Safety Information For Alhambra Trestle In Martinez And Other Bridges Kept By The Railroads
Underneath the Alhambra trestle in Martinez (Jeffrey Schaub/CBS)
A KCBS Cover Story Special: Part 2 of 3, Produced by Giancarlo Rulli, December 30, 2014 – KCBS reporter Jeffrey Shaub and producer Giancarlo Rulli investigate the Bay Area’s aging railway bridges that will carry increasing loads of highly volatile Bakken crude oil from North Dakota in this three-part KCBS Cover Story Special.
MARTINEZ (KCBS) — Some local, state and federal officials are concerned that an old railroad bridge in Martinez, used to transport increasing car loads of highly volatile crude oil from North Dakota to East Bay refineries, may be unsafe.
Officials said they can’t obtain safety information about that bridge, and others like it, because the railroad that owns it is allowed to keep that information to themselves.
The Alhambra trestle was originally built in 1899 and later reinforced in 1929. The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway replaced the rail deck in 2003, but the trestle’s support structures are 85 and to 115 years old.
Each week it bears the load of hundreds of rail cars including a growing number that carry Bakken crude oil.
Jim Nue is a member of the Martinez Environmental Group who said he worries about a derailment and how it might affect the several schools and scores of homes nearby.
“We figured the effects within a half-mile blast zone of those tracks affects 12,000 people,” he said.
State and federal authorities are also worried about Alhambra trestle.
“We are concerned about failure,” Paul King, the Deputy Director of Rail Safety for the California Public Utilities Commission, told KCBS.
He’s concerned about shipments of Bakken crude oil over the Alhambra Trestle.
“The consequences of derailment failure are very high,” King said.
But there is no way to know for sure because ever since the Civil War, the railroads have been allowed to keep that information to themselves. While the Federal Railroad Administration does oversee the BNSF, there is only one bridge inspector to cover all eleven Western states.
In the Fall of 2014, The CPUC authorized the hiring of two bridge inspectors to evaluate the more than 5,000 railroad bridges in the state, including the Alhambra trestle. It’s a job that could take 50 years to complete.
Rep. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove) told KCBS that it’s a statewide problem.
“The main bridge across the Sacramento is more than 100 years old. It was built shortly after the Gold Rush,” he said.
BNSF spokeswoman Lena Kent said the trestle is safe.
“Our bridges are inspected three times a year and, in fact, if they did detect—in any way—that that structure needed to be replaced, they would immediately put plans in place to replace the structure,” she said.
The state says they want the final say on what is safe and what isn’t—and not just leave it up to the railroads.
Back in Martinez, Nue, remains worried about the geography of the Alhambra trestle and his town.
“So if something happens on either end, you’re stuck,” he said.
In Part III, we will reveal how state and emergency response coordinators are concerned about their ability to battle a major railway explosion and fire.
Repost from the White Plains NY Journal News on LoHud.com [Editor: Significant quote: “At the CSX-owned Frontier Rail Yard in Buffalo, 106 DOT-111 crude oil tank cars were checked and three had found to have critical defects, including a cracked weld, a missing bolt and one inoperative brake assembly….Since the state began its “inspection blitz” last February, inspectors have examined 7,368 rail cars (including 5,360 DOT-111s) and 2,659 miles of track, uncovering 840 defects, and issuing 12 hazardous materials violations. The state recently hired five new rail inspectors.” – RS]
Inspectors find 100 defects on crude oil trains, tracks
By Khurram Saeed, December 15, 2014
State and federal railroad safety officials have inspected more than 7,300 rail cars and 2,600 miles of track since last February in response to increase shipments of Bakken crude across nearly 1,000 miles of New York. (Photo: Associated Press)
A broken rail, defective train car wheels and missing bolts on the tracks were among some of the problems state and federal teams found during its most recent round of statewide inspections of oil trains and the rail lines they use.
They identified 100 defects, including eight safety defects that require immediate action, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office said in a release.
Inspection teams from the state Department of Transportation and the Federal Railroad Administration on Dec. 9 examined 704 crude oil tank cars and about 95 miles of track as part of the state’s on-going response to a surge in rail shipments of Bakken crude across nearly 1,000 miles of New York.
