Category Archives: Emergency Readiness & Response

Cleanup funding, Crude By Rail, Derailment, DOT-111, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Fire, Let it burn, Rail Safety, Tank car design, Water contamination

“Bomb” Trains: Hope is not enough

Repost from the Pottstown Mercury

LETTERS: Safety of ‘bomb trains’ is public health priority

By Dr. Lewis Cuthbert, 04/25/15, 2:00 AM EDT

The Mercury article of Feb. 23, “We just have to hope that nothing happens” has profound implications to everyone in the Greater Philadelphia Region. We applaud the March 1 Mercury editorial conclusion, “Clearly, hope is not enough to maintain safety…”

So-called “bomb trains” containing up to 3 million gallons of explosive, flammable, hazardous crude oil travel right through Pottstown and the Limerick Nuclear Plant Site. A derailment, explosion and days-long fire ball near Limerick’s reactors and deadly fuel pools could trigger simultaneous meltdowns with catastrophic radioactive releases. Millions of Greater Philadelphia Region residents could lose everything forever.

Days of thick black smoke from a crude oil fire could be devastating. Even Occidental Chemical’s large vinyl chloride accidents (seven-tenths of a mile from Limerick) caused problems at Limerick, according to employees, some of whom are very worried about crude oil train derailments.

Risks are increasing. Emergency responders are smart to be concerned. They shouldn’t be expected to be on the front lines of such devastating uncontrollable disasters.

Train derailment disasters should be anticipated. Sixty-five tank cars bound for Philadelphia had loose, leaking, or missing safety components to prevent flammable, hazardous contents from escaping (Hazmat report – last two years). A fuel-oil train already derailed a few miles from Philadelphia.

Heat from the rupture and ignition of one 30,000-gallon car can set off a chain reaction, causing other cars to explode, releasing a days-long fireball. Basically, responders must let it burn out.

Over 100 railcars, estimated to hold three million gallons, regularly sit on tracks from the Dollar General in Stowe to Montgomery County Community College.

ProPublica data from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (2011-2014) shows incidents in over 250 municipalities. The worst of eight major crude oil train accidents include:

  • A train derailment and explosion killed 47 and destroyed 30 buildings in Quebec.
  • 2,300 residents were evacuated in North Dakota. The fireball was observed states away.

Safer trains aren’t the answer. A new safer-design derailed February 2015 in West Virginia, despite adhering to the speed limit. Hundreds of families had to flee their homes in frigid weather. Burning continued for days. Drinking water and electricity were lost. Leaking crude oil poisoned the water supply. Fireballs erupted from crumbled tank cars, underscoring volatility of crude oil’s propane, butane, etc.

Safe evacuation from our densely populated region is an illusion. Limerick Nuclear Plant’s evacuation plan is unworkable and unrealistic, not robust as claimed by a health official. Just consider work hour traffic combined with deteriorated roads and bridges. We encourage officials to visit www.acereport.org to view ACE’s 2012 video-blog series on the reality of Limerick’s evacuation plan. For a graphic presentation call (610) 326-2387.

Who pays to deal with irreversible devastation from train derailments and meltdowns? Clearly, not the oil industry, nuclear industry, railroad or government. We’d be on our own, despite:

  1. Long-term ecological damage that would leave ghost towns that can’t be cleaned up safely.
  2. Risking the vital drinking water resource for almost two million people (Pottstown to Philadelphia).
  3. Millions of people losing their homes, businesses and health.

Richard Lengel, Pottstown’s Fire Chief, admitted, “If something catastrophic happens, there’s no municipality along the railroad that can handle it, the volume [crude oil] is too great. We just have to hope that nothing happens, honestly.”

Hope is no solution! Neither is denying the reality of our unacceptable devastating risks.

The catastrophic disasters we face can, and must, be prevented with foresight and political will to face the facts and take action. Enough of corporate profits jeopardizing public safety.

Wake up! Speak up! Tell local, state and federal elected officials to stop this insanity!

Say no to dangerous crude oil trains traveling through our communities and the Limerick site.

Say no to continued Limerick Nuclear Plant operations to avoid meltdowns that can be triggered by cyber/terrorist attacks, embrittled/cracking reactors, earthquakes and now oil-train explosions/fires.

