HazmatCalls for improving safety of oil-carrying trains grow in wake of this week’s accidents

Oil trains transporting crude oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota and Canada to refineries in the Northeast have suffered several derailments in the past few years. In July 2013 a crude oil train derailed in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, causing an explosion which destroyed fifty buildings, killed forty-seven people, and destroyed much of the town’s business district. Before that incident, on 30 April 2014, a CSX crude oil train derailed in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia, spilling 30,000 gallons of Bakken crude into the James River.

The U.S.Department of Transportation (DOT) has since urged rail companies to adopt new train cars which could better survive derailments, and to retrofit current cars by 2017. Working with states, the rail industry has also agreed to reduce the speed of oil trains to 40 mph in urban areas and 50 mph elsewhere.

Still, railway safety advocates say companies need to do more to ensure the safety of their tracks and cars. Two separate oil train accidents this week support their concerns.

In West Virginia, state officials are reporting that the 109-car southbound CSX train, of which twenty-six cars derailed on Monday near Mount Carbon, had newer model tanker cars which included safety upgrades. The train carrying more than three million gallons of North Dakota crude oil was heading to an oil shipping depot in Yorktown, Virginia.

TheNew York Times reports that some local residents have been evacuated from the area, and though there is no evidence of oil-contaminated drinking water, health officials have asked locals to boil their water after finding evidence of oil in a creek that links with the Kanawha River — the source for a nearby water treatment plant. At least nineteen cars caught fire from an explosion following the derailment.

“There’s nothing there,” said Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), who toured the scene. “All you can see is a couple of blocks sticking out of the ground. There’s some pickup trucks out front completely burned to the ground.”

On Sunday, twenty-nine cars of a 100-car Canadian National Railway Co. (CN) eastbound oil train derailed in Ontario, Canada near the city of Timmins, destroying seven cars in a fire and disrupting passenger service between Toronto and Winnipeg. This train was inspected for mechanical problems twenty miles before the derailment, and the track itself was inspected and cleared on Saturday, according to Patrick Waldron, U.S. Public Affairs Manager at CN. Rob Johnston, an investigations team manager with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, said the train was traveling roughly 40 mph, the recommended safe speed.

Brigham McCown, former chief of the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration, the agency which oversees tank car safety, told the Los Angeles Times that regulators should order rail companies to improve car brakes to help reduce derailments. He explained that current air brakes are applied sequentially on each car, meaning it takes more than a minute for all the brakes to be applied on a 100-car oil train. “There are a lot of technical improvements we could be looking at, and I don’t think we are,” he said.

McCown adds that most derailments have occurred in extreme weather — when rain washes out rail beds or when intense cold or heat distorts or weakens steel rails. Authorities have not confirmed if the unusually low temperatures or the snowstorm at the time played a role in the West Virginia derailment.

“This accident is another reminder of the need to improve the safety of transporting hazardous materials by rail,” said Christopher Hart, National Transportation Safety Board acting chairman.