Category Archives: Fire

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Fire

VIDEO: 11 oil train cars derail in Columbia River Gorge, cars erupt in flames, I-84 closed

Repost from KATU Portland, OR

11 oil train cars derail in Columbia River Gorge, cars erupt in flames, I-84 closed

By KATU.COM staff and the Associated Press, June 3, 2016

MOSIER, Ore. — A Union Pacific train towing oil cars derailed and caught fire in the Columbia River Gorge Friday, evacuating schools in the nearby town of Mosier and closing down Interstate 84 between Hood River and The Dalles.

According to Union Pacific spokesman Aaron Hunt, 11 cars in the 96-car train derailed around noon near Mosier, about 70 miles east of Portland.

The train was hauling oil from Eastport, Idaho, and was headed for Tacoma, Washington. It was carrying Bakken crude oil, a type of oil known to be highly volatile.

According to the Oregon Department of Transportation, one car is fully engulfed in flames and another one is on fire. From KATU’s Chopper 2, however, it was clear that more than one car was on fire — perhaps as many as four.

A spokesperson from the state fire marshal’s office told KATU that so far there have been no injuries reported. The spokesperson said firefighters were taking a defensive stance in their battle against the flames and the best course of action may be to let the fire burn itself out.

Mosier students were taken to Wahtonka campus in The Dalles. Parents living in the area could pick up their students from that location; the district scheduled buses for the remaining students.

The Union Pacific train derailed just after noon. The ensuing fire created a large plume of black smoke rising from the train tracks near Mosier, which is located off I-84 east of Hood River.

Gresham Fire confirmed that their HazMat crews are heading to the scene. Dept. of Environmental Quality officials said they are investigating the impact of the derailment and fire.

Interstate 84 was closed for a 23-mile stretch between The Dalles and Mosier and the radius for evacuations was a half-mile.

Portland Airport Fire & Rescue has sent a specialized firefighting foam truck carrying about 1,300 gallons of fire suppression foam, four firefighters and a chief to aid in the firefighting effort.

Silas Bleakley was working at his restaurant in Mosier when the train derailed.

“You could feel it through the ground. It was more of a feeling than a noise,” he told The Associated Press as smoke billowed from the tankers.

Bleakley said he went outside, saw the smoke and got in his truck and drove about 2,000 feet to a bridge that crosses the railroad tracks.

There, he said he saw tanker cars “accordioned” across the tracks.

Another witness, Brian Shurton, was driving in Mosier and watching the train as it passed by the town when he heard a tremendous noise.

“All of a sudden, I heard ‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’ like dominoes,” he said.

He, too, drove to the bridge overpass to look down and saw the cars flipped over before a fire started in one of the cars and he called 911, he said.

“The train wasn’t going very fast. It would have been worse if it had been faster,” said Shurton, who runs a windsurfing business in nearby Hood River.

Environmental Concerns

The accident immediately drew reaction from environmentalists who said oil should not be transported by rail, particularly along a river that is a hub of recreation and commerce.

“Moving oil by rail constantly puts our communities and environment at risk,” said Jared Margolis, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity in Eugene, Oregon.

It wasn’t immediately clear if oil had seeped into the river or what had caused the derailment. Hunt did not know how fast the train was traveling at the time, but witnesses said it was going slowly as it passed the town of Mosier.

Response teams were using a drone to assess the damage, said Katherine Santini, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Forest Service.

Since last spring, North Dakota regulators have required companies to treat oil before it’s shipped by rail to make it less combustible.

A May 2015 derailment near Heimdal, North Dakota, involved cars carrying oil that had been treated to reduce the volatility, but the crude still ignited. At least one train wreck involving treated Bakken oil did not result in a fire, when 22 cars derailed and 35,000 gallons of oil spilled near Culbertson, Montana, last July.

Reducing the explosiveness of the crude moved by rail was not supposed to be a cure-all to prevent accidents. Department of Transportation rules imposed last year require companies to use stronger tank cars that are better able to withstand derailments.