— Dr. Lewis Cuthbert
ACE President

Earthquake, Emergency Readiness & Response, Fracking, Injection wells, Natural gas, Oil producers, Wastewater

Quake experts think fracking maps may predict future temblors

Repost from the San Antonio Express-News 

Quake experts think fracking maps may predict future temblors

Experts creating models to gauge future activity

By Sean Cockerham, Tribune News Service Washington Bureau, April 23, 2015 10:02pm
Chad Devereaux works to clear up bricks that fell from three sides of his in-laws' home in Sparks, Okla, after two earthquakes hit the area in less than 24 hours in 2011. A government report released Thursday found that a dozen areas in the United States have been shaken in recent years by small earthquakes triggered by oil and gas drilling, Photo: Associated Press File Photo / AP
Chad Devereaux works to clear up bricks that fell from three sides of his in-laws’ home in Sparks, Okla, after two earthquakes hit the area in less than 24 hours in 2011. A government report released Thursday found that a dozen areas in the United States have been shaken in recent years by small earthquakes triggered by oil and gas drilling, Photo: Associated Press File Photo / AP

WASHINGTON — As earthquakes triggered by oil and gas operations shake the heartland, the federal government is scrambling to predict how strong the quakes will get and where they’ll strike.

The U.S. Geological Survey released maps Thursday that show 17 areas in eight states with increased rates of manmade earthquakes, including places such as North Texas, southern Kansas and Oklahoma where earthquakes were rare before fracking sparked a U.S. drilling boom in recent years.

Seismologists are using the maps in an attempt to create models that can predict the future of such quakes.

“These earthquakes are occurring at a higher rate than ever before and pose a much greater risk to people living nearby,” said Mark Petersen, chief of the USGS national seismic hazard modeling project.

Studies show the earthquakes primarily are caused by the injection of drilling wastewater from oil and gas operations into disposal wells, said Bill Ellsworth, a seismologist with the USGS.

The fact there have been many small earthquakes “raises the likelihood of larger earthquakes,” Ellsworth said. While most of the quakes have been modest, a 5.7-magnitude earthquake near Prague, Oklahoma, in 2011 destroyed 14 homes and was felt as far away as Milwaukee.

The USGS is working on a model, to be released at the end of the year, that can predict the hazards a year in advance.

People who live in areas with manmade quakes can use the forecasting information to upgrade structures to be safer and in order to learn what they should do in case of an earthquake, he said.

“Many of these earthquakes are now occurring in areas where people have not been familiar with earthquakes in the past,” Ellsworth said. “So there’s just a lot of basic education that is worth doing.”

The USGS maps show the earthquakes are mostly in Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas, but also Colorado, Ohio, Arkansas, Alabama and New Mexico.

“What we’ve seen is very, very large volumes of wastewater being injected over many different areas in the midcontinent, Oklahoma principally but also Kansas, Texas and other states,” Ellsworth said.

Fracking produces large amounts of wastewater, which oil and gas companies often pump deep underground as an economical way to dispose of it without contaminating fresh water. That raises the pressure underground and can effectively lubricate fault lines, weakening them and causing earthquakes.

While there was some initial skepticism, it’s become increasingly accepted that oil and gas activities are behind the surge in American earthquakes since 2008. Southern Methodist University researchers said in a research paper this week that these activities were the most likely cause of a rash of earthquakes that hit an area northwest of Fort Worth, Texas, from November 2013 to January 2014.

Oklahoma was rocked with nearly 600 earthquakes big enough for people to easily feel last year.

The Kansas Corporation Commission, a state regulatory agency, has responded to the earthquakes there with new rules that limit how much saltwater drilling waste can be injected underground. Ellsworth said seismic researchers were watching Kansas closely to see whether the new rules reduced the quakes.

