Category Archives: Rail inspection

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

WV GAZETTE: Day after derailment, cleanup and restoration begin

Repost from WV  Gazette, Charleston, WV

Day after derailment, cleanup and restoration begin

By Rusty Marks, Staff writer, Tuesday, February 17, 2015


MOUNT CARBON — Cleanup crews began removing the hulks of derailed and burned-out railroad tank cars Tuesday evening, and residents began to get water and electricity back, after a train carrying crude oil derailed, caught fire and exploded in western Fayette County on Monday.

Emergency shelters, set up after hundreds of residents were evacuated from the area, were closed Tuesday evening after CSX, the company whose train derailed, provided hotel rooms for them.

The CSX train, hauling 107 tank car loads of Bakken Shale crude oil from North Dakota to a transportation terminal in Yorktown, Virginia, derailed in Adena Village near Mount Carbon and Deepwater about 1:30 p.m. Monday, setting one house ablaze and causing numerous tank cars to burn and explode. The train also included two cars of sand, which were used as buffers at either end of the train, CSX officials said.

At a briefing Tuesday afternoon, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said officials expected hundreds of residents without electricity to have service restored sometime Tuesday evening.

State officials said fewer than 800 people were affected by outages related to lines damaged by the initial fire. They also said they believed between 100 and 125 residents were evacuated or displaced, while the Federal Emergency Management Agency put that number at 2,400 in its daily report.

Local officials said about 100 people took refuge at emergency shelters Monday night at Valley High School in Smithers and the Armstrong Volunteer Fire Department.

Most people who had been staying at the shelters moved out once CSX offered hotel rooms, and others decided to stay with friends or relatives following the fire.

Billy Dunfee was the last to leave the shelter at Valley High School, having spent the night Monday. “They set us up on cots in the back gyms,” he said.

But the school didn’t have water Monday night, so Dunfee decided Tuesday morning to either stay with relatives or take CSX up on it’s offer for a hotel room. Dunfee wasn’t sure how long it would be before he would be allowed to return to his home.

Smithers police and volunteer firefighters from the area set up a makeshift water distribution center at Valley High School late Monday, and handed out water throughout the day Tuesday.

Smithers Police Chief Gerald Procter said the owner of J&J Trucking in nearby Canvas had a tractor-trailer filled with pallets of water, and took it upon himself to bring the truck to Smithers.

Volunteers had passed out water to about 60 cars by noon, with some drivers picking up water for friends and family members.

“I already came out and picked up water for six households before,” said Cannelton resident Jay Pauley. “I’m getting water for five more. There’s about 20 houses in the section where I live.”

CSX spokesman Gary Sease said the railroad was working with the Red Cross and other relief organizations to help those who had to leave their homes because of the train derailment.

The Federal Railroad Administration’s acting administrator, former Charleston resident Sarah Feinberg, and chief safety officer, Robert Lauby, were among several investigators from the FRA and the federal Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration who were on the scene Tuesday.

“Once the site is secured, officials will begin the investigation into the cause of the derailment,” U.S. Department of Transportation spokeswoman Suzanne Emmerling said Tuesday morning.

Officials at the West Virginia American Water treatment plant in Montgomery, downriver on the Kanawha-Fayette county line, were told to shut down their water intake as a precaution. The intakes were reopened Tuesday afternoon, after three rounds of testing by the company, with the help of the West Virginia National Guard, showed “non-detectable levels” of the components of crude oil in the Kanawha River.

The approximately 2,000 customers of West Virginia American Water’s Montgomery system — including people in Montgomery, Smithers, Cannelton, London, Handley and Hughes Creek — were told to boil their water before using it. Bottled water stations were being set up at the Montgomery Town Hall and at Valley High School.

Kelley Gillenwater, spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said that the fires were keeping DEP officials from being able to fully examine the site of the derailment to determine what sort of containment and cleanup is going to be needed.

Full details of water sampling being done by the state were not immediately available, but Gillenwater said that so far the results had come back “non-detect.” She said that despite initial reports, none of the train cars that derailed actually ended up in the Kanawha River.

Tomblin declared a state of emergency in Fayette and Kanawha counties after the derailment. “It appears things are starting to come back to normal,” the governor said at Tuesday’s news conference.

Randy Cheetham, a regional vice-president with CSX, said at the same press conference that the section of track where the derailment occurred had last been inspected on Friday. He said CSX and transportation officials have not yet determined the cause of the wreck.