But tens of thousands of outdated tank cars that are prone to split open during accidents remain in use.

It’s expected to take years for them to be retrofitted or replaced.

Hunt, the Union Pacific spokesman, did not respond to questions about whether the Bakken oil in Friday’s derailment had been treated to reduce volatility. It also wasn’t clear if the tank cars in the accident had been retrofitted under the new rules.

Matt Lehner, a spokesman from the Federal Railroad Administration, said a team of investigators was headed to the scene from Vancouver, Washington.

Gov. Kate Brown sent out the following statement regarding the incident.

“I am grateful to local first responders, HazMat teams, and other state agencies for doing their best to keep the community of Mosier safe,” she said. “I am closely monitoring the situation and ready to make every state resource available as needed. I ask that travelers seek alternate routes away from this area until further notice. The Oregon Department of Transportation will provide continuous updates on travel conditions.”

This is a developing story, updates will be posted as information comes in.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Fire

LATEST DERAILMENT: Oil train derails near Mosier in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge

Repost from the Oregonian

Oil train derails near Mosier in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge

By Tony Hernandez, June 03, 2016 1:03 PM, updated 6:37 PM
Video frame grab from KGW of an oil train, operated by Union Pacific, which derailed near Mosier, Oregon, June 3, 2016.

A multi-car oil train derailment Friday in the Columbia River Gorge at Mosier sent up a massive plume of black smoke and stoked long-standing fears about the risks of hauling crude oil through one of the Pacific Northwest’s most renowned landscapes.

Eleven cars from a 96-car Union Pacific train derailed west of the small city about 12:20 p.m., adjacent to a creek that feeds the Columbia River. At least one car caught on fire and released oil, but no one was injured, said railroad spokesman Aaron Hunt.

The train originated in New Town, North Dakota, and was moving crude extracted from the Bakken formation to the U.S. Oil & Refinery Co. refinery in Tacoma, said company spokeswoman Marcia Nielsen.

The accident closed a 27-mile stretch of Interstate 84 for hours as a precaution and caused the evacuation of a community school.

State officials were still assessing the accident early Friday evening. The cause remained unclear.

“We don’t know whether there’s any environmental damage including whether there’s spillage to the Columbia,” said Jennifer Flynt, spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

Maia Bellon, director of the Washington Department of Ecology, said there are no signs of oil in the Columbia River.

The cars derailed within about 20 feet from the city’s sewage plant, said Arlene Burns, mayor of the city of 440 people, east of Hood River. It’s not clear how much damage the plant sustained, she said. Residents have been asked not to use bathrooms and other drains into the city’s sewage lines.

“We’ve been saying for a long time that it’s not fair for trains with toxic loads to come into our towns near our Gorge,” Burns said. “We don’t have the capacity to fight these fires.”

The town, with the motto “Small Enough to Make a Difference,” is known for its orchards and vineyards. It has no gas station and one store. The cars jumped tracks under an overpass about 100 yards away from a mobile home park with 50 to 75 units.

“We need the ability to fight an oil fire which water does not fight nor does sewage,” Burns said.

Thankfully, she said, “It’s not a windy day and it’s not August and the ground is not brittle and dry.”

The fire burned at least a quarter of an acre of nearby land, said state Forestry Department spokesman Ken Armstrong. He wasn’t sure who owns the land.

The Oregon Department of Transportation shut down Interstate 84 westbound in The Dalles by milepost 87 and eastbound by milepost 64. Cars and trucks faced gridlock as they detoured around the area on routes that included a toll bridge over the river between Oregon and Washington state.

Residents reported seeing flames near the K-8 Mosier Community School. Its 160 students were quickly evacuated.

Union Pacific has hauled two types of oil through the gorge — a thick, waxy crude from Utah and Bakken crude from North Dakota. In late 2015, the company began moving one mile-long train of Bakken oil each week on the Oregon side of the gorge to the Tacoma refinery.

