais, an expert on the health consequences of major disasters, presented their findings on Wednesday morning in Sherbrooke, Que.
Généreux explained that following the tragedy, residents in the Granit MRC (regional county municipality) experienced a greater sense of belonging and community than people living elsewhere in the Eastern Townships.
Interviews with 800 residents of the Granit MRC found:
64 per cent had a human loss (fear for their lives or that of a loved one, was injured, etc.).
23 per cent had a material loss.
54 per cent had a negative perception (depression, post-traumatic stress, etc.).
17 per cent of people had an “intense exposure” (e.g. experienced all three of the above).
Généreux, Petit and Maltais commended the fact that medical and psychological resources were quickly deployed to the area after the blast.
Still, it could take years for the mental-health issues stemming from the disaster to subside, said Maltais, a researcher and professor at the University of Chicoutimi.
The public health officials convened in Sherbrooke said the tragedy will have lasting effects on the community for years, particularly because it was due to human negligence.
Arguin said more research is needed to ensure the younger generation is also taken care of, adding it’s hard to know how to handle this type of trauma because there’s no precedent.
“It hasn’t even involved children and teenagers, which is the future of our community,” Arguin said. “And they have been affected just as much.”
American oil trains spilled crude oil more often in 2014 than in any year since the federal government began collecting data on such incidents in 1975, an NBC News analysis shows. The record number of spills sparked a fireball in Virginia, polluted groundwater in Colorado, and destroyed a building in Pennsylvania, causing at least $5 million in damages and the loss of 57,000 gallons of crude oil.
By volume, that’s dramatically less crude than trains spilled in 2013, when major derailments in Alabama and North Dakota leached a record 1.4 million gallons — more than was lost in the prior 40 years combined. But by frequency of spills, 2014 set a new high with 141 “unintentional releases,” according to data from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). By comparison, between 1975 and 2012, U.S. railroads averaged just 25 spills a year.
The vast majority of the incidents occurred while the trains were “in transit,” in the language of regulators, rumbling along a network of tracks that pass by homes and through downtowns. They included three major derailments and seven incidents classified as “serious” because they involved a fire, evacuation or spill of more than 120 gallons. That’s up from five serious incidents in 2013, the data shows.
“They’ve got accidents waiting to happen,” said Larry Mann, the principal author of the landmark Federal Railroad Safety Act of 1970. “Back in 1991 I said, ‘One day a community is going to get wiped out by a freight train. Well, in 2013 that happened and unless something changes it’s going to happen again.”
Mann was referring to the Lac-Mégantic disaster, a deadly derailment in Quebec just miles from the Maine border. A 72-car oil train rolled downhill and exploded on July 6, 2013, killing 47 people and destroying most of the town.
In the months that followed American regulators convened a series of emergency sessions. They promised sweeping new safeguards related to tank car design, train speed, route and crew size. To date none of those rules have been finalized.
On January 15 the Department of Transportation missed a deadline set by Congress for final rules related to tank cars, which have a decades-long history of leaks, punctures, and catastrophic failure. The rules are being worked on by PHMSA and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).
In response to questions from NBC News, PHMSA declined to explain the delay in new rules but it defended the relative safety of oil-by-rail. “More crude is being transported across the country than in any time in our history, and we are aggressively developing new safety standards to keep communities safe,” PHMSA spokesperson Susan Lagana said in a statement.
“Last year, over 87,000 tank cars were in use transporting crude oil, and 141 rail crude oil releases were reported,” she continued. “The amount of crude oil released in these spills was less than the capacity of two tank cars.”
The FRA declined a request for comment. It did, however, provide data that suggests the railroads are getting better overall at transporting hazardous material. Between 2004 and 2014, for example, the number of collisions and derailments involving trains carrying hazardous material fell by more than half, from 31 to 13, according to the data.
Ed Greenberg, a spokesperson for the Association of American Railroads (AAR), the industry’s principal trade group, said the railroads themselves support stronger tank cars. The oil industry actually owns most of the cars used to transport its product, he said. That has complicated the rule-making process and set off a debate over which industry should cover the cost of an upgrade.
Greenberg also sharply disagreed with the idea that oil-by-rail was getting more dangerous. With 40 times more oil being hauled along U.S. rail lines in 2015 than in 2005, he acknowledges that the raw number of incidents has increased. But he argues that the railroads have never been safer overall.
“Railroads have dramatically improved their safety over the last three decades, with the 2014 train accident rate trending at being the lowest ever,” he told NBC News, citing multi-billion-dollar investments in new cars, tracks, and workers.
Last year, he added, 99.97 percent of all hazardous material on the rails reached its destination without incident. Of the 141 oil spills included in the federal data, meanwhile, the AAR calculates that fewer than 10 involved the loss of more than a barrel of oil.
But critics say that’s little comfort to the estimated 25 million Americans who within the one-mile evacuation zone that the US Department of Transportation recommends in the event of an oil train-derailment.
“Moving oil from one place to another is always risky, and even a single spill has the potential to harm land and marine ecosystems for good,” said Karthik Ganapathy, communications manager for 350.org, an environmental group that has helped organize protests against oil by rail. “These new data confirm what we’ve known to be true all along—oil-by-rail is incredibly dangerous.”
