Repost from KATU Portland, OR

11 oil train cars derail in Columbia River Gorge, cars erupt in flames, I-84 closed

By KATU.COM staff and the Associated Press, June 3, 2016

MOSIER, Ore. — A Union Pacific train towing oil cars derailed and caught fire in the Columbia River Gorge Friday, evacuating schools in the nearby town of Mosier and closing down Interstate 84 between Hood River and The Dalles.

According to Union Pacific spokesman Aaron Hunt, 11 cars in the 96-car train derailed around noon near Mosier, about 70 miles east of Portland.

The train was hauling oil from Eastport, Idaho, and was headed for Tacoma, Washington. It was carrying Bakken crude oil, a type of oil known to be highly volatile.

According to the Oregon Department of Transportation, one car is fully engulfed in flames and another one is on fire. From KATU’s Chopper 2, however, it was clear that more than one car was on fire — perhaps as many as four.

A spokesperson from the state fire marshal’s office told KATU that so far there have been no injuries reported. The spokesperson said firefighters were taking a defensive stance in their battle against the flames and the best course of action may be to let the fire burn itself out.

Mosier students were taken to Wahtonka campus in The Dalles. Parents living in the area could pick up their students from that location; the district scheduled buses for the remaining students.

The Union Pacific train derailed just after noon. The ensuing fire created a large plume of black smoke rising from the train tracks near Mosier, which is located off I-84 east of Hood River.

Gresham Fire confirmed that their HazMat crews are heading to the scene. Dept. of Environmental Quality officials said they are investigating the impact of the derailment and fire.

Interstate 84 was closed for a 23-mile stretch between The Dalles and Mosier and the radius for evacuations was a half-mile.

Portland Airport Fire & Rescue has sent a specialized firefighting foam truck carrying about 1,300 gallons of fire suppression foam, four firefighters and a chief to aid in the firefighting effort.

Silas Bleakley was working at his restaurant in Mosier when the train derailed.

“You could feel it through the ground. It was more of a feeling than a noise,” he told The Associated Press as smoke billowed from the tankers.

Bleakley said he went outside, saw the smoke and got in his truck and drove about 2,000 feet to a bridge that crosses the railroad tracks.

There, he said he saw tanker cars “accordioned” across the tracks.

Another witness, Brian Shurton, was driving in Mosier and watching the train as it passed by the town when he heard a tremendous noise.

“All of a sudden, I heard ‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’ like dominoes,” he said.

He, too, drove to the bridge overpass to look down and saw the cars flipped over before a fire started in one of the cars and he called 911, he said.

“The train wasn’t going very fast. It would have been worse if it had been faster,” said Shurton, who runs a windsurfing business in nearby Hood River.

Environmental Concerns

The accident immediately drew reaction from environmentalists who said oil should not be transported by rail, particularly along a river that is a hub of recreation and commerce.

“Moving oil by rail constantly puts our communities and environment at risk,” said Jared Margolis, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity in Eugene, Oregon.

It wasn’t immediately clear if oil had seeped into the river or what had caused the derailment. Hunt did not know how fast the train was traveling at the time, but witnesses said it was going slowly as it passed the town of Mosier.

Response teams were using a drone to assess the damage, said Katherine Santini, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Forest Service.

Since last spring, North Dakota regulators have required companies to treat oil before it’s shipped by rail to make it less combustible.

A May 2015 derailment near Heimdal, North Dakota, involved cars carrying oil that had been treated to reduce the volatility, but the crude still ignited. At least one train wreck involving treated Bakken oil did not result in a fire, when 22 cars derailed and 35,000 gallons of oil spilled near Culbertson, Montana, last July.

Reducing the explosiveness of the crude moved by rail was not supposed to be a cure-all to prevent accidents. Department of Transportation rules imposed last year require companies to use stronger tank cars that are better able to withstand derailments.

But tens of thousands of outdated tank cars that are prone to split open during accidents remain in use.

It’s expected to take years for them to be retrofitted or replaced.

Hunt, the Union Pacific spokesman, did not respond to questions about whether the Bakken oil in Friday’s derailment had been treated to reduce volatility. It also wasn’t clear if the tank cars in the accident had been retrofitted under the new rules.

