Train derailment at Norfolk Southern Abrams Yard in Upper Merion under investigation
By Oscar Gamble, 11/13/15, 10:48 AM EST
A section of train derailed at Abrams Yard of Norfolk Southern along Henderson Road in Upper Merion Friday morning, Nov. 13, 2015. Gene Walsh — Digital FIrst Media
UPPER MERION >> Five tanker cars on a train carrying heavy crude oil bound for New Jersey derailed near the Norfolk Southern Abrams Yard in King of Prussia Friday.
No one was injured and no oil was spilled.
The derailment occurred around 4:30 a.m. during switching operations at the yard while the train was traveling less than 5 mph.
According to Norfolk Southern Resident Vice President of Governmental Relations Rudy Husband, there has been no disruption to rail line operations and the derailment poses no risk to public safety. Husband said he anticipates it will take several hours to re-rail the cars and assess the damage to the tracks.
Service on the affected segment of track will resume after repairs are made.
This past May, emergency responders from Montgomery and Chester counties put into practice techniques that were learned over a three-day training course on containing an oil spill in the event of an oil train derailment. The exercise was one in a series of trainings and seminars on behalf of the Montgomery County Department of Public Safety to help municipal first responders prepare for a catastrophic oil train derailment.
In August, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf released a series of recommendations meant to reduce the risk of a catastrophic derailment, including reduced speeds through cities, beefed-up track inspections and a call for trackside communities to plan for an emergency.
The cause of the derailment at Norfolk Southern Abrams Yard remains under investigation.
Wisconsin derailments are a reminder of need to improve rail safety
Editorial | Railroad safety | November 12, 2015
Train cars lie overturned outside of Alma after derailing on Saturday. Associated Press
The three train derailments in the last week in Wisconsin are another reminder that the industry, Congress and states have to move faster in making safety upgrades to rail cars and the tracks on which they move. Part of those improvements also should include better training for local responders to train accidents, better government oversight and more public access to industry records related to safety issues.
A rail accident near Alma on Saturday resulted in a spill of 18,000 gallons of ethanol, much of which escaped into the Mississippi River. That accident involved a class of tankers that are being phased out and replaced with tankers that have more safety features. On Sunday in Watertown, a derailment resulted in the spill of crude oil and prompted the evacuation of 35 homes. That accident involved tankers that had been retrofitted with some upgrades. A minor derailment also occurred Wednesday in Watertown, but there was no spill and the cars stayed upright.
As the Journal Sentinel noted in a Monday story, the accidents were the latest in a series of rail tanker mishaps across the United States and Canada in recent years that have moved safety issues and preparedness into the spotlight. That includes in Milwaukee, where oil-laden trains move through the heart of the city.
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said Monday that “There has to be a stronger emphasis on safety — not just in urban areas but smaller communities as well. Watertown is not a large community.”
And in a news release Thursday, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) said. “I have been sounding the alarm for two years on the need to put in place strong rail safety reforms. These two train derailments in Wisconsin are more evidence why Congress needs to take action on the reforms I have proposed.”
Baldwin went on to call on the House and Senate conference committee “to include the reforms I have proposed in the final transportation bill. We need to put in place rail reforms that provide safety, transparency, and better communication between the railroads and local first responders and communities.”
She’s right, as is Barrett. While the Senate adopted Baldwin’s reforms on rail safety in its version of the transportation bill, the House did not include those measures in its version. The conference committee should make sure the final bill includes the reforms.
The fact is that railroad infrastructure is wearing down across the nation at the same time that there is a rising tide of railroad traffic, shipping oil from North Dakota to markets. Yes, railroad shipping is generally safe. The Association of American Railroads reports that the train accident rate is down 79% from 1980 and 42% from 2000, and that “99.995% of tanks carrying crude arrive safely.”
And yet there is a serious risk to citizens. More crude oil was spilled in U.S. rail incidents in 2013 than was spilled in the previous 37 years. In 2013 in Quebec, 47 people were killed and 1.5 million gallons of crude oil were spilled in a rail accident involving crude being moved from North Dakota. That train had passed through downtown Milwaukee.
The Wisconsin derailments are part of that pattern. Congress and the industry need to pick up the pace on safety.
OPINION | Jessie Mehrhoff, November 12, 2015 11:21 a.m. EST
(Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
It’s the fundamental connection between environmental degradation and human health that has me concerned about the prospect of Congress lifting the U.S. oil export ban, which will worsen climate change and threaten our communities with toxic spills.