Cheetham said the derailment started with the third car behind two locomotives pulling the train, and continued to the 28th car. Work crews were able to pull most of the cars away from the site of the fire.

An engineer and conductor on the train were not hurt, Cheetham said. He said the tank cars set fire to one home at the site, and the homeowner was treated for smoke inhalation — the only injury reported related to the derailment.

The West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Montgomery canceled classes for the rest of the week. In a statement, WVU Tech officials said water service on campus isn’t expected to be restored for another two or three days, and the school’s residence halls would close at 5 p.m. Tuesday. WVU Tech students will be temporarily housed at the University of Charleston’s residence halls at the former Mountain State University in Beckley, and at the Marriott Courtyard hotel in Beckley if necessary.

In April 2014, a train carrying crude oil on the same North Dakota-Virginia route derailed in Lynchburg, Virginia — one of several incidents involving oil-carrying rail cars in recent months that have brought increased scrutiny to the transport of oil via rail.

In October, officials with the state Department of Homeland Security blacked out details about the frequency of CSX oil train shipments, the amounts of oil transported and the routes the trains took through West Virginia from a Charleston Gazette Freedom of Information Act request for data on Bakken crude oil shipments through the state, citing security concerns and saying some of the information was proprietary to CSX.

Asked Tuesday whether the state would reconsider that stance in light of Monday’s derailment, Tomblin said there were probably still security concerns over releasing the information. However, he said state officials would take another look at the question.

Amtrak’s thrice-weekly Cardinal service, which runs through Fayette County on its way between Chicago and New York City, listed today’s run as canceled on the Amtrak website. Friday’s run is listed as “sold out,” which the service often does to block ticket sales on annulled runs. Tickets are being sold online for Sunday’s run.

Staff writers Ken Ward Jr., Erin Beck and Phil Kabler contributed to this report.
Canadian regulation, Crude By Rail, Rail industry, Rail inspection, Rail Safety

Transportation Safety Board of Canada adds new demands to emergency directive

Repost from The Wall Street Journal
Editor: This story is also covered in railway-technology.com and The Globe and Mail.  – RS]

Canada’s TSB Concerned Railway Safety ‘Remains Inadequate’

Transportation Safety Agency Concerned Over Ottawa’s Oversight of Railway Companies

By Judy McKinnon, Jan. 28, 2015

Canada’s transportation safety agency said Wednesday it is concerned that Ottawa’s oversight of railway companies remains inadequate, while noting that measures now in place would significantly reduce the risk of runaway trains.

Last year, the agency recommended several measures to strengthen rail safety after a 2013 oil-train derailment in Quebec killed 47 people and devastated the small town of Lac-Mégantic.

“While recognizing significant positive action taken by the regulator, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada remains concerned about Transport Canada’s response to outstanding recommendations,” the agency said Wednesday.

Transport Canada is the Canadian federal ministry responsible for rail transportation.

The TSB said it is specifically concerned the ministry hasn’t yet put in place an effective oversight process “that guarantees all railways will be audited in sufficient breadth and frequency to ensure safety issues are addressed in a timely manner.”

Canadian Transportation Minister Lisa Raitt said the ministry has taken action to boost oversight. “As part of our response to the Transportation Safety Board, Transport Canada will be conducting full (safety management systems) audits of federally regulated railway companies on a three-to-five-year cycle,” Ms. Raitt’s spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.

In August, the TSB cited 18 factors for the Lac-Mégantic disaster, including a weak safety culture at the train’s operator—Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway Ltd.—and lax regulatory oversight. The derailment sharply raised concerns about the growing transportation of crude by rail and was followed by a number of other fiery but non-deadly accidents.

Among the TSB’s recommendations was that Transport Canada audit the safety management systems of all railways on a regular basis to confirm that safety measures are in place, and more measures to secure trains.

Transport Canada hasn’t yet shown that an effective oversight regime has been implemented, which could lead to a lag in identifying safety issues, the TSB said Wednesday.

As for preventing runaway trains, the agency said it is satisfied that Transport Canada has introduced “multiple layers” of defenses that, if fully implemented, will significantly reduce risks.

“The Minister of Transport and the department have taken strong action to improve rail safety in the wake of the Lac-Mégantic tragedy, but more work needs to be done,” the safety agency said.

Last year, the TSB found that the 72-car train derailed after being left unattended and improperly secured on a descending grade despite indications there were mechanical problems with the lead locomotive. The agency said then that the now-defunct railway didn’t properly train and oversee its crews and lacked fully functioning safety-management processes.

