Category Archives: Derailment

Derailment, Draft EIR, Sacramento Area Council of Governments, Valero Crude By Rail

Sacramento leaders question Benicia’s crude oil rail project

Repost from The Sacramento Bee
[Editor: The SACOG letter can be viewed here.  (Note that this download is in draft form, but the letter was approved as is.)  Of interest also is this 10-page Union Pacific letter addressed TO the SACOG Board, encouraging no action.  A recording of the Board meeting  is available here.  – RS]

Sacramento leaders question Benicia’s crude oil rail project

By Tony Bizjak, Aug. 28, 2014
Tracks lead to Benicia’s Valero refinery. Sacramento area leaders have drafted a letter saying a Benicia report doesn’t take major oil train risks into account. | Manny Crisostomo

Sacramento leaders will send a letter to Benicia today formally challenging the Bay Area city to do a better job of studying train derailment risks before it approves an oil company’s plans to ship crude oil on daily trains through Sacramento-area downtowns to a Benicia refinery.

Acting collectively through the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, which represents 22 cities and six counties, Sacramento representatives say they are protecting the region’s interests in the face of a proposal by Valero Refining Co. to transport an estimated 2.7 million gallons of crude oil daily on trains through Roseville, Sacramento, West Sacramento and Davis. Valero officials say the oil will be refined into gas for cars in California, as well as diesel fuel and jet fuel.

“We are not taking a position on whether the project should proceed,” said Don Saylor, a Yolo County supervisor and SACOG member. “We are pointing out, as we have the responsibility to do, the public safety issues in our region. There are ways those issues can be identified and mitigated.”

Benicia officials have been collecting public comments and questions about their environmental review of the Valero project plans, and said they will respond to all comments after the comment period closes Sept. 15.

The SACOG group also is drafting a letter to federal regulators, encouraging them to make hazardous materials transport on rail safer, particularly shipments of volatile crude oil produced in North Dakota’s Bakken region. Crude oil train shipments have increased dramatically in recent years, leading to several derailments and explosions, including one that killed 47 in a Canadian town last year.

Railroad officials nationally say derailments are very infrequent. A study commissioned by Benicia determined that a derailment and spill would be a rare occurrence on the line between Roseville and Benicia. But Sacramento leaders contend Benicia has underplayed derailment possibilities, and has not adequately studied the consequences of a spill and fire.

“We think there are serious safety concerns that should be addressed by Benicia, not downplayed,” said Sacramento Councilman Steve Cohn, chairman of the SACOG board.

The Benicia trains would travel on tracks just north of downtown, through the downtown Sacramento railyard, and over the I Street Bridge.

Elk Grove Mayor Gary Davis was one of two SACOG members who voted to oppose sending the letter. “I thought it is a little outside our scope. It’s a slippery slope,” he said.

SACOG’s main role is to serve as the region’s transportation planning agency and to administer a portion of the region’s federal transportation funding allotment.

Sutter County Supervisor James Gallagher also voted against sending the letter, saying many safety issues are in the federal government’s purview, not Benicia’s. He said he doesn’t want to discourage production of domestic oil that creates jobs and reduces reliance on foreign oil.

Sac Bee: More Information

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.”

Crude By Rail, Derailment

Union Pacific oil train derails near El Paso, no spill, no injuries

Repost from KFOX TV, El Paso TX
[Editor: Apologies for commercial content on the video.  – RS]

Crews work non-stop to repair Lower Valley train derailment

By Stacey Welsh, August 22 2014

EL PASO, Texas — Union Pacific Railroad said crews will be working non-stop Friday to repair a Lower Valley train derailment.

As KFOX14 reported, the derailment happened at about 10:30 p.m. Thursday near the Carolina Bridge.

While Union Pacific said some of the cars were carrying oil, there were no spills in the area.

A Union Pacific train also derailed last October, damaging a pillar underneath the Cotton Street overpass on Interstate 10.

No injuries were reported in either derailment.

“I think they need to work on the railroad tracks and maybe service them more often,” Lower Valley resident Fred Grajeda said.

Union Pacific said the community would be notified immediately if a derailment posed any kind of danger.

“We work very closely with the local authorities and emergency responders in the area. If something were to happen, we would be in immediate contact with them and they would go into their immediate emergency procedures,” Union Pacific spokesperson Jeff DeGraff said.

DeGraff said it will take some time to determine a cause of the latest train derailment. The derailment happened on Union Pacific’s property.

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.