Tag Archives: Fire

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Fire

Cleanup, investigation continue at W.Va. derailment site

Repost from The San Francisco Chronicle

Cleanup, investigation continue at W.Va. derailment site

By Pam Ramsey, Associated Press, February 22, 2015 2:19pm

BOOMER, W.Va. (AP) — A full-scale federal investigation of an oil train derailment in southern West Virginia has begun as work continues to remove the overturned tank cars from the site, federal officials said Sunday.

A fire sparked by the Feb. 16 derailment in Mount Carbon prevented investigators from gaining full access to the crash scene until this weekend. Foul winter weather also has hampered the investigation. As of Sunday, some cars had been removed from the site but many remained.

“The folks at the site of the derailment are making a lot of progress. It has absolutely been difficult. It is a great testament to them that we have no one injured up there despite the ice and snow, the cold and dampness,” Sarah Feinberg, acting administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration Administrator, said Sunday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

Investigators have not determined what caused 27 cars of the 109-car CSX train to go off the tracks during a snowstorm. Feinberg said the investigation is in an early stage and the railroad agency will examine all elements, including weather, the track and the operation of the train.

“Some of the things we want to look are still under the cars in the pileup,” Robert Lauby, the railroad agency’s chief safety officer, told The AP.

Investigators have reviewed video from cameras on the locomotives’ front and rear, along with video from another train that passed the CSX train minutes before the derailment. The train’s data recorder also has been recovered.

“Now we can begin work on the forensic investigation,” Feinberg said.

The investigation will include inspecting the damaged tank cars, recovering damaged rail and reviewing maintenance and inspection records, the U.S. Department of Transportation said Sunday in a news release.

The oil involved in the derailment is being tested by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to determine its gas content, volatility and tank car performance. Investigators also want to determine whether the oil’s classification complied with federal hazardous material regulations, the DOT said.

Derailment investigations can take several days to a couple of weeks, Feinberg said.

The train was carrying 3 million gallons of North Dakota crude when it derailed. As of Sunday afternoon, response teams had recovered 152,000 gallons from tank cars, multiple agencies responding to the derailment said in a news release.

“Some cars still have to be righted,” Skip Elliott, CSX vice president of public safety, health and environment said Sunday at a multiagency media briefing in Boomer, across the Kanawha River from the derailment site.

The derailment shot fireballs into the sky, leaked oil into a Kanawha River tributary, burned down a house nearby and forced nearby water treatment plants to temporarily shut down. Containment booms have been deployed to lessen the environmental impact.

A small amount of oil was detected in the river. Water and air monitoring in the area is continuing, Dennis Matlock, on-scene coordinator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said at the briefing.

CPC-1232, Crude By Rail, Derailment, DOT-111, Explosion, Fire, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Tank car design

POPULAR MECHANICS: We Need Better Oil-Carrying Train Cars Now

Repost from Popular Mechanics

Why We Need Better Oil-Carrying Train Cars Now

U.S. has seen a 400 percent increase in crude oil transportation. So why don’t we have rail cars that are designed to carry it?

By William Herkewitz, Feb 20, 2015 @ 9:06 AM
The Register-Herald, Chris Jackson

On Monday, a train hauling 100 tankers of crude oil derailed in West Virginia. The violent crash punctured several of the tankers. Eventually 19 were engulfed in flames. Now, more questions are swirling about whether these tankers are safe enough to carry crude.

Old cars, new crude

Initially, the crash had many pointing to a seemingly similar accident in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec in 2013, in which crude oil tankers also ignited following a derailment. In the Quebecois crash, many of the tanker cars involved were DOT-111s—a train car not designed to transport flammable crude oil, but that regularly does so on North American rail lines.

Since 2005, the U.S. has seen a 400 percent increase in crude oil transportation

In 2009, four years before the Quebecois crash, the DOT-111 had been flagged by U.S. National Transportation Safety Board as inadequate to carry ethanol and crude oil, chiefly because of its inability to prevent a puncture in the event of a crash. But the NTSB’s recommendations are not legally binding anywhere in North America. More than 100,000 DOT-111s were transporting crude across American and Canadian rails when the Quebec accident occurred, and still are today.