They did not look at the River Line, the track owned by CSX Corp. that runs through the Hudson Valley, including Rockland. As many as 30 trains carrying 80 to 100 tank cars filled with explosive crude oil from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota head south to East Coast refineries.
But the inspection of 15 miles of CSX-owned mainline track near Albany found a critical switch gauge defect that required a speed reduction, the release said. They also discovered four non-critical defects, including loose bolts. They must be repaired within 30 days.
“We have sent inspection crews to check rail tracks and crude oil cars across New York and we continue to find critical safety defects that put New Yorkers at risk,” Cuomo said in a statement.
Crude oil tank cars, especially the older DOT-111 models are also in the spotlight because they have been involved in several accidents, including an derailment and explosion that killed 47 people in Quebec in July 2013. Bakken crude is volatile and can catch fire should the tank rupture or derail.
The federal government is reviewing rules that would increase safety standards.
At the CSX-owned Frontier Rail Yard in Buffalo, 106 DOT-111 crude oil tank cars were checked and three had found to have critical defects, including a cracked weld, a missing bolt and one inoperative brake assembly.
CSX spokesman Rob Doolittle said in an email that the railroad “appreciates Governor Cuomo’s continued focus on making the safe transportation of energy products even safer,” adding that CSX is “committed to strong, ongoing and long-term coordination with state and local officials.”
Since the state began its “inspection blitz” last February, inspectors have examined 7,368 rail cars (including 5,360 DOT-111s) and 2,659 miles of track, uncovering 840 defects, and issuing 12 hazardous materials violations. The state recently hired five new rail inspectors.
A matter of faith: Rail bridge conditions hidden from public view
By Chris Hubbuch, December 14, 2014
BNSF Railway workers reinforced this railroad bridge south of Stoddard with cribbing last June. The bridge has been scheduled for replacement in 2015. (Click image for 2 more photos.)
STODDARD — On the afternoon of June 6, Kevin Gobel pulled into town after work and noticed dozens of railroad workers and trucks gathered near the village’s only railroad crossing.
Perturbed at trucks parked across the tracks and blocking the road, Gobel, the village president, went looking for whoever was in charge to ask what was going on.
The answer: We’ve got a real problem at the bridge south of town.
Gobel, who is also a Vernon County supervisor, called Chad Buros, the county’s emergency management director. Together they drove about three quarters of a mile south on Highway 35 to where a swarm of crews were busy working on the BNSF Railway bridge over the mouth of Coon Creek.
As it turned out, the problem was an “incipient failure” on one span of the 112-year-old bridge, according to the Federal Railroad Administration. Train traffic was halted for 12 hours as crews put timber blocking under the span and nine others “that appeared susceptible to the same mode of failure.”
But six months later, Gobel still has little information about the bridge, which carries an average of 16 million gallons of volatile crude oil each day.
“Nobody’s ever gotten an official report from BNSF” about happened in June, he said. “Local governments need to be informed of what’s going on. I haven’t seen any documents stating what the status of (those) bridges are.”
Local officials and the general public are largely in the dark about the nation’s freight railroads, which carry growing volumes of flammable crude oil, while state and federal governments have limited authority and oversight.
And when it comes to rail bridge safety, the industry is generally left to police itself.
Concerned citizens have documented cracked and crumbling rail bridges along the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi River that engineers say are troubling and that prompted federal authorities to take a closer look. BNSF assures the public the bridges are safe, but the government does not have structural engineers to independently verify their claims. And unlike highway bridges, inspection reports are secret, unavailable to the public and local officials.
There isn’t even an inventory of bridges.
“What makes me nervous is the responsibility of safety for railroad bridges rests with the owner of the track. You’d like to think they use good faith and safety and upkeep of the bridges … but it only takes some poor owners that don’t take it as seriously,” said Pat Salvi, a Chicago attorney who handles rail accidents. “The consequences are so potentially dramatic.”
BNSF says its bridges are inspected at least once a year — some twice or more — by trained bridge inspectors as well as structural engineers, consultants and contractors. Canadian Pacific, which carries far less oil, says it also has a rigorous inspection program. Both maintain inventories.
But neither the reports nor the inventories are available to the public.
Railroad bridge failures are rare, said Frank Douma, a research fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs and the Center for Transportation Studies.
