Repost from MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show [Editor: You have to be patient at the beginning of this report – Rachel will take you through font size in the NYTimes 100 years ago for a pretty good reason. Her sometimes roundabout and always repetitive hype proves to be well worth it. She is one of very few who have reported on – and made understandable – the difference between oil stabilization and oil conditioning. Hang in there…. – RS]
ND oil train safeguards too little, too late
Rachel Maddow and Wall Street Journal senior energy reporter Russell Gold discuss if new oil train safety regulations will be enough to prevent disasters like the derailment in West Virginia yesterday that caused huge explosions.
Repost from The New York Times [Editor: A friend read this and observed, “A veteran of Iraq said it was ‘like a 500 pound bomb going off.’ Children were running barefoot down an icy road carrying their pets and said they ‘thought they were going to die.’ This should get everyone’s attention, even the numb skulls at DOT!” – RS]
Spilled Oil Keeps Flames Burning After a Train Derailment in West Virginia
By Dan Heyman & Richard Pérez-Peña, Feb 17, 2015
A train that carried crude oil continued to smolder on Tuesday after derailing in southern West Virginia the day before and setting off multiple explosions. Smoke remained visible from miles away on Tuesday. Credit Marcus Constantino / Reuters
BOOMER, W.Va. — A train hauling millions of pounds of crude oil that derailed on Monday was still burning Tuesday night as oil poured from the wreckage.
Residents relied on bottled water that was trucked into town after the utility West Virginia American Water, fearing that oil had been dumped into the Kanawha River, closed a treatment plant downstream, in Montgomery, on Monday. The company reopened the plant on Tuesday afternoon, saying tests had shown “nondetectable levels of the components of crude oil” in the river. Still, aerial photographs appeared to show oil in a nearby creek, and the utility advised its 2,000 customers in the area to boil water before using it.
The CSX train, with 109 tanker cars and two locomotives, derailed about 1:20 p.m. here in the southern part of the state, sending fireballs ripping through the air. The governor’s office released a statement Tuesday saying that 26 tankers had derailed and that “19 of those tankers were involved in the fire.”
Spills and fires in derailments have prompted concerns about the safety of transporting oil by rail. In 2011, the American Association of Railroads required that new tanker cars meet higher standards to resist rupture in accidents, though it did not require refitting older cars. CSX said the tankers in Monday’s crash had all been built to the new specifications.
Scattered fires still burned in pools of oil late Tuesday, the dark plume of smoke visible from many miles away, and a bitter aroma of burning plastic filled the air. Several tankers were charred an oily black, all their markings obscured.
In the derailment, several tanker cars jumped the tracks entirely, piling against each other at odd angles or tumbling down the riverbank. There were multiple explosions, as flames shot hundreds of feet in the sky. Residents, some of whom were ordered to evacuate, said at least one house had burned to the ground in a few minutes, and firefighters from several surrounding departments fought the blaze in frigid conditions, with temperatures of 13 degrees or less.
“It was like a 500-pound bomb going off,” said Brandon Truman, 32, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who lives in this town, which is across the ice-clogged river from the crash site. “You could feel the pressure and the heat.”
He and his neighbors said the second blast had been the biggest, rattling their houses and their nerves. Residents noted the presence of chemical plants in the region and said their fear had initially been compounded by wondering what kinds of toxins might have been in the rail cars.
“We ran because we didn’t know what it was,” Mr. Truman said.
Leslie Bowles, who lives on the same short street, said, “It literally blew my door open.” Ms. Bowles said she had loaded her two small children into a car driven by her father-in-law and “just said, ‘Go.’ Just said, ‘Get out of here.’ ”
She and her husband, James, along with many of their neighbors, found their own vehicles stuck in the snow, and they fled on foot.
Cameron Sigmon, 12, said he and his sister had run down to the frozen road, without socks, carrying their dogs.
“Heck yeah, I was scared,” he said. “I thought I was going to die.”
About 200 to 300 people were ordered by the local authorities to evacuate on Monday. They took shelter in schools, a fire station and a community center, said Jennifer Sayre, the Kanawha County manager. “The railroad has made arrangements for some families to get hotel rooms,” she said.
Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency in Kanawha and Fayette Counties on Monday. CSX and local officials said that one person had been treated for possible respiratory trouble related to the accident but that they knew of no other injuries. It was not clear if any structures were damaged, but several hundred homes lost electricity.
The train was carrying oil from North Dakota to a ship terminal in Yorktown, Va.
Such accidents have become more common as oil shipment by rail has soared with the boom in oil production from the Bakken shale formation underlying parts of the northern Plains states and central Canada. Before 2009, fewer than 10,000 tank cars of oil were transported by rail each year in the United States, according to the railroad association, but that traffic jumped to more than 230,000 cars in 2012, and more than 430,000 in 2013.
The federal Department of Transportation has proposed even tougher standards for tankers, and the Canadian authorities have required the retrofitting of older cars by 2017.
State, federal and CSX investigators were headed to the scene of the crash here to determine the cause and the extent of environmental damage.
It was not clear whether the unusually low temperatures or the snowstorm barreling through the region at the time had played a role in the accident.
Dan Heyman reported from Boomer, W. Va., and Richard Pérez-Peña from New York.
BREAKING NEWS from multiple sources (thank you, Google)
[Editor: what with the rash of explosive news of late (Derailments in Alberta on the 14th, Ontario on the 15th, West Virginia on the 16th, and now this refinery explosion in Torrance), I can hardly keep up. Here are Mr. Google’s stories on Torrance. – RS]
Torrance Fire Department Crews Respond To Explosion At … KABC-TV-56 minutes ago Torrance School District officials instructed its 30 schools to shelter in place. Although air quality readings were withing normal range, residents were also …
Video: Flames after explosion reported at Torrance, Calif., ExxonMobil … Photo: Smoke, flames from an explosion at the Exxon Mobil refinery in Torrance, Calif.