The list of risks climate change poses to human health is long. Increased temperatures will spread tropical diseases to new latitudes. Heat waves will cause more deaths across the world. Warmer temperatures will lead to more health-threatening smog and decrease crop yields. Detailing these impacts and more in 2009, “The Lancet,” one of the world’s most respected medical journals, labeled climate change ‘the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.”
These aren’t just future consequences, to be experienced on the other side of the globe. In New Jersey, we still face the impacts of superstorm Sandy three years later. Climate scientists at Rutgers University predict even more extreme weather if climate change goes unchecked.
In addition to these consequences, the American Lung Association’s 2015 State of the Air report card has given Monmouth County an “F” for the number of high-ozone level days, and finds more than 56,000 people in the county suffer from asthma. Climate change is only going to make numbers such as this climb as our air quality worsens.
To avoid global warming’s most devastating health impacts, we must end our dependence on fossil fuels and transition to pollution-free, renewable energy. Lifting our decades-old ban on the export of U.S.-produced oil represents the opposite course.
If the oil companies have a larger distribution market for oil produced in the U.S., they will drill more — upward of another 3.3 million barrels per day for the next 20 years, by some General Accounting Office estimates. Even if only a fraction of all this extra oil is burned, global warming pollution could still increase 22 million metric tons per year — the equivalent of five average-sized coal power plants.
In addition to worsening climate change, there’s the public health threat of transporting additional oil across the country. While most crude oil is shipped around the U.S. by pipeline, shipments by rail have been increasing. To keep up with increased demand, oil trains have grown larger and tow more tanker cars than ever before.
Currently, trains carrying highly flammable crude oil travel through 11 of the 21 counties in New Jersey —Mercer, Middlesex, Gloucester, Somerset, Hunterdon, Bergen, Camden, Essex, Hudson, Union and Warren — en route to refineries. These oil trains are an accident waiting to happen, and have spurred trainings across the state where firefighters, police and other emergency responders have prepared courses of action in an oil derailment emergency.
The fear of oil train accidents — where toxic crude oil is spilled into our communities — is not hyperbole. Accidents have been on the rise, with more oil accidentally dumped into our environment in 2013 alone than during the previous three decades combined.
In 2015, we’ve already seen three major oil train accidents. In Mount Carbon, West Virginia, a rail oil spill led to evacuations and a governor-declared state of emergency. In Galena, Illinois, a spill threatened to pollute the Mississippi River. A spill in Heimdal, North Dakota, forced the evacuation of a town.
If we are to prevent these accidents from taking place in the 11 New Jersey counties through which these trains travel, we must work to reduce the amount of oil these trains carry. Transporting the increased oil we would produce domestically if the oil export ban were lifted could require enough trains to span the country from Los Angeles to Boston seven times over.
Increasing our nation’s crude oil drilling and transportation by lifting our decades’ old ban on exports leads to more risk, not less. And the inconvenient truth of lifting the oil export ban means more drilling, more global warming pollution, and more threats to public health.
There is a way around lifting the oil export ban in the first place. President Obama is against lifting the ban, and the measure only narrowly cleared a Senate committee earlier in the month. That’s why we need Sen. Cory Booker to join Sen. Bob Menendez in standing strong against the oil industry and to vote to keep the ban in place — for the sake of the environment and public health.
Jessie Mehrhoff is lead organizer with Environment New Jersey, a citizen-based environmental advocacy organization.
CP: Broken Rail Caused Oil Train Derailment in Wisconsin
By The Associated Press, November 11, 2015, 9:33 P.M. E.S.T.
Workers tend to the scene of a train derailment in Watertown, Wis., on Nov. 9 after 13 cars of a Canadian Pacific train carrying crude oil overturned Sunday. (John Hart/AP)
WATERTOWN, Wis. — Canadian Pacific Railway says a broken rail caused an oil train derailment in southeastern Wisconsin last weekend.
The railroad said Wednesday the defect was not visible to the naked eye.
More than a dozen cars of a CP train loaded with crude oil jumped the tracks in Watertown on Sunday afternoon, puncturing one car that spilled hundreds of gallons of its load and caused the evacuation of a neighborhood.
The railroad says it uses rail flaw detector cars that use ultrasonic technology to detect defects the eye cannot see. The technology last passed over the site in late September, and nothing was found.
The derailment happened a day after a BNSF Railway freight train derailed Saturday near Alma in western Wisconsin, spilling ethanol into the Mississippi River.