CPC-1232, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Emergency Readiness & Response, Ethanol, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Hazmat notification, Public Safety, Rail Safety, Train inspection, Train length, Train speed

In case you missed it last week: Fed emergency order, advisories & notices on safety of hazmat trains

Repost from NBC12 Richmond, VA
[Editor: You would NOT BELIEVE the NUMBER of news stories on the Friday 4/17 release of federal orders by the DOT, FRA and PHMSA.  I won’t post a long list here – for a sample, just Google “oil train speed” and look through the 9,800 hits when you limit results to NEWS in the last week!  Better: just read the summary below.  For a good critique, see Law360.com’s “Enviro Groups Call DOT’s Oil Train Speed Limit ‘Toothless'”.   – RS]

Agencies coordinate actions to increase safe transportation of energy products

By Mike McDaniel, Updated: Apr 20, 2015 6:37 AM PDT

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announces with its agencies, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), a package of targeted actions that will address some of the issues identified in recent train accidents involving crude oil and ethanol shipped by rail.  The volume of crude oil being shipped by rail has increased exponentially in recent years, and the number of significant accidents involving trains carrying ethanol or crude oil is unprecedented.

“The boom in crude oil production, and transportation of that crude, poses a serious threat to public safety,” stated U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “The measures we are announcing today are a result of lessons learned from recent accidents and are steps we are able to take today to improve safety. Our efforts in partnership with agencies throughout this Administration show that this is more than a transportation issue, and we are not done yet.”

These actions represent the latest in a series of more than two dozen that DOT has initiated over the last nineteen months to address the significant threat to public safety that accidents involving trains carrying highly flammable liquids can represent. Today’s announcement includes one Emergency Order, two Safety Advisories, and notices to industry intended to further enhance the safe shipment of Class 3 flammable liquids.

Actions

  1. Preliminary investigation of one recent derailment indicates that a mechanical defect involving a broken tank car wheel may have caused or contributed to the incident.  The Federal Railroad Administration is therefore recommending that only the highest skilled inspectors conduct brake and mechanical inspections of trains transporting large quantities of flammable liquids, and that industry decrease the threshold for wayside detectors that measure wheel impacts, to ensure the wheel integrity of tank cars in those trains.
  2. Recent accidents revealed that certain critical information about the train and its cargo needs to be immediately available for use by emergency responders or federal investigators who arrive on scene shortly after an incident.   To address the information gap, DOT is taking several actions to remind both the oil industry and the rail industry of their obligation to provide these critical details
  • PHMSA is issuing a safety advisory reminding carriers and shippers of the specific types of information (*listed below) that they must make immediately available to emergency responders;
  • FRA and PHMSA are issuing a joint safety advisory requesting that specific information (*listed below) also be made readily available to investigators;
  • FRA is sending a request to the Association of American Railroads asking the industry to develop a formal process by which this specific information (*listed below) becomes available to both emergency responders and investigators within 90 minutes of initial contact with an investigator, and;
  • FRA submitted to the Federal Register a notice proposing to expand the information collected on certain required accident reports, so that information specific to accidents involving trains transporting crude oil is reported.
  1. DOT has determined that public safety compels issuance of an Emergency Order to require that trains transporting large amounts of Class 3 flammable liquid through certain highly populated areas adhere to a maximum authorized operating speed limit of 40 miles per hour in High Threat Urban Areas. Under the EO, an affected train is one that contains: 1) 20 or more loaded tank cars in a continuous block, or 35 or more loaded tank cars, of Class 3 flammable liquid; and, 2) at least one DOT Specification 111 (DOT-111) tank car (including those built in accordance with Association of American Railroads (AAR) Casualty Prevention Circular 1232 (CPC-1232)) loaded with a Class 3 flammable liquid.

“These are important, common-sense steps that will protect railroad employees and residents of communities along rail lines.  Taking the opportunity to review safety steps and to refresh information before moving forward is a standard safety practice in many industries and we expect the shipping and carrier industries to do the same,” said Acting FRA Administrator Sarah Feinberg.

“Our first priority is to prevent these accidents from ever happening,” stated Acting PHMSA Administrator Tim Butters.  “But when accidents do occur, first responders need to have the right information quickly, so we are reminding carriers and shippers of their responsibility to have the required information readily available and up to date.”

The actions taken today coincide with actions being taken by other government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Department of Energy (DOE).

*Information required by PHMSA Safety Advisory

  • Basic description and technical name of the hazardous material  the immediate hazard to health;
  • Risks of fire or explosion;
  • Immediate precautions to be taken in the event of an accident;
  • Immediate methods for handling fires;
  • Initial methods for handling spills or leaks in the absence of fire;
  • Preliminary first aid measures; and
  • 24-hour telephone number for immediate access to product information.

