Repost from The Journal Sentinal, Milwaukee WI [Editor: FEMA held a “worst case” urban bomb train scenario/drill in New Jersey in March, and plans another in Wisconsin in June. Will they also hold a big city drill here on the west coast? We don’t have nearly the oil train traffic that Midwesterners and East Coasters see every day … yet. But there is significant traffic in the Pacific Northwest and increasing deliveries and plans for more here in California. A FEMA exercise would be an eye-opener here. – RS]
FEMA drill plans for deadly worst-case oil train scenario
By Lee Bergquist and Crocker Stephenson, April 25, 2015
Federal authorities painted a frightening picture of what could happen if an oil train exploded in a big city.
In a mock drill in Jersey City, N.J., on March 19, authorities laid out a scenario where five oil tankers from a 90-car train would derail on an elevated track, spilling 100,000 gallons of crude oil.
The pool of highly combustible oil quickly ignited, sending a 300-foot fireball skyward. Jersey City is across the Hudson River from Manhattan.
The blast could kill an estimated 287 people within 200 yards of the explosion, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency documents.
Using information tailored to a Jersey City neighborhood, FEMA estimated that buildings up to 340 yards away [0.2 miles] could be severely damaged.
All told, more than 32,000 people within 1,500 yards [0.9 miles] of the explosion could be injured.
The rail cars are an older design that the federal government is proposing to phase out. Tens of thousands of the tankers are in use today.
The location selected by FEMA — near a freeway and surrounded by residential and commercial buildings — would not seem out of place from rail corridors of Milwaukee used by trains pulling oil tankers.
FEMA put on the exercise as one of the federal government’s first efforts at disaster planning for an oil train disaster in an urban area.
In its next such drill, federal officials will conduct a mock derailment involving oil trains with state and local authorities June 9-10 in the La Crosse area.
Oil trains moving through La Crosse travel in two directions — south down the Mississippi River valley and east across Wisconsin through Milwaukee before heading to Chicago-area refineries and other locations.
Federal officials devise scenario involving a train explosion to prepare officials for the worst
By Russell Gold, April 13, 2015 7:54 p.m. ET
Oil trains traverse Jersey City, N.J., where officials are concerned about the potential for a spill. Photo: Joe Jackson/The Wall Street Journal
Imagine a mile-long train transporting crude oil derailing on an elevated track in Jersey City, N.J., across the street from senior citizen housing and 2 miles from the mouth of the Holland Tunnel to Manhattan.
The oil ignites, creating an intense explosion and a 300-foot fireball. The blast kills 87 people right away, and sends 500 more to the hospital with serious injuries. More than a dozen buildings are destroyed. A plume of thick black smoke spreads north to New York’s Westchester County.
This fictional—but, experts say, plausible—scenario was developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in one of the first efforts by the U.S. government to map out what an oil-train accident might look like in an urban area. Agency officials unveiled it as part of an exercise last month to help local firefighters and emergency workers prepare for the kind of crude-by-rail accident that until now has occurred mostly in rural locations.
“Our job is to design scenarios that push us to the limit, and very often push us to the point of failure so that we can identify where we need to improve,” said FEMA spokesman Rafael Lemaitre. He said a second planning exercise is scheduled in June in a suburban area of Wisconsin.
Jersey City’s mayor, Steven Fulop, said the drill showed participants that they need to improve regional communication to cope with an oil-train accident.
“It would be a catastrophic situation for any urban area and Jersey City is one of the most densely populated areas in the entire country,” he said.
Railroad records show that about 20 oil trains a week pass through the county that contains Jersey City, and Mr. Fulop said the trains use the elevated track studied in the FEMA exercise. Even more trains hauling crude pass through other cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia and Minneapolis.
Rail shipments of oil have expanded to almost 374 million barrels last year from 20 million barrels in 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Although low crude prices and safety issues have recently led to small declines in such traffic, trains carrying volatile oil from North Dakota and the Rocky Mountains continue to rumble toward refiners on the East, West and Gulf Coasts.
Edgardo Correa, of Jersey City, N.J., beneath railroad tracks that pass by his home. Photo: Joe Jackson/The Wall Street Journal
Several oil-train derailments have produced huge fireballs, including two in March in rural Illinois and Ontario. In 2013, a train carrying North Dakota crude derailed late at night in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing 47 people.
Regulators worry more about a serious accident in a densely populated area. “The derailment scenario FEMA developed is a very real possibility and a very real concern,” said Susan Lagana, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Transportation. She said her agency was considering emergency orders to address such risks.