One afternoon in late January, Howard Flysher, an avuncular 67-year-old with a neatly trimmed white short-boxed beard, walked the length of the towering …
Southern California authorities say an explosion has occurred at an Exxon Mobil refinery in the city of Torrance, triggering a very large smokestack flare to burn …
TORRANCE, Calif. (AP) — Southern California authorities say an explosion has occurred at an Exxon Mobil refinery in the city of Torrance, triggering a very …
W.Va. oil train derailment was 1 of 3 with safer tank cars
By John Raby & Jonathan Mattise, Feb 18, 2015, UPDATED Feb 18, 2015 1:33pm ET
A fire burns Monday, Feb. 16, 2015, after a train derailment near Charleston, W.Va. Nearby residents were told to evacuate as state emergency response and environmental officials headed to the scene. THE REGISTER-HERALD, STEVE KEENAN — AP Photo
MOUNT CARBON, W.Va. — The fiery derailment of a train carrying crude oil in West Virginia is one of three in the past year involving tank cars that already meet a higher safety standard than what federal law requires — leading some to suggest even tougher requirements that industry representatives say would be costly.
Hundreds of families were evacuated and nearby water treatment plants were temporarily shut down after cars derailed from a train carrying 3 million gallons of North Dakota crude Monday, shooting fireballs into the sky, leaking oil into a Kanawha River tributary and burning down a house nearby. It was snowing at the time, but it is not yet clear if weather was a factor.
The fire smoldered for a third day Wednesday. State public safety division spokesman Larry Messina said the fire was 85 percent contained.
The train’s tanks were a newer model — the 1232 — designed during safety upgrades voluntarily adopted by the industry four years ago. The same model spilled oil and caught fire in Timmins, Ontario on Saturday, and last year in Lynchburg, Virginia.
A series of ruptures and fires have prompted the administration of President Barack Obama to consider requiring upgrades such as thicker tanks, shields to prevent tankers from crumpling, rollover protections and electronic brakes that could make cars stop simultaneously, rather than slam into each other.
If approved, increased safety requirements now under White House review would phase out tens of thousands of older tank cars being used to carry highly flammable liquids.
“This accident is another reminder of the need to improve the safety of transporting hazardous materials by rail,” said Christopher Hart, acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.
Oil industry officials had been opposed to further upgrading the 1232 cars because of costs. But late last year they changed their position and joined with the railway industry to support some upgrades, although they asked for time to make the improvements.
Oil shipments by rail jumped from 9,500 carloads in 2008 to more than 435,000 in 2013, driven by a boom in the Bakken oil patch of North Dakota and Montana, where pipeline limitations force 70 percent of the crude to move by rail, according to American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers.
The downside: Trains hauling Bakken-region oil have been involved in major accidents in Virginia, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Alabama and Canada, where 47 people were killed by an explosive derailment in 2013 in Lac-Megantic, Quebec.
Reports of leaks and other oil releases from tank cars are up as well, from 12 in 2008 to 186 last year, according to Department of Transportation records reviewed by The Associated Press.
Just Saturday — two days before the West Virginia wreck — 29 cars of a 100-car Canadian National Railway train carrying diluted bitumen crude derailed in a remote area 50 miles south of Timmins, Ontario, spilling oil and catching fire. That train was headed from Alberta to Eastern Canada.
The train Monday was bound for an oil shipping depot in Yorktown, Virginia, along the same route where three tanker cars plunged into the James River in Lynchburg, Virginia, prompting an evacuation last year.
The train derailed near unincorporated Mount Carbon just after passing through Montgomery, a town of 1,946, on a stretch where the rails wind past businesses and homes crowded between the water and the steep, tree-covered hills. All but two of the train’s 109 cars were tank cars, and 26 of them left the tracks.
Fire crews had little choice but to let the tanks burn themselves out. Each carried up to 30,000 gallons of crude.
One person — the owner of the destroyed home — was treated for smoke inhalation, but no other injuries were reported, according to the train company, CSX. The two-person crew, an engineer and conductor, managed to decouple the train’s engines from the wreck behind it and walk away unharmed.
The NTSB said its investigators will compare this wreck to others including Lynchburg and one near Casselton, N.D., when a Bakken crude train created a huge fireball that forced the evacuation of the farming town.
No cause has been determined, said CSX regional vice president Randy Cheetham. He said the tracks had been inspected just three days before the wreck.
“They’ll look at train handling, look at the track, look at the cars. But until they get in there and do their investigation, it’s unwise to do any type of speculation,” he said.
By Tuesday evening, power crews were restoring electricity, water treatment plants were going back online, and most of the local residents were back home. Initial tests showed no crude near water plant intake points, state Environmental Protection spokeswoman Kelley Gillenwater said.
State officials do have some say over rail safety.
Railroads are required by federal order to tell state emergency officials where trains carrying Bakken crude are traveling. CSX and other railroads called this information proprietary, but more than 20 states rejected the industry’s argument, informing the public as well as first-responders about the crude moving through their communities.
West Virginia is among those keeping it secret. State officials responded to an AP Freedom of Information request by releasing documents redacted to remove nearly every detail.
There are no plans to reconsider after this latest derailment, said Melissa Cross, a program manager for the West Virginia Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Contributors include Joan Lowy in Washington, D.C.; Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana; and Pam Ramsey in Charleston, West Virginia. Mattise reported from Charleston.
You must be logged in to post a comment.