The oil came from the heart of a massive boom that’s pushed an unprecedented amount of crude into the country’s rail system, turning the Columbia River Gorge into one of the United States’ most heavily traveled oil train routes.

Crude oil wasn’t thought to be especially explosive before trains began derailing and erupting in sky-high fireballs in 2013. Those explosions have been driven by the unique characteristics of the crude from North Dakota’s Bakken formation and the expansive volumes in which it has moved.

Though Bakken oil is laden with greater concentrations of flammable gases than comparable types of crude, the North Dakota Industrial Commission has begun requiring oil producers to condition the most volatile batches. Its limits have been criticized as far too loose.

Alison Ritter, a commission spokeswoman, said the oil in the derailment would have been subject to those conditioning rules. But its exact volatility isn’t yet known, she said.

Federal regulators have moved to improve oil train safety by requiring upgrades to tank cars. But it will take years for the public to reap the benefits.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency planning, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Fire, First responder training, Let it burn, Rail industry public relations, Tank car puncture velocity, Tar sands crude

OIL TRAIN DISASTER PLANS: A burning need for the truth about oil train fires

Repost from STAND.EARTH
[Editor:  Highly significant. REQUIRED READING.  For a number of BenIndy articles addressing “Let it burn,” click here.  For “first responder training,” click here.  – RS] 

Oil Train Disaster Plans: A burning need for the truth about oil train fires

By Matt Krogh, May 13, 2016
Don’t believe the hype: The scene of a crude oil derailment and fire is an uncontrollable fire. All firefighters can do is evacuate the area and wait for the fire to burn itself out.

In the year since five fiery oil train disasters in the US and Canada brought national attention to the threat from trains hauling explosive crude oil, the rail industry has embarked on a high profile public relations exercise to reassure the public that deadly disasters can be averted by emergency responders. In fact, the reality of oil train accidents — and the unanimous opinion of fire officials and federal rail safety experts — proves that there is no fighting an oil train derailment and fire. The scene of a crude oil derailment and fire is an uncontrollable fire. All firefighters can do is evacuate the area and wait for the fire to burn itself out.

Images from oil train firefighter training circulated by railroad and oil companies show firefighters standing close to burning tank cars, training hoses on small fires. But as Fairfield, Iowa, Fire Chief Scott Vaughan described in 2014, “If there was a spill or a fire, our big thing would be containment and evacuation,” he said. “We train for it, but training and actually doing are two different things.” Very simply, there is no controlling an oil train fire.

In 2013 in Lac Megantic, Quebec, 47 people died when an oil train derailed and caught fire in the center of a small Canadian town. More than 1.5 million gallons of crude oil spilled in flowing “rivers of fire”, creating pool fires and filling sewers. Blocks away uncontrollable fires erupted from drains and manholes and more than 30 building were destroyed. Despite 1,000 firefighters responding from across Quebec and Maine the fire burned for two days.

When an oil train derails at any speed over the puncture velocity of roughly 10 miles an hour (for a common CPC-1232 tank car) a dozen or so cars typically come off the tracks, decouple and are thrown from their wheels. If tank cars are punctured, possibly by something on the ground or the couplers on the ends of the cars, the crude (either Bakken or diluted tar sands, both highly volatile) can easily self-ignite or find an ignition source.

Observations published by FEMA from County Emergency Manager Dave Rogness on the oil train explosion that rocked the small town of Casselton, ND, describe the derailment and the size of the spill:

On December 30, 2013 in Casselton, a BNSF westbound train with 112 grain cars went off the tracks. Thirteen of the cars derailed, and one fell on the eastbound tracks. Within two minutes, a BNSF eastbound crude oil train hit that car. That caused two front locomotives, a hopper car, and twenty cars on the eastbound train to derail, and 18 of them ruptured, exploded, and released 450,000 gallons of Bakken crude oil.

