Tag Archives: National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)

Coal, Derailment, Rail inspection, Rail Safety

NTSB final report on 2012 fatal freight train derailment

Repost from The Washington Post

Report on fatal Ellicott City train accident details how a piece of rail snapped

By Ashley Halsey III,  August 23, 2014

Workers stand near one of the coal cars of the derailed train behind the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum: Ellicott City Station on Aug. 21, 2012. (Mark Gail / FOR THE WASHINGTON POST)

They would be college graduates now, poised on the brink of life, had not a train gone off the tracks two years ago in a tragic fateful moment that caught them where they should not have been.

After almost two years of investigation into a 2012 train derailment in Ellicott City, Md., the National Transportation Safety Board said a piece of rail near replacement age simply snapped under the weight of a half-mile-long train carrying 9,873 tons of coal toward the Baltimore docks.

Elizabeth Nass and Rose Mayr, both 19 and celebrating their imminent return to college, were sitting a few feet away on a trestle 20 feet above Main Street. They were buried beneath the spilling coal. Death transformed them into a parable for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and for the random cruelty of fate. The details played out on the airwaves and in print as far as Australia.

They had tweeted messages and photos to friends from atop the rail bridge as the freight train rumbled toward them just before midnight. One photo showed the tiny shops and bars of Main Street, gone dark deep into Sunday night. Another showing their feet dangling off the bridge came with a one-word exclamation: “Levitating.”

Last month, the parents of the girls spoke out for the first time, releasing a statement through their attorneys saying that the CSX railroad was to blame.

The NTSB report is more meticulous than captivating. It describes details of the accident and gives a broader picture of a freight rail company struggling to stay ahead of deterioration on the oldest stretch of common carrier rail line in the United States.

It describes how the three crew members had the train rolling at 23 mph, just below the acceptable limit, when the emergency brakes slammed it to a halt. They got out to discover that 11 cars had overturned, including eight that had dumped their loads as they toppled into a parking lot below.

As they pieced together sections of shattered rail, investigators could not find five inches of it. “At the point of derailment, the rail fractured,” they said. The board said that “the probable cause of the Ellicott City derailment was a broken rail with evidence of rolling contract fatigue.”

The NTSB report said the railroad was aware of the history of rail defects on that line and of the increased volume of coal tonnage the line was carrying. As a result, the report said, CSX ran ultrasonic tests on the rails 11 to 12 times a year, far more frequently than regulations require. The rail had been tested by federal regulators in July 2012 and by CSX 17 days before the Aug. 20 derailment. “In the area of the derailment, no defects were recorded” by that CSX testing, the NTSB said.

After the accident, some people in Ellicott City said the railroad bridge was a place where underage people went to drink out of sight of others.

Just before they died, Nass tweeted, “Drinking on top of the Ellicott City sign,” a reference to the welcome sign painted on the bridge just below their dangling feet. The underage girls were not heavily inebriated, the NTSB report said. One had a blood alcohol level of 0.05 and the other was at 0.03, both below the limit of 0.08 for driving a car.

“Our daughters did not cause the derailment, CSX did,” Sue Nass, Elizabeth Nass’s mother, said in the statement released by the law firm, which said the families would seek a settlement from CSX. “A rail car should not turn over and kill innocent people.”

The NTSB report said CSX has installed a chain-link fence along the rail line “in an attempt to deter future trespassing.”

Derailment, Evacuation, Fire, Liquid natural gas, Sulfuric acid

Two Union Pacific Freight Trains Collide Head-On in Arkansas, Killing 2

Repost from The Wall Street Journal

NTSB Investigating Arkansas Train Crash

By Laura Stevens, Aug. 18, 2014

Investigators are examining tracks, equipment and human performance factors to determine why two Union PacificCorp.  trains collided head-on collided head-on in Arkansas early Sunday morning after it appears signals were functioning correctly, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The crash, which occurred at about 2:30 a.m. in Hoxie, killed two train crew members and injured two others, according to authorities. One tank car, containing unrefined alcohol, caught fire and burned for hours.

The two trains collided at a location where two main tracks converge into one main track, said Mike Hiller, the NTSB’s investigator in charge of the probe. The plan was for the southbound train, which was on the double track, to stop and wait for the northbound train to take the other track.

“We know that this did not happen and a collision occurred right at that point,” said Mr. Hiller. “We are still trying to gather data to find out why that southbound train did not stop.”

In addition to examining equipment such as the brakes, investigators have requested medical documents and are scheduling interviews to look at the human performance factors. They’ve also shipped the trains’ black boxes to Washington, D.C., for examination.

Liquid natural gas and sulfuric acid were among the hazardous materials on board, Mr. Hiller said. Neither train contained any crude oil tank cars, and all hazardous material was loaded properly into the correct type of tank cars, he added.

The northbound train carried 92 cars, 11 of which contained flammable liquid class hazardous materials including the car with the alcohol, Mr. Hiller said. It originated in North Little Rock, Ark. The southbound train originated in St. Louis, Mo., with 86 cars, 20 of which were carrying hazardous materials.

About 500 residents were evacuated as a precaution in an approximately 1.5 mile area Sunday.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, CSX, Derailment, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Oil spill, State regulation, Tank car design, Water quality

CSX reimburses Lynchburg $107,853; Virginia regulators negotiating further penalties

Repost from The Richmond Times-Dispatch

State regulators expect penalty for CSX oil train wreck

April CSX wreck sent oil into river at Lynchburg
By Alicia Petska, The News & Advance, August 21, 2014 10:30 pm

LYNCHBURG — State environmental regulators are in talks with CSX to negotiate the terms of a consent order that will be issued in response to the estimated 29,916 gallons of oil released into the James River during the April 30 train derailment in downtown Lynchburg.

