Repost from Columbia Riverkeeper [Editor: The following comes from our friends in Oregon and Washington State. All of us from the 50 United States and 10 Canadian Provinces can show solidarity with the people in Mosier, Oregon by signing the petition today. – RS]
Stop Dangerous Oil Trains Today!
Leadership requires action. Now is the time to stand up for the health and safety of our people. The June 3, 2016 train derailment in Mosier, Oregon, highlights the risks we all face every time an oil train travels through our communities and along our waterways. We applaud leaders for their calls to stop oil train traffic pending the completion of a full investigation, but even more can and should be done.
We are on the front line. It is our children who are in schools next to the train tracks. Our homes are at risk. Our livelihoods, health, and drinking water are on the line when a spill happens.
The oil industry has shown that it is not able to transport their product safely by rail. New proposals would increase the number of trains. It is unacceptable to allow oil train traffic to continue.
We call on Governors Kate Brown and Jay Inslee to use the full power of the state to reject any permit or lease for state land or water that would allow more oil to come through our region.
We call on President Obama to use his authority to place an immediate ban on transporting oil through our communities and reject any federal permits that would allow more oil to come through our region. Sign the Riverkeeper Petition! (click here)
Track failure likely cause of oil train derailment, fire in Mosier
By Donna Gordon Blankinship, Associateed Press, June 5, 2016
Mosier tracks being replaced on Sunday, June 5 (KATU News photo)
MOSIER, Ore. — Officials now say a track failure was likely the cause of the oil train derailment and explosion in the Columbia River Gorge Friday.
A failure of the fastener between the railroad tie and the line was likely the problem, but more investigation will be required before railroad officials know for sure, Raquel Espinoza with Union Pacific said Sunday.
Union Pacific inspects the tracks that run through Mosier twice a week, and the most recent inspection took place on May 31, Espinoza said. Union Pacific had completed a more detailed and technical inspection of this section of track at the end of April and found no problems.
“We’re doing everything we can to get you back home, but we’re not going to risk your safety,” Espinoza said at a news conference. When asked if she knew how much the cleanup was going to cost the company, Espinoza said, “I don’t know and it doesn’t matter.”
“Our priority here is bringing people home. Nothing else matters,” she added. Repairs to a water treatment system, which runs under the tracks, would need to be completed before people could return to their homes, the railroad said.
About a hundred people – a quarter of the town’s population – have been evacuated from their homes since Friday in an area about a quarter mile around the train.
Mosier’s mayor and fire chief said Sunday the derailment and fire in their town could have been a lot worse.
Fire Chief Jim Appleton says the usual amount of wind in Mosier – about 25 mph – could have turned this incident into a major disaster, destroying the town and sending flames across state lines.
“My attention was focused on the incident that didn’t happen,” Appleton said. “It probably would have burned its way close to Omaha, Nebraska. That’s how big it would have been.”
Mayor Arlene Burns said the people of Mosier were “incredibly lucky.”
“I count myself lucky that we dodged a bullet,” Burns said, after noting that her own child was at school within a few blocks of the derailment. “We hope that this is a wake-up call.”
The fire and derailment damaged essential city services in the small Oregon town, authorities said Sunday.
The Mosier waste water treatment plant and sewer system were not operational Sunday. Residents were told not to flush their toilets and advised to boil any water before they drank it or cooked with it. Mosier exhausted its water reserves fighting the fire and cooling the trains. Burns said the aquifers were completely depleted.
Officials have been conducting continuous water and air monitoring since plumes of black smoke filled the sky near the scenic Columbia River Gorge.
“Today’s priority is focused on safely restoring essential services to the community of Mosier as soon as possible,” incident spokeswoman Judy Smith of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement.
No injuries have been reported. But Oregon health officials are asking people with questions or concerns to call a hotline to talk to a health expert at 888-623-3120.
Including Friday’s incident, at least 26 oil trains have been involved in major fires or derailments during the past decade in the U.S. and Canada, according to an Associated Press analysis of accident records from the two countries. The worst was a 2013 derailment that killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. Damage from that accident has been estimated at $1.2 billion or higher.
Evacuated residents needing assistance should contact the Union Pacific Claim Center located across from the Mosier Market or call the claim center at 877-877-2567, option 6.