First responders to the Casselton accident were forced to pull far back from the scene because of the intense heat:

The command post was originally set up one-quarter mile from the scene, but they had to pull back to a half mile because it was too hot for the responders even inside their rigs.

A similar situation occurred in Galena, Illinois, where the fire from the March 2015 derailment burned for days. First responders, who unloaded emergency equipment nearby to fight the fire, were forced to abandon $10,000 in equipment on the scene when they pulled back to a safe distance.

The DOT Emergency Response Guidebook is quite clear on the initial response to a single tank car disaster: “If tank, rail car or tank truck is involved in a fire, isolate for 800 meters (1/2 mile) in all directions” But this direction is for a single tank car, and oil train disasters almost always involve many more than one car.

Emergency response to oil trains traveling across the US and Canada is left to municipal fire departments. Few fire departments have the manpower, training, or equipment to respond to more than a single burning 10,000-gallon tank truck of crude. An oil train tank car carries triple that, and most oil train disasters involve way more than a single tank car. As North Dakota Emergency Manager Rogness describes:

“There were few options for fighting the fire. Water should not be put on exploding crude oil. Firefighters did not have enough foam in four counties together to put the fire out, plus the foam would freeze in the cold. Dry chemicals were not available. The only choice was to let it burn, which BNSF responders said would take about 12 hours. It took more than 24. Political leaders were skeptical of the strategy.

In fact, federal guidelines for emergency responders for oil train fires state very clearly that the only option is to let the oil burn itself out.

In the event of an incident that may involve the release of thousands of gallons of product and ignition of tank cars of crude oil in a unit train, most emergency response organizations will not have the available resources, capabilities or trained personnel to safely and effectively extinguish a fire or contain a spill of this magnitude.

In 2015 in Mount Carbon, West Virginia, tens of thousands of gallons of burning crude escaped punctured cars, flowing into the nearby river and forming a pool fire under other tank cars. Under the intense heat those additional cars began to rupture and explode. A report on oil train safety by the Interagency Board, which coordinates local, state and federal agencies on emergency response, described the situation on the ground during the 2015 West Virginia oil train accident:

During the derailment sequence, two tank cars were initially punctured releasing more than 50,000 gallons of crude oil. Of the 27 tank cars that derailed, 19 cars became involved in the pileup and post-accident pool fire. The pool fire caused thermal tank shell failures on 13 tank cars that otherwise survived the initial accident.

Emergency responders at the Mount Carbon, WV incident reported the first thermal failure about 25 minutes after the accident. Within the initial 65 minutes of the incident, at least four tank car failures with large fireball eruptions occurred. The 13th and last thermal failure occurred more than 10 hours after the accident.

With oil trains continuing to run across North America, it’s a question of when, not if, we will experience the next fatal oil train accident. As Christopher A. Hart of the National Transportation Safety Board explained in January 2016, “We have been lucky thus far that derailments involving flammable liquids in America have not yet occurred in a populated area… But an American version of Lac-Megantic could happen at any time.”

Realistic oil train disaster preparations would not involve firefighters spraying tank cars for cameras. The first, most important step would be to recognize — as emergency responders across the country freely admit — that no municipal fire department can control an oil train fire.

An upcoming Department of Transportation rulemaking is intended to provide oil train information and preparedness (materials and training) for first responders around the country. Unfortunately, that new rule has been delayed for years and the draft rules are not expected until late 2017. It will be years before the final rules are released, leaving dangerous tank cars, volatile crude, and unprepared communities to bear the risks of oil train traffic.

And thorough reporting by DeSmog Blog on the weak existing regulatory standards and the oil and rail industry’s failure to meet them demonstrates, there have been no improvements in the safety of the 100,000 unsafe tank cars in the US fleet. The steps oil shippers have promised to improve the safety of oil trains are as hollow and inadequate as the promise of firefighters dousing burning oil tank cars.