The order is expected to include a financial penalty, but the amount has not been determined yet, said Robert Weld, regional director for the Department of Environmental Quality.

Other measures may include long-term monitoring of river conditions and replanting vegetative buffers along the riverbank.

Water quality testing in the weeks after the derailment found no contaminants of concern, Weld said, but visual checks and other monitoring will continue out of an “abundance of caution.”

It remains unclear just how much of the Bakken crude oil that leaked during the downtown derailment actually mixed into the river or made its way downstream.

Much of it burned in the large fire that erupted after 17 cars on a 105-car oil train derailed near downtown Lynchburg. Three cars tumbled over the riverbank, and one ruptured. There were no injuries or building damage.

The incident drew Lynchburg into a national debate over how to safely ship the volatile crude found in Bakken shale around North Dakota, where production has skyrocketed in recent years.

On Wednesday, Weld was among more than a dozen state officials who convened in Lynchburg for the second meeting of a new rail safety task force formed by Gov. Terry McAuliffe after the derailment.

The meeting, held at City Hall, included a presentation from the federal agency charged with regulating hazmat shipments and public comments from environmental advocates and rail employee representatives.

CSX had offered to reimburse the city for the cost of its emergency response and sent the final check last week, according to Lynchburg’s finance department.

The reimbursement totaled $107,853 for personnel and equipment costs, as well as minor property damage to trees, curbs and sidewalks.

The new rail safety task force has been asked to advise the state on how it can improve its own preparedness and response efforts.

It also might weigh in on the federal regulations that govern most aspects of rail operations. The U.S. Department of Transportation has been studying the oil-by-rail issue since a deadly oil train derailment in Quebec in July 2013.

Last month, federal officials released a set of proposed rules that may lead to phasing out older DOT-111 model tankers that have been criticized as puncture prone.

There also may be higher standards for braking systems, speed limits and testing of volatile liquids. The proposed rules are in a 60-day public comment period that will end Sept. 30.

During a public hearing Wednesday, water quality advocates with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and James River Association urged officials to take a comprehensive look at the rail safety issue and not limit themselves to one region, cargo or issue.

The proposed federal regulations may not do anything to deter the kind of derailment that occurred in Lynchburg, said Pat Calvert of the James River Association, whose office is close to the derailment site.

Given the location of the derailment — near several downtown businesses and a popular trail system — it’s a miracle no one was injured, he said.

“We dodged a bullet,” Calvert said. “But we shouldn’t necessarily be playing Russian roulette here.”

The cause of the Lynchburg derailment is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB said it could be a year or more before its report is ready.

The state’s rail safety task force plans to hold its next meeting in September in the Norfolk area. It hopes to tour the Yorktown oil refinery — where oil-by-rail shipments through Virginia end up — and meet with a representative of the NTSB.

Bakken Crude, Canadian regulation, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Tank car design

U.S. lags in dealing with danger of oil tank cars

Repost from CentralMaine.com

OUR OPINION: US lags in dealing with danger of oil tank cars

Federal foot-dragging could lead to a Lac-Megantic-type tragedy in this country.
August 20, 2014

A major milestone was reached this week in the follow-up to the oil train explosion that killed 47 people last summer in Lac-Megantic, Quebec: Canadian investigators released a final report blaming lax government oversight and poor rail company safety practices for the tragic accident.

But although the Canadian government obviously didn’t fulfill its regulatory responsibilities, Canada is still way ahead of the United States in taking steps to prevent another such tragedy. Canada has banned the most decrepit tank cars; Washington, meanwhile, is calling for a drawn-out retirement and retrofitting process that could keep some of the cars in service until at least 2017. This reluctance to take action is putting U.S. communities so far down the track in terms of improved public safety that they’re almost guaranteed to be left behind.

The train that crashed in Quebec in July 2013 was carrying nearly 2 million gallons of volatile North Dakota crude oil in DOT-111 tanker cars. When derailed, DOT-111 cars are easily punctured or ruptured, making them highly vulnerable to leaks and explosions. The cars’ flaws were first noted in a National Transportation Safety Board study more than 20 years ago. And in 2012, the NTSB concluded that the DOT-111s’ “inadequate design” contributed to the severity of a 2009 oil train derailment in Illinois that killed one person and injured several others. Because of a spike in U.S. crude oil production, moreover, the number of oil car accidents continues to climb: 116 in 2013, more than double the number of all episodes from 1990 to 2009.

Nonetheless, about 98,000 tank cars are in service — and most don’t have the latest safety features. All 72 cars in the Quebec runaway train, for example, were built to the older standard. So any of the major cities through which this train passed before reaching Lac-Megantic — including Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit — could have been the site of an equally devastating derailment, spill and explosion.

In April, Canada barred 5,000 of the most poorly made, puncture-prone DOT-111s from carrying crude oil and ethanol. But such cars will stay in service in the United States until at least 2017, under proposed regulations that call for a two-year phase-out of the cars, effective September 2015, unless they’re retrofitted to comply with new safety standards.

Announced last month by the federal Department of Transportation, the rules would apply only to “high-hazard flammable trains” that carry at least 20 cars of volatile liquids. DOT-111s that haven’t been retrofitted still could be used beyond 2015 on trains with 19 or fewer tank cars — a massive loophole.

The U.S. DOT realizes it’s dangerous to keep shipping volatile crude in substandard rail cars. The agency even said as much in the news release announcing the proposal: “The safety risk presented by transporting Bakken (North Dakota) crude oil by rail is magnified both by an increasing volume of Bakken being shipped … throughout the U.S. and the large distances over which the product is shipped.”

To have this knowledge and still fail to act on it is to take a cynical view of the well-being of the people whom the agency is supposed to be protecting — and it gives public service a bad name.