A health hotline has been set up at 888-623-3120. A boil water order remains in effect for the Mosier community.
Mosier Fire Chief Calls Shipping Bakken Crude Oil By Rail ‘Insane’
By Amelia Templeton, June 4, 2016 4:39 p.m. | Updated: June 5, 2016 9:04 a.m.
Jim Appleton, Mosier fire chief, speaks Saturday, June 4, 2016, following the derailment of an oil train in his town near Hood River Friday. Amelia Templeton/OPB
Jim Appleton, the fire chief in Mosier, Ore., said in the past, he’s tried to reassure his town that the Union Pacific Railroad has a great safety record and that rail accidents are rare.
He’s changed his mind.
After a long night working with hazardous material teams and firefighters from across the Northwest to extinguish a fire that started when a train carrying Bakken crude derailed in his town, Appleton no longer believes shipping oil by rail is safe.
“I hope that this becomes death knell for this mode of shipping this cargo. I think it’s insane,” he said. “I’ve been very hesitant to take a side up to now, but with this incident, and with all due respect to the wonderful people that I’ve met at Union Pacific, shareholder value doesn’t outweigh the lives and happiness of our community.”
Federal regulators say oil from the Bakken region is more flammable and more dangerous, than other types of crude. It’s been involved in a string of rail disasters, including a tragedy that killed 47 people in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec.
Shipments through the Columbia River Gorge have dramatically increased in recent years and oil companies have proposed building the largest oil-by-rail terminal in the country 70 miles downstream from Mosier, at the the Port of Vancouver.
Emergency responders in communities along rail lines in the Northwest have struggled to prepare for a possible disaster. Much of the focus has been on stockpiling critical equipment needed to fight oil spills and fires, including a special type of fire suppression foam.
But Appleton said that foam was of relatively little use for the first 10 hours after the spill in Mosier. It couldn’t be directly applied to the main rail car that was on fire.
“The rationale that was explained to me by the Union Pacific fire personnel is that the metal is too hot, and the foam will land on the white-hot metal and evaporate without any suppression effect,” he said. “That was kind of an eye-opener for me.”
Appleton said crews spent 8 to 10 hours cooling down the adjacent rail cars with water before the final burning car was cool enough to be extinguished using the firefighting foam. Fire tending trucks drew water from the Columbia River using a nearby orchard supply line, and applied roughly 1,500 gallons of water per minute to the white-hot rail cars.
Other first responders described a chaotic scene, and difficulty getting to the site of the accident due to a massive snarl of traffic on Interstate 84.
“It looked like the apocalypse,” said Elizabeth Sanchey, the Yakima Nation’s environmental manager and the head of its hazmat crew. “You get into town, and there is just exhausted firefighters everywhere you look. It was quite scary.”
Emergency crews on Saturday, June 4, 2016, found an oil sheen on the bank of the Columbia River near the site of an oil train derailment and spill in Mosier, Ore., the day prior. Amelia Templeton/OPB
No lives were lost in the fire, and reports so far of property damage have been minimal, but an oil slick has appeared in the Columbia River, and officials said they haven’t determined for sure how oil is reaching the water. Yellow oil containment booms were stretched across the river to contain the oil.
Sanchey and several other Yakama Nation first responders were monitoring the containment effort through binoculars from a nearby overpass.
“It’s unknown how much oil is in the river, but it is in containment now, and we believe it to be relatively safe,” she said. “We currently have a sockeye run that is just starting, and lamprey live in the sediment, so that’s definitely a concern. We have endangered species at risk.”
Jim Appleton said Friday was a horrible day for his town, and he feels like he narrowly avoided a catastrophe.
“If the same derailment had happened just 24 hours earlier, there would have been 35 mph gusts blowing the length of the train,” he said. “The fire very easily could have spread to some or all of the 96 cars behind, because they were in the line of the prevailing wind. That would have been the catastrophe.”
Crews subdued the fire from the oil train derailment in Mosier, Ore., by the morning of Saturday, June 4, 2016. Cleanup on the oil spill and charred rail cars continued into the weekend. Emily Schwing/OPB
In a press conference Saturday, the Union Pacific Railroad apologized for the incident.