Real emergency preparedness for oil trains would involve preparing for massive amounts of spilled crude oil by developing evacuation protocols for the 25 million Americans who live in the oil train blast zone. It would include modeling the flow of burning crude, likely toxic plumes and wildfires. It would also require much better information sharing and coordination with emergency officials on oil train hazardous cargo, routes, and scheduling, information which railroads have strongly resisted sharing.

According to the National Fire Protection Association 69 percent of the 1.1 million firefighters in North America serve in volunteer fire departments. They are not trained or equipped for effective oil train emergency response – in fact, the scale and danger of an oil train fire puts our emergency responders, like the millions who live along the tracks, at unacceptable risk. The railroads are providing some highly touted emergency training to a tiny sliver of this massive force, but the reality is that these efforts are staged to misinform the public, not prepare emergency responders.

Federal emergency response guidance and fire chiefs have long recognized that there is no effective emergency response to a crude oil derailment fire event. If even one tank car of crude oil is involved in a fire, federal guidelines are clear that firefighters should pull back half a mile and let it burn. And that is another good reason that oil trains are too dangerous for the rails.

Many thanks to Fred Millar for his research and analysis.

[Editor:  For a number of Benicia Independent articles addressing “Let it burn,” click here.  For “first responder training,” click here.  – RS] 

Ammonia, Derailment, Emergency planning, Emergency Readiness & Response, Evacuation, Fire, First responder training, Oil spill

VIDEO RECAP: Mass Casualty Drill in Roseville, CA

Repost from Rocklin & Roseville Today
[Editor:  Be aware that these exercises and the promo “news accounts” that follow them are not much more than rosy public relation spins on the reality of catastrophic spills, fires and explosions resulting from oil train derailments. We can hope the first responders learned something, but no one is telling them – or us – that in a real crude oil explosion and fire, the ONLY thing to be done is evacuate and let it burn. See previous announcement details here, additional coverage by the City of Roseville. and the event Goals and Objectives worksheet here.   – RS]

Video Recap: Roseville Mass Casualty Drill

Placer County / Thursday, May 19, 2016

ROSEVILLE, Calif. — First responders from 35 local agencies converged on Roseville to rescue the victims of a staged but horrific accident: a collision of a train carrying volatile crude oil and a public transit bus. But the evacuation and treatment of the injured was just the beginning.

Fire fighters, police and other emergency workers then had to contend with leaking oil from one derailed train car, an ammonia gas leak from another and a fire when the crude ignited. First word of the accident reached them at around 8:15 a.m. By 11:30 a.m., exercise players had evacuated 57 injured bus riders to area hospitals (several by helicopter), built a temporary dam to contain the oil spill, extinguished the fire and coordinated the (pretend) evacuation of 8,000 area residents. Thank goodness it was just a drill.

“If such a large disaster ever did happen here, we’d need everyone to be on the same page and working together as effectively as possible, because lives depend on it,” said John McEldowney, program manager for Placer County’s Office of Emergency Services. “We definitely learned some lessons today, but overall I couldn’t have been more impressed with the professionalism and skill of our first responders. If the worst happens, I’m confident we’ll be in the best of hands.”

The exercise took place at the Roseville Fire Department Training Center in Roseville, near the Union Pacific switchyards, with medical evacuations staged in the parking lot of Denio’s Market up the road.

Placer County’s Office of Emergency Services held the exercise to give first responders from various agencies the opportunity to practice working together and test how well they can come together in a crisis. It was also a great chance to test the county’s recently finalized oil-by-rail response guide, which was developed to aid our first responder fire and law enforcement community and specialized response teams in the unlikely event an oil train disaster were to occur here.

The Red Cross coordinated for the participation of nearly 60 volunteers, most of them serving as mock accident victims.

For the quickest warning and information in a real crisis, Placer residents are encouraged to sign up for the Placer Alert emergency notification system at placer-alert.org.