Yet he acknowledges the stakes are higher when trains are hauling hazardous materials: “The difference between an oil train and a grain train derailing is what happens when it derails.”
Little oversight, little access
The Federal Railroad Administration is tasked with oversight and enforcement of rail safety.
In a 2007 report, the federal Government Accountability Office outlined how little oversight the agency exercises over rail bridges, more than half of which were built before 1920.
The GAO recommended, among other things, that the FRA devise “a systematic, consistent, risk-based methodology for selecting railroads for its bridge safety surveys.”
In addition, a joint FRA-industry committee recommended the agency create and maintain a detailed bridge inventory. That never happened.
Since the release of that report, the agency has created a bridge inspection program, which spokesman Mike England said entails audits of the railroads’ inspection programs as well as spot checks by FRA inspectors.
But there are just six inspectors for the nation’s estimated 76,000 rail bridges; only two are engineers.
“The railroad has the oversight of the bridge. The FRA has oversight of the railroad,” said Greg Baer, statewide railroad structure and track engineer for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.
According to records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, in the four years since the bridge inspection program was adopted, the FRA has looked at just 14 Canadian Pacific bridges in eastern Wisconsin, and none in Minnesota. It has yet to conduct a regular inspection of a BNSF bridge on more than 1,800 miles of track in either state.
The FRA has yet to produce any documents in response to a September request for audit records. And while the FRA has access to the railroads’ structural inspection reports, those documents are hidden from public view.
England said the primary objective of FRA bridge inspections is to verify the bridge’s physical appearance matches what’s in the railroad’s report — to “make sure they’re not fudging anything” — but that inspections are thorough.
But inspection reports obtained by the La Crosse Tribune offer little detail.
An FRA inspector’s July 30 report of a Canadian Pacific bridge in Milwaukee, reads in full:
“Observation of Bridge 84.99 and review of the latest bridge inspection report. This bridge includes a TRT swing span over the Menominee River. This bridge has 3 spans, TRT and beams, concrete substructure, open deck, double track, and is 293’ long. Bridge conditions observed generally correspond with conditions reported on bridge inspection report dated 6/18/2014.”
“It’s a detailed inspection,” England said. “They’re not going to put anything in the report unless they find something wrong.”
The reports show that inspector looked at 13 bridges in a single day along nearly 45 miles of track in two counties.
By comparison, a recent DOT inspection report on a 262.4-foot viaduct on Copeland Avenue in La Crosse describes in detail minor cracks and other features. A routine inspection report on La Crosse’s Cass Street bridge is 86 pages.
Douma notes that unlike highways and airports, which are built and maintained by government, railroads are and always have been private enterprises. They came into existence at a time when the federal government was much smaller, and at least as concerned about keeping the union together as moving people across the continent.
Prior to the 1980s, railroads were subject to strict economic regulation, but the rails have always been on private land and largely out of government oversight.
Earlier this year, the state of California launched its own rail bridge inspection program in response to increasing oil train traffic and what one report labeled “the dearth of information and lack of regulatory oversight regarding the structural integrity of California’s rail bridges.”
The FRA says it is the only such state-run program in the nation.
The PUC would not make officials available for an interview, but an agency spokesman said by email they are in the process of hiring two bridge inspectors and will implement the new program “as soon as possible.”
“I don’t mean to criticize the railroads’ programs, but for the public to have the confidence that bridges are in good shape, our role is to offer oversight,” PUC Rail Safety Deputy Director Paul King told the Sacramento Bee. “Given the heightened risk of one of these crude oil trains derailing and given the projections of significant increase in tonnage across these bridges, we need to fulfill this role.”
The FRA does have the authority to order a bridge closed, as it did in 1996, 1999 and most recently 2006. In each case, orders were issued only after the owners of the bridges ignored repeated warnings to repair serious defects.
The typical maximum civil penalty for violations is $25,000, though in cases of “grossly negligent violation or where a pattern of repeated violations has caused death or injury or an imminent hazard of death or injury” fines can reach $105,000.
“That’s not really much of a hammer,” Salvi said.
According to FRA records, BNSF settled 418 track safety violations in 2012, the most violations per mile of any of the seven Class 1 railroads. Those track violations resulted in fines of $865,000, of which BNSF paid $569,725.