View image on Twitter
TWITTER – The Hill ✔ @thehill Fires are still burning three days after the West Virginia oil train crash: http://ow.ly/Jlmlk 12:40 PM – 19 Feb 2015

The CSX Corporation, the railway company that owns Monday’s crashed tankers, was quick to point out that the tankers in use in the West Virginia crash were not DOT-111s, but CPC-1232s. But the fact is that a CPC-1232 tanker is just a reinforced, purportedly tougher version of the DOT-111—a redesign put in place after the NTSB’s 2009 warning. The biggest difference between the DOT-111 and the CPC-1232 is that the head shields (the puncture-prone ends of the cylindrical tankers) are more heavily protected.

Enough shielding?

These CPC-1232s are being increasingly used for crude oil transportation, and are planned to eventually phase out the older DOT-111 models. But as the West Virginia accident is shows, the CPC-1232 is also far from disaster-proof.

America needs a crude oil tanker that will not puncture in a crash

Why? Although the CPC-1232 boasts sturdier head shields, both it and the DOT-111 suffer from a much more basic problem: they simply aren’t thick enough overall. Both train cars have a steel shell that measures 7/16 inch thick. That width falls short of the 9/16 inch steel shell that U.S. regulators say would significantly reduce the likelihood of puncture during a derailment. (Granted, the regulators came to this conclusion in January 2014—long after the CPC-1232 redesign.)

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TWITTER – Matt Heckel @WSAZmattheckel Another explosion just happened here at the train derailment: 8:29 PM – 16 Feb 2015

A real crude oil tanker

Rather than relying on insufficiently beefed-up old-style tankers — which, when first created, were not designed for crude oil anyway — America needs a crude oil tanker that will not puncture in a crash. It’s more important now than ever: Since 2005, thanks to a glut of oil production, the U.S. has seen a 400 percent increase in crude oil transportation. And that number looks to be rising.

Derailments are rare, and railroad techs and transporters do an impressive job of almost always avoiding them. But they will never be completely unavoidable.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Evacuation, Explosion, Fire, Train speed

AP: Most residents return to homes near W.Va. train derailment – 5 homes remain under evacuation order

Repost from ABC News, AP

Most residents return to homes near W.Va. train derailment

Feb 20, 1:01 PM EST

MOUNT CARBON, W.Va. (AP) — Most residents were allowed to return to their homes Friday along a road where an oil train derailed in southern West Virginia.

State public safety agency spokesman Lawrence Messina said the last of the small fires were out at the scene of Monday’s fiery crash in Mount Carbon.

One lane of the state highway nearby reopened Friday. Because of the presence of heavy equipment trucks responding to the crash site, traffic was moving slowly.

About 225 people live in 100 homes in the area of the crash along the road. A statement from multiple agencies responding to the derailment said residents of five homes adjacent to the site remained under an evacuation order. Authorities will assess those properties to determine when it becomes safe for those residents to return.

Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Kevin Thompson said frigid weather continues to hamper crews trying to transfer oil out of wrecked tanker cars before the cars are removed. Hydraulic pumps were being used Friday to pump out the oil. Other equipment froze Thursday night in subzero weather conditions, he said.

Investigators are trying to determine what caused the derailment of the train carrying 3 million gallons of crude from North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields to an oil-shipping depot in Yorktown, Virginia. Speed doesn’t appear to have been a factor, Federal Railroad Administration acting administrator Sarah Feinberg said Thursday.

The crash shot fireballs into the sky, destroyed a house, leaked oil into a Kanawha River tributary and forced nearby water treatment plants to temporarily shut down.

Twenty-seven of the 107 tank cars on the CSX train derailed, and 19 of those were involved in the fires.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Fire

Media explosion over West Virginia oil train explosion

Editor: I have never seen an upsurge in media coverage like this.  There may be a national consensus forming that oil trains are disasters in waiting.  There are simply too many stories “out there” to post them all.  Here is a summary of many of the best NEW stories (as of late 2/19/15) from media outlets across the country.  ALL are important and worthy of your attention.  – RS