“As we have always said, and as the Transportation Safety Board report clearly indicates, this was a case where rules were not followed,” Ms. Raitt’s spokeswoman said Wednesday.

—Nirmala Menon contributed to this article.
Crude By Rail, Emergency Readiness & Response, Foam, Rail inspection

Survey Finds Oregon Fire Departments Not Equipped For Oil Train Accident

Repost from Oregon Public Broadcasting (NPR)
[Editor: Interesting video interview with Portland Fire & Rescue – scroll down the page.  And yes, you KNEW I would have to ask: has the California State Fire Marshall (Tonya Hoover) undertaken a similar survey?  Here is the Cal. Fire Marshall’s contact information.  – RS]

Survey Finds Oregon Fire Departments Not Equipped For Oil Train Accident

By Cassandra Profita, Jan. 15, 2015

A survey by the Oregon State Fire Marshal found 81 percent of the state’s fire departments don’t have the equipment they need to respond to an oil train accident.

In a report to Gov. John Kitzhaber’s office, the fire marshal tallied up $2.7 million in “start-up” costs for the additional equipment, personnel and training needed for the state to prepare for a crude oil incident.

The governor’s office says it’s unclear where that money would come from, but the governor is working with lawmakers to bridge the gap.

“Rail safety is a priority for the governor,” said Kitzhaber spokesman Chris Pain. “It’s very important to him to address these gaps and to figure out how to get the additional resources to support our already well-trained hazmat teams and other first responders across the state.”

Explosive oil train derailments in the U.S. and Canada over the past couple years have raised safety concerns as more and more crude oil travels by rail through the Northwest.

In response, Kitzhaber is studying what his state needs to handle an oil train emergency.

A safety gap assessment report ordered by the governor last year concluded the state needs more rail safety inspectors and training for emergency responders. It also concluded that the Oregon State Fire Marshal should find out whether fire departments are equipped to respond to a derailment if it happens here.

After a survey of 127 fire chiefs, the fire marshal has concluded that most are not; 81 percent said their departments don’t have the equipment needed to respond to a crude oil incident.

Around 50 fire departments said they’re lacking firefighting foam and oil-absorbing boom. Dozens of departments also reported lacking personal protective equipment, air monitors and foam applicators. Of those surveyed, 80 fire departments reported their jurisdictions have railways carrying crude oil or other hazardous materials.

“The overriding takeaway is a majority of fire agencies with crude oil trains traveling through their jurisdictions indicate they do not have enough equipment to respond to a crude oil incident,” the fire marshal’s report concludes.

The report recommends adding six trailers equipped with firefighting foam and protective gear at strategic locations throughout the state to make up for the shortfall.

That won’t get every fire agency the materials they would need to respond to an oil train accident, the report says, but it would spread essential equipment across the state so it will be accessible in case of an emergency. The report also notes that in addition to the $2.7 million in start-up costs, there will be ongoing maintenance costs in future years.

Scappoose Fire Chief Mike Greisen, whose agency sees about a dozen oil trains pass through its jurisdiction every month on their way to an oil terminal near Clatskanie, said his department can’t afford the firefighting foam and special training it needs to be ready in case one of those trains derails. He’s applied for a $20,000 grant to pay for his firefighters to take a training class.

“We can’t afford to practice because foam is $32 a gallon and you can go through five gallons a minute,” he said.

He said the state should step in to help local fire departments get the equipment they need.

“They really need to sit down and figure out where some funding is going to come from,” he said.

Fire Chief Tim Moor at Redmond Fire and Rescue said he thinks the railroads should bear the primary responsibility for responding to an oil train incident because the state won’t be able to afford all the equipment needed.

“They need to be accountable when they’re transporting it,” he said. “Should there be a derailment or accident, it’s probably going to come down to the private sector and then state agencies doing the best they can with the equipment we have.”

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Hazmat notification, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Rail inspection, State regulation

Albany NY: Year in review top news – crude by rail

Repost from The Times Union, Albany NY
[Excellent month-by-month review of CBR developments in New York’s capital region, and an excellent group of 14 photos.  – RS]

Albany’s Top 10 stories: Region a hub in oil train surge

Converging lines drove growth in shipment
By Brian Nearing, December 29, 2014
View of the courtyard between the apartment buildings and the rail line that carries oil tankers to the Port of Albany Wednesday, July 16, 2014, at Ezra Prentice Homes in Albany, N.Y. (Cindy Schultz / Times Union) Photo: Cindy Schultz / 00027815A
View of the courtyard between the apartment buildings and the rail line that carries oil tankers to the Port of Albany Wednesday, July 16, 2014, at Ezra Prentice Homes in Albany, N.Y. (Cindy Schultz / Times Union)

More oil trains kept a-rollin’ last year in Capital Region from the booming Bakken fields of North Dakota, where massive hydrofracking has helped drop national gasoline prices below $3 a gallon.