Last year, BNSF reported a pre-tax profit of almost $6.7 billion on revenues in excess of $21.5 billion.
Bridge conditions spark concern
In June, when the swarm of workers showed up to fix the bridge in Stoddard, Guy Wolf started to get worried about the state of the bridges near his home in Mohawk Valley.
Wolf, a retired university retention specialist and avid angler, used a kayak to navigate up the mouth of Coon Creek to get a closer look at the emergency repairs.
“What really concerned me — they had things circled. Cracks,” he said. “You could begin to see that parts of the bridge were lower (than other parts). All this lumber stacked up under the bridge.”
He started looking at other bridges and was startled at their appearance. Over the summer, Wolf and La Crescent wildlife photographer Alan Stankevitz, who runs a blog where he tracks rail safety issues, began photographing rail bridges along the Mississippi River backwaters between La Crosse and Prairie du Chien.
They documented cracked supports, exposed reinforcing steel rods, and chunks of missing concrete.
But looks can be deceiving, according to the railroad, which assures all the bridges are sound.
“Railroad bridges are typically not pretty; but they are functional and safe,” BNSF spokeswoman Amy McBeth said. “The visual appearance of these structures is not indicative of their structural integrity.”
While it is impossible to determine a bridge’s structural integrity from photographs, four engineers who looked at the photos agreed there are signs of serious deterioration.
Al Ghorbanpoor, a professor and director of the Structural Engineering Laboratory at UW-Milwaukee, said while a thorough assessment would be required, “the photographs give the impression that the condition of these bridge structures should be of concern. There is clear evidence of excessive deterioration that could have negative impact on the structural integrity of these bridges.”
Most agreed the Coon Creek bridge was the most troubling, though John Zachar, a professor of architectural engineering Milwaukee School of Engineering, expressed concerns about the pictures of a bridge in Genoa where concrete breakage has left exposed rebar at the base of piers and on one of the spans.
“That is a significant structural deficiency,” Zachar said. “I’d say there’s no question about it. This is something we ought to look at.”
But John Bennett, a former vice president of planning and systems for Amtrak and policy adviser, said rail bridges can be sound even after losing some of their structural integrity.
“Many of these bridges were built 50 or 100 years ago, (when) standards weren’t as well known,” Bennett said. “Many of these bridges have been overbuilt in terms of strength.”
Wolf and other rail safety activists presented the photos to Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who wrote to the FRA in September urging a quick inspection of the bridges.
The FRA says it sent inspectors to look at a dozen Mississippi River bridges and a letter to Baldwin said neither BNSF nor its own inspections revealed any conditions “that inhibit the ability of these bridges to safely carry rail traffic.”
But the agency did not release those reports in response to a FOIA request and has declined to provide access to them.
According to the letter, the four bridges pictured were built between 1911 and 1923 and show deterioration — cracking and spalling concrete, exposed rebar — typical for rail bridges of that age.
The letter also notes that BNSF is monitoring the Coon Creek bridge, and the temporary blocking, through twice weekly inspection. The FRA went on to say BNSF is inspecting its bridges twice as often as required by the agency and accurately documenting conditions.
Reinvesting revenues
Railroads have enjoyed substantial growth in revenue and profit in recent years as the U.S. economy has recovered.
BNSF says it is sinking record amounts of that money back into its infrastructure: the railroad spent $5.5 billion last year on capital improvements, and has announced plans to spend $6 billion this year — about half of that on maintaining its physical infrastructure, such as tracks and bridges.
Indeed, workers this fall cut an access road to the Coon Creek bridge in preparation for its replacement, which BNSF said was scheduled for 2015 even before the most recent problems were detected.
The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the railroad industry a C+ in its most recent report card on U.S. infrastructure, which Bennett said is largely due to the investments the big four railroads are making in their infrastructure.
In fact, Bennett said, railroad infrastructure is generally better funded than highways.
“One of the good things about the railroad, they have a business model that actually works — they’re able to extract enough profits from operations to invest in infrastructure,” he said. “As opposed to highways. … The highway bridge systems are much more perilous in terms of getting funding.”
“It’s certainly in our best interest to prevent accidents and keep our infrastructure sound,” McBeth said. “That’s why you see record investments in infrastructure.”