Every day, 40 trains carry 30,000 loads of freight – some containing volatile materials – while another 22 trains transport 6,000 passengers through the “Center of the Universe.”
A lot could go wrong.
But CSX and local emergency services officials assured members of town council last week that stringent planning and strong communication between agencies should help ensure a swift response in the event of a train emergency or prevent one all together.
The issue of rail safety is tied to what Bryan Rhode, CSX regional vice president in charge of state government affairs in Virginia, called an “energy revolution” currently underway in the United States.
Crowds line the train tracks in downtown Ashland as a CSX train makes its way through town in this 2012 Herald-Progress file photo
With increased domestic oil production come questions about how to get those resources to market. Rhode said that traditionally, crude oil would be transported by pipeline, but that infrastructure doesn’t exist in many of the new areas where the raw materials are being extracted, and that’s where rail comes in.
“This idea of moving crude [oil] by rail really sprung up a couple years ago,” Rhode said. “I’ve talked to people who have been with CSX much longer than I have and they tell me if somebody had come to them five years ago and said we’d be moving crude oil by rail, they would have said, ‘You’re crazy.’”
But it’s now something railroads are doing in increasing volumes even though Rhode said transporting crude oil still only constitutes about 2 percent of CSX’s business.
The issue has received increasing attention following a CSX train derailment in Lynchburg last April, when a large shipment of crude oil exploded along the James River and near the city’s downtown sector.
“In a lot of ways we got very lucky because nobody was hurt or killed,” Rhode said. “But it was still something that impacted Lynchburg, impacted the James River and something that we strive every day to avoid allowing to happen again.”
Even prior to the Lynchburg crash, there had been a push for safer crude oil transport. In February 2013 the Federal Railroad Administration issued a number of emergency orders and regulations aimed at enhancing safety. Following the crash, Rhode said the federal government implemented more stringent regulations concerning the shipment of crude oil by rail and HAZMAT materials, in general.
But despite those regulations and what Rhode called a culture of safety at CSX, accidents still can and do occur.
“We do everything we can to prevent accidents from happening, but when you’re moving huge amounts of material in large equipment, we all recognize that sometimes, despite our best efforts, things do happen,” Rhode said. “Our goal is zero preventable accidents.”
Emergency plans in place
Hanover is contained in the RF&P sub-division of what CSX calls its Baltimore division, bookended by Richmond to the south and Philadelphia to the north.
According to Henry Moore, division chief of planning for Hanover Fire-EMS, molten sulfur and crude oil comprise half of all hazardous materials making their way through the county on a daily basis. Ethanol carloads are also increasing with about 210,000 gallons of the volatile substance making its way by rail to Stafford County on a daily basis.
Moore said Hanover and the region have bolstered their foam suppression capabilities in preparation for a derailment or catastrophic event and that regional response teams routinely participate in emergency exercises in preparation for railroad accidents where hazardous materials are present.
Hanover has in place a standard operating guideline for responding to railroad emergencies and also maintains an initial responder checklist for public safety personnel created for joint response to train crises.
Anthony Callahan, deputy chief of the Ashland Police Department, said all Ashland officers are trained in how to handle critical incidents. In the advent of a train-related incident, responding officers are taught to first establish communication and to contact other resources. Officers are also instructed to designate a “danger zone,” where only emergency responders are allowed, and to set up inner and outer perimeters. They would then implement an incident command post to direct emergency personnel and secure a staging area for other first responders.
However, Callahan said that his officers will assume different roles based on the severity of the actual incident. In cases where a car is stuck on the tracks, for example, Callahan said the first responding unit would get in touch with CSX and work to get the occupants out of the vehicle, with the immediate consideration being the health and safety of individuals on scene and in the area.
In cases where there has been a collision requiring any sort of spill cleanup, Callahan said Fire-EMS would take the lead, with APD in a support role.
In case of an incident, Rhode said CSX also brings a number of resources to the table, including trained personnel and heavy equipment staged throughout its network to ensure a quick response.
If a community is impacted, CSX steps up to offer relocation services and local aid.
Rhode said that in the advent of an actual emergency, cross-jurisdictional communication is key. In the case of the Lynchburg incident, officials from CSX had existing relationships with state and local emergency response teams.
“We weren’t handing out business cards. We all knew each other; we’d worked together before,” Rhode said. “If you don’t know each other and you’re not talking to each other before [an emergency] happens, you’re probably going to have issues.”
Fortunately, ties are strong between CSX and local fire, EMS and law enforcement agencies, officials told town council.
Rhode said CSX partners with local first responders to make sure they have the training they need to effectively respond to an incident. This takes place through online courses and local “tabletop” exercises on up to specialized, in-person, training dealing specifically with crude oil accidents.
Moore said Fire-EMS is in the final stages of planning a joint Amtrak derailment tabletop exercise in Ashland with Randolph-Macon College and the Ashland Police Department. The training should take place in the coming spring, one more safeguard aimed at ensuring this train town also remains a safe town.
American oil trains spilled crude oil more often in 2014 than in any year since the federal government began collecting data on such incidents in 1975, an NBC News analysis shows. The record number of spills sparked a fireball in Virginia, polluted groundwater in Colorado, and destroyed a building in Pennsylvania, causing at least $5 million in damages and the loss of 57,000 gallons of crude oil.
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