Matt Lehner, a spokesman from the Federal Railroad Administration, said a team of investigators was headed to the scene from Vancouver, Washington.

Gov. Kate Brown sent out the following statement regarding the incident.

“I am grateful to local first responders, HazMat teams, and other state agencies for doing their best to keep the community of Mosier safe,” she said. “I am closely monitoring the situation and ready to make every state resource available as needed. I ask that travelers seek alternate routes away from this area until further notice. The Oregon Department of Transportation will provide continuous updates on travel conditions.”

This is a developing story, updates will be posted as information comes in.

Repost from the Oregonian

Oil train derails near Mosier in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge

By Tony Hernandez, June 03, 2016 1:03 PM, updated 6:37 PM

A multi-car oil train derailment Friday in the Columbia River Gorge at Mosier sent up a massive plume of black smoke and stoked long-standing fears about the risks of hauling crude oil through one of the Pacific Northwest’s most renowned landscapes.

Eleven cars from a 96-car Union Pacific train derailed west of the small city about 12:20 p.m., adjacent to a creek that feeds the Columbia River. At least one car caught on fire and released oil, but no one was injured, said railroad spokesman Aaron Hunt.

The train originated in New Town, North Dakota, and was moving crude extracted from the Bakken formation to the U.S. Oil & Refinery Co. refinery in Tacoma, said company spokeswoman Marcia Nielsen.

The accident closed a 27-mile stretch of Interstate 84 for hours as a precaution and caused the evacuation of a community school.

State officials were still assessing the accident early Friday evening. The cause remained unclear.

“We don’t know whether there’s any environmental damage including whether there’s spillage to the Columbia,” said Jennifer Flynt, spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

Maia Bellon, director of the Washington Department of Ecology, said there are no signs of oil in the Columbia River.

The cars derailed within about 20 feet from the city’s sewage plant, said Arlene Burns, mayor of the city of 440 people, east of Hood River. It’s not clear how much damage the plant sustained, she said. Residents have been asked not to use bathrooms and other drains into the city’s sewage lines.

“We’ve been saying for a long time that it’s not fair for trains with toxic loads to come into our towns near our Gorge,” Burns said. “We don’t have the capacity to fight these fires.”

The town, with the motto “Small Enough to Make a Difference,” is known for its orchards and vineyards. It has no gas station and one store. The cars jumped tracks under an overpass about 100 yards away from a mobile home park with 50 to 75 units.

“We need the ability to fight an oil fire which water does not fight nor does sewage,” Burns said.

Thankfully, she said, “It’s not a windy day and it’s not August and the ground is not brittle and dry.”

The fire burned at least a quarter of an acre of nearby land, said state Forestry Department spokesman Ken Armstrong. He wasn’t sure who owns the land.

The Oregon Department of Transportation shut down Interstate 84 westbound in The Dalles by milepost 87 and eastbound by milepost 64. Cars and trucks faced gridlock as they detoured around the area on routes that included a toll bridge over the river between Oregon and Washington state.

Residents reported seeing flames near the K-8 Mosier Community School. Its 160 students were quickly evacuated.

Union Pacific has hauled two types of oil through the gorge — a thick, waxy crude from Utah and Bakken crude from North Dakota. In late 2015, the company began moving one mile-long train of Bakken oil each week on the Oregon side of the gorge to the Tacoma refinery.

The oil came from the heart of a massive boom that’s pushed an unprecedented amount of crude into the country’s rail system, turning the Columbia River Gorge into one of the United States’ most heavily traveled oil train routes.

Crude oil wasn’t thought to be especially explosive before trains began derailing and erupting in sky-high fireballs in 2013. Those explosions have been driven by the unique characteristics of the crude from North Dakota’s Bakken formation and the expansive volumes in which it has moved.

Though Bakken oil is laden with greater concentrations of flammable gases than comparable types of crude, the North Dakota Industrial Commission has begun requiring oil producers to condition the most volatile batches. Its limits have been criticized as far too loose.

Alison Ritter, a commission spokeswoman, said the oil in the derailment would have been subject to those conditioning rules. But its exact volatility isn’t yet known, she said.

Federal regulators have moved to improve oil train safety by requiring upgrades to tank cars. But it will take years for the public to reap the benefits.