Derailment’s cause pinned down, but anxiety lingers
By Brian Nearing, October 23, 2014
Railcars are derailed Wednesday night, Oct. 23, 2014, at the CSX yard in Selkirk, N.Y. (Sheriff Craig Apple)
A misplaced piece of safety equipment triggered the slow-motion derailment of 18 railroad cars overnight at the spawling Selkirk rail yard, the state Department of Transportation said Thursday.
Eighteen cars — two of which had been earlier emptied of highly explosive propane — derailed about 7:40 p.m. at the sprawling Selkirk yard, which can handle thousands of freight cars a day for rail company CSX and is a critical transit gateway to much of the Northeast. No cars ruptured or spilled, and no one was hurt.
State transportation investigators said the mishap was caused by safety equipment — called a derailer — inadvertently left on the tracks by a crew that had been making repairs. A derailer is meant to protect workers by blocking trains from running over them.
Another worker elsewhere later began using a remote-controlled engine to move freight cars slowly around the yard, unaware the derailer was in the path of the oncoming cars, according to a DOT statement.
“The remote control operator was moving freight cars onto that section of track when they ran into the derailer, pushing them off the tracks. Investigators believe the remote control operator was initially unaware of what was happening and continued to move the cars down the track, causing more to derail,” according to DOT.
Albany County Executive Dan McCoy said the accident, coming days after a liquid propane spill at a tank farm near a sprawling interstate highway intersection, shows the Capital Region is “dancing with the devil” as fossil fuel-laden trains surge through from the Midwest.
Fifteen of the cars in Selkirk had been righted by Thursday afternoon, said CSX spokesman Rob Doolittle. He said four cars were classified for hazardous materials, including two for propane, as well as one containing residue of a chemical herbicide and another containing an industrial acid.
Doolittle said “several of the remaining cars were empty, and none of the other cars contained any hazardous freight.” He said the accident was not causing backups or delays elsewhere on CSX lines.
A vocal opponent of a surge of crude oil rail shipments from North Dakota that are arriving daily in Albany, some carried by CSX, McCoy said the rail company was “downplaying” the mishap and “making it sound like less than it was.” He and Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple went to the yard Wednesday night to inspect the mishap.
Derailed cars were “stacked two or three high,” said McCoy. “There was a huge crater or hole near one of the derailed cars … and one car was leaning against” a tanker that was marked with a placard identifying its contents as propane. “Cars were beaten up, dented in. It looked like a bomb had gone off.”
State DOT spokesman Beau Duffy said CSX notified the state at 8:23 p.m., within a one-hour notification window required under law. He said previous state inspections of the yard have “not found anything out of the ordinary.”
This is the second derailment at the Selkirk yard this year. In February, 13 tanker cars each carrying about 29,000 gallons of highly flammable crude oil derailed, but did not spill or explode. DOT later fined CSX $5,000 for failing to notify the state of the derailment within the one-hour requirement.
Later, inspectors from DOT and the Federal Railroad Administration looked at a mile of track in the Selkirk yard and found 20 “non-critical defects” that were to be repaired, according to a March press release from Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
On Monday, there was “a small release” of liquid propane from a tank farm in North Albany, near the intersections of Interstates 90 and 787, according to statement from tank farm owner Global Partners.
Workers found the leak during a “routine site inspection” about 3:45 p.m., according to a statement by Global Partners Vice President Edward J. Faneuil. The company informed the city Fire Department and burned off “excess gas which could not be recovered,” he said. No one was hurt and the cause of the leak was being investigated.
McCoy said flames from the gas burn went on for hours Monday night. City Fire Chief Warren Abriel said his department was notified by Global about 5 p.m. that they were going to burn off excess gas from one of its storage tanks. He said he was not aware that burn was linked to a leak.
Burning gas vented from tanks is a routine procedure at the Global facility that is not unusual, said Abriel. Global expanded its 540,000-gallon propane storage facility in April; it has been receiving propane shipments by rail there since April 2013.
Spokesman from both state DOT and the state Department of Environmental Conservation said their agencies were not required to be notified about the propane spill.
LISTEN: Safety Information For Alhambra Trestle In Martinez And Other Bridges Kept By The Railroads, Part 2 of 3 click here, then scroll down to play
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