Firefighters at the FEMA workshop in Jersey City discussed the difficulty of battling a crude-oil fire, which can be explosive and hard to extinguish. One problem: limited supplies of the special foam required to smother the flames.
Jordan Zaretsky, a fire battalion chief in nearby Teaneck, N.J., who attended the presentation, said the scale of such an accident was sobering. “This isn’t a structural fire that we can knock down in an hour or two,” he said. “This is something we’d be dealing with for days.”
Ideas discussed at the workshop included devising a system to allow local officials to know when an oil train was passing through, developing public-service messages to tell residents what to do in case of a derailment and providing more firefighters with specialized training.
There have been many calls for changes to how crude oil is handled on the railroads, including new speed limits for trains and requirements to treat the crude oil to make it less volatile.
Earlier this month, the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board urged the rail industry and federal regulators to move more swiftly to replace existing tank cars with ones that would better resist rupturing and fire.
A spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group for oil producers, said the companies are committed to “greater efforts to prevent derailments through track maintenance and repair, upgrades to the tank car fleet, and giving first responders the knowledge and tools they need.”
The Association of American Railroads recognizes that “more has to be done to further advance the safe movement of this product,” a spokesman said.
FEMA chose for the location of the derailment scenario a stretch of track adjacent to the New Jersey Turnpike and about a mile from downtown Jersey City. One side of the track is industrial and includes an electric substation. The other side is residential.
Edgardo Correa, a 59-year-old retired sanitation worker, lives in a house close to the tracks in Jersey City. He said he was aware that trains full of crude pass by his home. “It’s an alarming thing,” he said.
By VERENA DOBNIK and MICHAEL SISAK, Associated Press, September 22, 2014
People protest for greater action against climate change during the People’s Climate March on September 21, 2014 in New York City. The march, which calls for drastic political and economic changes to slow global warming, has been organized by a coalition of unions, activists, politicians and scientists. | Photo: Andrew Burton, Getty Images
NEW YORK (AP) — Tens of thousands of activists walked through Manhattan on Sunday, warning that climate change is destroying the Earth — in stride with demonstrators around the world who urged policymakers to take quick action.
Starting along Central Park West, most came on foot, others with bicycles and walkers, and some even in wheelchairs. Many wore costumes and marched to drumbeats. One woman played the accordion.
But their message was not entertaining:
“We’re going to lose our planet in the next generation if things continue this way,” said BertGarskof, 81, as a family member pushed his wheelchair through Times Square.
He had first heard about global warming in 1967, “when no one was paying much attention,” said Garskof, a native New Yorker and professor of psychology at Connecticut’s Quinnipiac University.
Organizers said more than 100,000 marched in New York, including actors Mark Ruffalo and Evangeline Lilly. They were joined in midtown Manhattan by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, former Vice President Al Gore and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
On Tuesday, more than 120 world leaders will convene for the United Nations Climate Summit aimed at galvanizing political will for a new global climate treaty by the end of 2015.
“My sense is the energy you see on the streets, the numbers that have amassed here and in other cities around the world, show that something bigger is going on, and this U.N. summit will be one of the ones where we look back and say it was a difference maker,” de Blasio said.
Ban agreed.
“Climate change is a defining issue of our time and there is no time to lose,” he said. “There is no Plan B because we do not have planet B. We have to work and galvanize our action.”
The New York march was one of a series of events held around the world to raise awareness about climate change.
In London, organizers said 40,000 marchers participated, while a small gathering in Cairo featured a huge art piece representing wind and solar energy. In Rio de Janeiro, marchers at Ipanema Beach had green hearts painted on their faces.
Celebrities in London including actress Emma Thompson and musician Peter Gabriel joined thousands of people crossing the capital’s center, chanting: “What do we want? Clean energy. When do we want it? Now.”
“This is important for every single person on the planet, which is why it has to be the greatest grass roots movement of all time,” Thompson said. “This is the battle of our lives. We’re fighting for our children.”
In New York, a contingent came from Moore, Oklahoma, where a massive tornado killed 24 people last year, as did hundreds of people affected by Superstorm Sandy, which the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British meteorological office said was made more likely by climate change.
In Australia, the largest rally was in Melbourne, where an estimated 10,000 people took to the streets with banners and placards calling on their government to do more to combat global warming.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott was a particular target of the protesters. Abbott’s center-right coalition has removed a carbon tax and has restricted funding for climate change bodies since coming to power last year.
Associated Press writer Sylvia Hui in London contributed to this report.
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