It is easily forgotten that the rail industry has a century and a
half of legacy decisions that are costly to fix and that the
companies can do little better than slap band-aids on. At best
improvement is incremental.
There is nothing more troublesome than the movement of hazardous
chemicals like petroleum and many others. Were there is an obvious
and immediate risk as was the case in this particular town, the risk
needs to be clearly identified and stakeholders notified. Even here
the risk may have not been identified although upgrade brake failure
should be at the top of the list.
A runaway entering a town is a serious and present risk and clearly
needs to be countered in concert with the affected municipality.
A proper set back and a ten foot berm would likely have been
sufficient to have contained the worst of this accident. It was also
something clearly indicated for this particular site.
It was also indicated for the chemical plant in Texas that recently
blew up.
The fact remains that you cannot hope to prevent every possible
accident scenario nor is it cost effective to even try. What can be
done is to recognize exposure and to establish containment were
populations are at risk. Then insure the whole industry complies and
supply government credits were needed.
Oil tank cars like
those in Quebec tragedy long seen as flawed
By Cezary Podkul and
Joshua Schneyer
NEW YORK (Reuters) -
The oil-laden train that derailed and exploded in a small Canadian
town on Saturday, possibly killing as many as 50 people, included a
class of railcar whose vulnerability to leaks and deadly explosions
was well known to regulators.
The U.S. National
Transportation Safety Board has issued safety guidelines on the
widely used, cylindrical tank cars known as DOT-111s, including a
recommendation that all tank cars used to carry ethanol and crude oil
be reinforced to make them more resistant to punctures if trains
derail.
The new guidelines,
put forward in March 2012, but which have not yet been adopted by the
Department of Transportation agency that oversees the sector, stem
from a deadly ethanol train derailment and explosion in Illinois in
2009.
The "inadequate
design" of the DOT-111 tank cars made them "subject to
damage and catastrophic loss of hazardous materials," the NTSB
concluded in its investigation of the 2009 incident, which killed one
person and injured several others in Cherry Valley, Illinois.
Saturday's disaster in
Lac-Megantic, Quebec, was caused by a runaway oil freight train that
leveled the town's center and killed at least 13 people. Another 37
people are still missing.
It is not known if the
train's DOT-111 tanker cars were manufactured up to the higher
standards. It is also far from clear if more puncture-resistant
fittings could have withstood the crush of a train hurtling downhill
and leaping the tracks into the center of town.
Ed Balkaloul, an
investigator for the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, said the
"resistance" of the tanker cars would be part of the
investigation.
"These cars are
designed to carry all kinds of goods. They could contain corn oil.
They are not cars that are protected, like for example the cars that
carry propane, which are double hulled or which have shields on the
front to provide resistance against shocks in case of impacts,"
Balkaloul said on Tuesday.
The rail industry has
met regulators half-way on the NTSB's recommendations. DOT-111
railcars ordered after October 2011 have been manufactured to the new
code, but the industry has resisted spending an estimated $1 billion
to retrofit nearly 300,000 existing tank cars.
In Lac-Megantic,
Reuters saw several derailed but undamaged railcars that were made
before 2011, which suggests they were not manufactured to the new
code. There were also some cars made in late 2011, just as the
industry adopted higher standards. The fire burnt the markings on
many cars.
Montreal, Maine and
Atlantic Railway, whose train derailed on Saturday, does not own the
railcars, according to Chairman Ed Burkhardt. He said the cars were
leased by the same company that was shipping the crude, but declined
to identify it.
World Fuel Services
Corp confirmed it was shipping the crude, but did not respond to
questions about the cars. It said it had sold the crude to Irving
Oil, which owns the refinery in Canada that the train was traveling
to. World Fuel Services shares have fallen 7 percent since the
derailment.
HAMMERING OUT THE
REGULATIONS
U.S. regulators have
been debating the safety of the railcars for more than 20 years.
Most of the existing
DOT-111 fleet was built to carry ethanol, refined fuels or petroleum
liquids, all of which tend to be more flammable than crude. Of an
estimated 290,000 tank cars in service over a year ago, 69 percent of
them were DOT-111s, according to the NTSB's March 2012 letter. Until
recently, only a handful of those would have carried crude.
Now, about 10 percent
of the fleet is used for crude because of railroads are increasingly
used to transport shale oil, such as from North Dakota's Bakken, to
refineries. Much of the crude is shipped in the DOT-111 class
railcars, industry experts say.
"There is no
technically official car for crude oil. People just use whatever tank
car is available, whether it's a car built for ethanol, or a car
built for gasoline or corn oil or any other product," said Keith
Kronfeld, director of transload operations for Atlas Oil, a national
fuel supply and distribution company in Oregon.
The Association of
American Railroads (AAR) previously opposed retrofitting, saying it
would cost the industry "well over" $1 billion. In
comparison, derailment costs totaled about $64 million over the past
five years, the group said in a March 2011 letter. It said there had
been one fatality and 11 injuries from the derailments in the
2004-2008 period.
The country's largest
railroads made $70 billion in operating revenues in 2012, according
to an AAR estimate.
AAR spokeswoman
Patricia Reilly said there are "technical difficulties"
with the NTSB's retrofitting requirement, but noted the industry has
already adopted the tougher safety standards for all tank cars
ordered after October 2011.
"The AAR believes
that improving the safety standards of tank cars is an ever-evolving
process and should involve the input and expertise of those whose
goal is ensuring the safe transport of all hazardous materials,
including crude oil and ethanol," she said in an emailed
statement.
In a March 2012
letter, the NTSB suggested that imposing tougher safety requirements
solely on newly built DOT-111 cars was inadequate. It said existing
railcars should be made more puncture resistant by making their shell
walls thicker and adding extra protection at the ends, where the
pile-up of decoupled cars can pose additional risk.
A spokesperson for the
U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials
Safety Administration said it is "considering amendments to
current regulations that would enhance rail safety," including
for the DOT-111s, but the rules are still being hammered out.
An online log for the
rules shows the agency is accepting public comment on the proposals
until September 17, a deadline extended from the end of 2012.
(Reporting By Cezary
Podkul, Joshua Schneyer and Jonathan Leff in New York; Additional
Reporting by Kristen Hays in Houston, David Ljunggren in Ottawa and
P.J. Huffstutter in Chicago; Editing by Jonathan Leff, Tiffany Wu and
Andre Grenon)
1 comment:
Yeah its true no one can control the accidents but using precautions and a little bit care you can save your and others lives.
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