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Oil Train Explosion Triggers Evacuation In North Dakota
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The LA Times reports that the small town of Casselton, North Dakota dodged a bullet after being partially evacuated when a train carrying crude oil collided with another train, setting off a large fire and explosions. Officials received a report at 2:12 p.m. of a train derailing about a mile west of Casselton, a city of 2,432 people about 20 miles west of Fargo. At some point, another train collided with the derailed train, belonging to the BNSF Railway, carrying more than 100 cars loaded with crude oil. The explosions and fire erupted after cars from a grain train struck some of the oil tank cars. 'A fire ensued, and quickly a number of the cars became engulfed,' said Sgt. Tara Morris of the Cass County Sheriff's Office, adding that firefighters had managed to detach 50 of the 104 cars but had to leave the rest. This was the fourth serious accident involving trains hauling crude in North America this year. In July, an unattended train with 72 tank cars carrying crude oil from North Dakota's Bakken shale fields rolled downhill and set off a major explosion in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing 47 people. The accidents have put a spotlight on the growing reliance on rail to move surging oil production from new fields in Texas, North Dakota and Colorado. U.S. railroads are moving 25 times more crude than they did in 2008, often in trains with more than 100 tank cars that each carry 30,000 gallons. Though railroads have sharply improved their safety in recent years, moving oil on tank cars is still only about half as safe as in pipelines, according to Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane University Energy Institute. 'You can make the argument that the pipeline fights have forced the industry to revert to rail that is less safe,' says Smith. One problem is that the trains go through small towns with volunteer fire departments, not well schooled in handling a derailment and explosion. Casselton Mayor Ed McConnell says it is time to 'have a conversation' with federal lawmakers about the dangers of transporting oil by rail. 'There have been numerous derailments in this area,' says McConnell. 'It's almost gotten to the point that it looks like not if we're going to have an accident, it's when.'"
Thank everyone against the pipeline.
It dominated the news broadcasts at the end of last year.
They said most of the people in that town could return to their homes on th 6pm news on 31 december.
I bet the cold weather was the cause. W've been having January temperatures for most of the last month in the region.
Although at the moment it has warmed up to 245 Kelvin, and not much wind.
(I live about 90 Km SE of Fargo
Ordinarily tracks next to a derailed train are closed, being considered unsafe until a track inspector or officer OKs it's use.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Business is booming!
Table-ized A.I.
As per CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/01/us/north-dakota-train-fire/, the people have been given an all clear and returned home... this happened a long time ago.. why is it being posted now?
Don't forget the crony capitalist resistance from the railroad to the construction of the pipeline in order to prevent loss of revenue.
One problem is that the trains go through small towns with volunteer fire departments, not well schooled in handling a derailment and explosion.
More importantly, the towns through which these trains travel aren't told what's being shipped through them. Even after Lac Megantic the Canadian government is doing everything possible to allow rail companies to not provide prior details of dangerous cargo being shipped by rail.
Three Squirrels
The crash happened about 36 hours before the article was posted. Hardly the definition of "a long time ago". And it's probably being posted now because it wasn't posted earlier.
Add to it the fact that the quality of most of the railroads in the US are a century or more behind the leading railroads in Europe and Japan. Only a few have a reasonable quality standard, and even fewer are electrified.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
At some point, another train collided with the derailed train
I'm sending in more trains!
That's not true at all. If you are considering *passenger* rail, then yes, it's terrible. But we don't really use much passenger rail. That chicken and egg problem aside, US freight rail is pretty good.
For instance: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21576136-quiet-success-americas-freight-railways-back-track
"Even the American Society of Civil Engineers, which howls incessantly (and predictably) about the awful state of the nation’s infrastructure, shows grudging respect for goods railways in a recent report."
NPR ran without follow-up a rail industry spokesperson saying "99.9997% of all rail trips occur without serious incident." Without giant fireballs in the sky? Yes, we knew that already!
The workers on the train managed to unhook some of the cars that had not yet caught fire. No free speech for them though, so we get the shill.
The US has a freight rail system that is unmatched in the world. Other countries do passenger rail just fine, but nobody beats the USA at freight rail.
Slashdot frequently has a day or so lag between interesting things happening and them being posted.
I'm waiting for Google to buy the railroads and integrate them with personal rapid transit.
If we built a PRT that handled automobiles instead of just people, we could get millions of cars off roads, run transportation more on electricity which is cleaner and cheaper, and avoid millions of auto accidents that kill and injure people and animals (deer, dogs, cats,skunks, & possums, mostly.) With cars carrying families, it would be far cheaper than airlines, and at an operating speed of 80 mph, would be fairly efficient and fast enough to get coast-to-coast in about 40 hours, with their own cars (no renting) and with the luggage in the trunk, and not "handled" to wind up in Acapulco when you're in Anaheim.
I hope they're not going to have to evacuate the *whole* of North Dakota- the congestion caused by three or four busloads of people would be awful.
Besides which, the South Dakota village hall doesn't have enough space to hold them all.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Apparently quite when you run into it with a train, but for some reason I would have thought that crude oil was ultimately flammable with high enough ignition temperatures or in the presence of an accelerant capable of burning alongside it but generally difficult to ignite.
I would think that it would be hard to get it to ignite, especially in the winter when the temperature of the crude would be pretty close to the ambient air temperature. The low temperature for three days prior to the accident in nearby Fargo was between -12F and -19F and the highest temperature two days prior was 2F.