It was only two days into 2014 in the aftermath of a massive oil train derailment and fire in North Dakota when federal regulators warned that Bakken crude was more likely to catch fire than regular crude. And at year’s end, critics were warning that federal plans to phase out less-sturdy versions of the most common rail tankers during the next two years were too slow.

In between, massive trains pulling dozens of all-black tanker cars — carrying millions of gallons of crude and ominously called bomb trains by opponents — kept coming.

Because of its geographic location, with rail lines converging from all four directions and its access to the Hudson River, Albany has become a major oil shipping hub, which drew little public attention when the oil boom began taking shape some five years ago.

Some oil is unloaded at the port for shipment down the Hudson in barges or tankers, while other oil continues by rail either south along the Hudson River to coastal refineries in New Jersey and Pennsylvania or north along Lake Champlain to Canada.

And there are many more trains than just a couple years ago. For the first 10 months of 2014, more than 672,000 oil-filled tanker cars moved by rail in the U.S., an increase of more than 13 percent from the previous period of 2013, according to federal statistics. That was more than twice as many as the 300,000 rail oil tankers that moved for the same period in 2011.

But for part of the oil train story in Albany, 2014 will end the way it began, with the state Department of Environmental Conservation still weighing plans by an oil terminal operator at the port, Global Partners, to build a facility that heats crude oil to make it easier to pump in cold weather.

Bakken crude doesn’t have to be heated in the cold, leading many to conclude Global wants to begin accepting trains carrying Canadian tar sands oil, a thicker crude that must be heated to be pumped in the cold. Global has never said either way. DEC extended the comment period on the project eight times amid growing community opposition.

Global and another terminal operator, Houston-based Buckeye Partners, have DEC permission to ship 2.8 billion gallons of oil a year that is arriving by rail. By the end of January, Gov. Andrew Cuomo had ordered a state review of safety and spill control plans while also pressing the Obama administration to act faster to toughen rules on the burgeoning energy network.

The governor did not wait for the report to act. By February, he was touting the first rail-safety inspections at the Port of Albany and elsewhere by state and federal regulators. By year’s end, eight such inspection “blitzes” had been done involving nearly 7,400 rail cars, including more than 5,300 oil tankers, and nearly 2,700 miles of track. A total of 840 defects have been uncovered.

In March, Albany County Executive Daniel P. McCoy slapped a county moratorium on Global’s crude heating project. By July, as many as 42 oil trains each week — each holding more than 100 million gallons of Bakken crude — were coming into Albany from North Dakota, according to figures released by the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services.

This summer, two major rail companies — CSX and Canadian Pacific — revealed information about their shipments under an emergency federal order intended to help inform local emergency workers of potential risks. CSX transports oil through 17 counties on a line that runs upstate from Lake Erie and eastward roughly along the Thruway corridor, while CP runs oil through five counties in the Capital Region and the North Country on the way from Canada.

The region can expect to see trains for a long time. By October, a Canadian Pacific official predicted increased transport of tar sands crude oil from Alberta in coming years would account for about 60 percent of the railroad’s oil revenue. That same month, the DEC rejected oil train opponents’ claims that the state had the power to immediately ban the most common type of tanker cars — called DOT-111s — from entering the port loaded with flammable oil.

Also in October, Global quietly withdrew plans before the DEC for a new oil terminal facility on the Hudson River in New Windsor, Orange County, so that oil could be moved from massive crude oil tanker trains onto vessels to continue downriver to coastal refineries. The company also announced it had voluntarily stopped using the oldest, least sturdy models of DOT-111s.

By December, officials in North Dakota announced new safety rules on Bakken crude oil shipments aimed at reducing its potential explosiveness, but the limits would not affect about 80 percent of oil arriving daily in Albany, leading oil train opponents to criticize the rules as almost meaningless.

And it looks like the surge of oil trains will continue to grow. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, two refineries in Linden, N.J., and Philadelphia are adding crude-by-rail terminals to handle up to 8.8 million gallons a day of incoming shipments.

For oil trains from North Dakota and Canada to reach these refineries, the trip would have to pass through Albany.