“We apologize to the residents of Mosier, the state of Oregon, and the Pacific Northwest Region,” said spokeswoman Raquel Espinoza.
Espinoza said the railroad company will pay for the cost of fighting the fire. She said it has to wait for the area to cool down before it can extract the cars that remain and remove them by flatbed truck.
The company said crude oil represents less than 1 percent of its cargo, and said it has trained more than 2,300 emergency responders across Oregon since 2010.
Union Pacific set up information and health hotlines for Mosier residents. The information hotline number is 1-877-877-2567. The health hotline number is 1-888-633-3120.
Oregon derailment likely to reignite rail-by-oil safety concerns
By Eric M. Johnson, Jun 3, 2016 9:12pm EDT
Smoke and flames as multi-car oil train derails in Oregon (00:47)
A Union Pacific train carrying crude oil derailed and caught fire along Oregon’s scenic Columbia River gorge on Friday, forcing the closure of an interstate highway and the evacuation of a school in the first major rail accident involving crude in a year.
Union Pacific Corp, which owns the line, said 11 rail cars from a 96-car train carrying Bakken crude oil derailed about 70 miles (110 km) east of Portland, near the tiny town of Mosier. It said oil spilled from at least one rail car. There were no injuries.
The crude from North Dakota was purchased by TrailStone Inc’s U.S. Oil & Refining Co, bound for its refinery in Tacoma,Washington, about 200 miles northwest of the derailment, the company said.
Television footage showed smoke and flames along with overturned black tanker cars snaking across the tracks, which weave through the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.
“I looked outside and there was black and white smoke blowing across the sky, and I could hear the flames,” said Mosier resident Dan Hoffman, 32, whose house is about 100 meters from the derailment site. “A sheriff’s official in an SUV told me to get the hell out.”
While rail shipments have dipped from more than 1 million barrels per day in 2014 as a result of the lengthy slump in oil prices, the first such crash in a year will likely reignite the debate over safety concerns surrounding transporting crude over rail.
“Seeing our beautiful Columbia River Gorge on fire today should be a wake-up call for federal and state agencies – underscoring the need to complete comprehensive environmental reviews of oil-by-rail in the Pacific Northwest,” said U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon.
Officials from the Washington state Department of Ecology said there was no sign of oil in the Columbia River or Rock Creek.
SAFETY MEASURES DELAYED
Since 2008, there have been at least 10 major oil-train derailments across the United States and Canada, including a disaster that killed 47 people in a Quebec town in July 2013.
The incident comes eight months after lawmakers extended a deadline until the end of 2018 for rail operators to implement advanced safety technology, known as positive train control, or PTC, which safety experts say can avoid derailments and other major accidents.
The measures included phasing out older tank cars, adding electronic braking systems and imposing speed limits, all meant to reduce the frequency and severity of oil train crashes.
The tank cars involved in Friday’s crash were CPC-1232 models, which elected officials have raised concerns about in the past even though they are an upgrade from older models considered less safe. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon last year asked federal officials to look into whether the newer cars were safe enough.
Rail operators such as Union Pacific are required under federal law to disclose crude rail movements to state officials to help prepare for emergencies. The rule was put in place after a string of fiery derailments.
In its latest disclosure with the state, Union Pacific said it moved light volumes of Bakken crude oil along its state network, which includes the Oregon line. In March, it transported six unit trains, which generally carry about 75,000 barrels each.
In Oregon, Union Pacific hazardous materials workers responded to the scene along with contractors packing firefighting foam and a boom for oil spill containment.
As emergency responders descended on the crash site, Interstate 84 was closed, students were evacuated from the nearby Mosier Community School, and residents were ordered to leave the area.
Brett VandenHeuvel, executive director of the Columbia Riverkeeper advocacy group, said the crash should raise concerns about Tesoro Corp’s proposed 360,000 barrels-per-day railport in Vancouver, Washington, which would be the country’s largest.
“We are very concerned about additional oil trains passing through our community because of their safety record, the risk of fires, of explosions, the risks of spills,” he said.
(Reporting by Jessica Resnick-Ault, Jarrett Renshaw amd Devika Krishna Kumar in New York, Erwin Seba in Houston, Curtis Skinner in San Francisco and Eric M. Johnson in Calgary, Alberta; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Leslie Adler)
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