*Information sought by U.S. DOT in the event of a crude-by-rail accident:

  • Information on the train consist, including the train number, locomotive(s), locomotives as distributed power, end-of-train device information, number and position of tank cars in the train, tank car reporting marks, and the tank car specifications and relevant attributes of the tank cars in the train.
  • Waybill (origin and destination) information
  • The Safety Data Sheet(s) or any other documents used to provide comprehensive emergency response and incident mitigation information for Class 3 flammable liquids
  • Results of any product testing undertaken prior to transportation that was used to properly characterize the Class 3 flammable liquids for transportation (initial testing)
  • Results from any analysis of product sample(s) (taken prior to being offered into transportation) from tank car(s) involved in the derailment
  • Date of acceptance as required to be noted on shipping papers under 49 CFR § 174.24.
  • If a refined flammable liquid is involved, the type of liquid and the name and location of the company extracting the material
  • The identification of the company having initial testing performed (sampling and analysis of material) and information on the lab (if external) conducting the analysis.
  • Name and location of the company transporting the material from well head to loading facility or terminal.
  • Name and location of the company that owns and that operates the terminal or loading facility that loaded the product for rail transportation.
  • Name of the Railroad(s) handling the tank car(s) at any time from point of origin to destination and a timeline of handling changes between railroads.

Since 2013 there have been 23 crude-related train accidents in the United States with the majority of incidents occurring without the release of any crude oil product.  The actions taken today can be found at the following link:

All documents are available at:http://www.phmsa.dot.gov/hazmat/osd/chronology.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, DOT-111, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.)

New York Times op ed video: A Danger on Rails

Repost from The New York Times
[Editor:  This is another good locally-based video, this time focusing on crude-by-rail in the Albany NY region.  We have seen similar professional quality videos featuring the Pacific Northwest (by Columbia Riverkeeper and VICE News) and an Inside Climate News / Weather Films documentary, “Boom” that is broad in scope, focusing in on a bridge in Alabama.  We need someone to create a prime time video documenting the looming threat of increasing oil trains here in our beautiful California, focusing not only on safety concerns, but also on the part our corporate decisions will play – or won’t play – in the desolation of land in Alberta Canada and the Upper Midwest and the massive release of toxic fossil fuel chemicals that contribute to climate change.  – RS]

‘A Danger on Rails’

This short documentary warns about the dangers posed by trains that transport explosive oil across North America.

Op-Docs, by Jon Bowermaster, April 21, 2015 

 

In recent years, small towns across the United States have begun hosting an increasingly common phenomenon: long trains, made up of 100-plus black cylindrical cars, rolling slowly past our hospitals, schools and homes.

Few who see them know what they carry: highly flammable crude oil from the shale fields around North Dakota.

I live in the Hudson Valley and see these trains daily; Albany is a major hub, and trains traveling south down the Hudson River toward mid-Atlantic refineries hug its shores. Every day on the East Coast, as many as 400,000 barrels of this explosive mixture travel through our backyards over shaky bridges, highways and overpasses.

As this Op-Doc video shows, there are reasons to be very concerned about this increased train traffic, which is directly related to the boom in oil and gas drilling in the Midwest. These trains can be very dangerous, prompting some to call them “bomb trains.” There have already been horrific railway accidents in North America caused when these trains go off the tracks, some of them fatal.

No one wants the responsibility, or expense, of improving the safety of the cars, fuel, tracks or related infrastructure that would reduce the threat. While new regulations are expected in May from the United States Department of Transportation, environmentalists are not hopeful for much change — given the powerful lobbying efforts of the oil and rail industries.

Already this year there have been four serious derailments, resulting in spills, explosions and fires. Safety and Homeland Security officials have mentioned these “rolling bombs” as potential terrorist weapons. And the Department of Transportation has estimated that at this rate there will be 15 major accidents in the United States this year alone. I hope we will do our best to prevent them.

Jon Bowermaster’s most recent documentaries include “Antarctica 3D, On the Edge” and “Dear Governor Cuomo: New Yorkers Against Fracking in One Voice.’’ He is a 30-year resident of the Hudson Valley.
Op-Docs is a forum for short, opinionated documentaries, produced with creative latitude by independent filmmakers and artists. Learn more about Op-Docs and how to submit to the series.