The railroads themselves don't care about the cars running on them, but my word for some the US rails where they transport goods is "scary".
Ties that are overage, crooked tracks, missing track binders etc. And on those tracks trains there's a lot of dangerous goods transported. Crude oil is harmless compared to some stuff that's transported.
I'm just waiting for an upcoming accident with a chlorine car in a city...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
im not sure if this is an excellent troll, or just a brain dead moron
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
As someone who grew up in a railroad family, I will tell you that this year is just an outlier. I know the guy who owned the Canadian railroad that had the explosion that killed people. Ed use to own a railroad called the WC. WC had an accident in Wisconsin and the railroad did everything in its power to take care of the he town. Short of this year and the many years ago in the WC, I do not recall major catastrophes of this scale. As a kid, I remember reading the FRA yearly accident reviews and this year is an anomaly.
I would point out two facts:
1. Trains carry a lot more hazardous chemicals than oil. If a single tank car broke open in the Chicao hump yard, a shit load more people would be killed if that tank car was full of chlorine.. Trains do not have regs on how many cars of what types have to be on trains. Trains have ALWAYS carried caustic chemicals, just because you did not know of this risk does not mean it was not there and you lived with it just fine.
2. Trains are a LOT safer than other modes of transportation. You are not going to ship chlorine by pipeline. You are not going to ship all of the other hazardous non-chlorine stuff by any other non-existent pipeline. The railroad industry's tonnage by miles driven safety numbers are well beyond pipelines, cars or trucks. Let us not forget, pipeline spills hurt water supplies that can cause cancer. IOW, just comparing raw deaths to impacts of pipelines are not apples to apples comparisons.
IOW, quit equating this to an oil problem because it is not.
There is a movement to take trains to use positive train control. Look it up if you do not know what that is. However, even that is a pain in the ass. The FCC is requiring the railroads to get individual transmitter tower permits even though the railroads need -11,000- towers to cover the man thousands of miles of tracks they have. IOW, your safety is impaired by a lot more than just oil cars.
Well, duh. Refusing to build pipelines hasn't caused oil production to be capped, the increased supply has simply found alternative paths to market that are less safe...
Wait, is the problem what the firemen do on e the oil train derails and bursts into flames OR that the oil train derails and bursts into flame? Seems to me that the training of the firemen in the town when the trai derails makes very little difference: their training won't prevent derailments or other accidents with trains, and the firemen are not 'on the scene' when the accident happens - their training and professional status has very little to do with anything.
Ken
If they'd just made the rails out of Rearden metal....
You do realize a century is 100 years, right? You argue that the the US rail system is over 100 years behind 'everyone else'?
What, exactly, did the European rail system look like in 1914? Is THAT what the US Rail system looks like in 2014? I think not.
The US freight railroads are doing fine, passenger service is limited to regions it makes either practical or political sense - rail service isn't cost-effective, and is typically subsidized extensively. I am not aware of ANY passenger railroad in America that can operate on the ticket & light freight revenue their services generate, period.
In California there is a massive 'high-speed' rail service going in between SF and LA, it will cost hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars, take over a decade to complete, and once operational will NEVER be faster or cheaper than a commuter air flight between SF and LA.
Ken
The real issue with the Keystone XL pipeline is that it crosses an international border, allowing the Federal government to play an over-sized role in the approval process. Were this a truly domestic pipeline, the impacted states would be the decision makers... Once federal land or national borders are crossed, the Feds take over, and it's much easier for the anti-pipeline groups to petition the federal government than a handful of individual states.
Ken
Don't forget the crony capitalist resistance from the railroad to the construction of the pipeline in order to prevent loss of revenue.
Do you know for a fact that this is a serious factor? There's lots of crony capitalism in the US, but I haven't heard of railroads trying to stop pipelines.
It seems like Slashdot mods are becoming worse censors by the day, trying to hide any opinion they don't agree with.
I completely disagree with the PP, which is an extreme libertarian PoV. However, it's not a troll or flamebait in any way. I was going to tell him just how wrong he is, but instead find myself complaining about the fact that in order for a non-AC poster to get a -1, he had to have been modded down by at least 2 points.
So let's see here. One could posit that the tracks or the rolling stock were intentionally damaged to cause the derailment because the environmentalists are hell bent on casting a dark shadow on fossil fuels. One could also posit that the derailment was created by people who are are trying to encourage the completion of the Keystone pipeline. One could also look to see if anyone shorted BNSF stock. One could also posit that sh*t happens no matter who is doing what even though there is plenty of regulation in place with the goal being to create more expensive bureaucracy and paperwork that translates to more people to be employed doing nothing productive.
Drill local. It's organic and free-range too.
If they'd just made the rails out of Rearden metal....
They'd have a railroad just as realistic as any of Ayn Rand's fantasies.
Then anyone could hold the rest of the nation hostage and block development.
The deaths and injuries from both pipeline and rail accidents are trivial compared to the enormous national benefit of the rail and pipeline systems which were built largely by granting rights of way and could not be done affordably any other way.
Ideals are adorable but often the greater good is attained by making practical choices.
ANY transportation choice has casualties, including tens of thousands dead each year from auto crashes. Even that rate is trivial in a nation of over 300 million people.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Maybe I'll see you there!
If you want to pipe it through my yard,*
fuck you.
I suppose its important to some folks that we continue the quest for global desertification through carbon augmentation, but I can do without that, as well.
* The Enbridge Northern Gateway will run through my yard, so I reiterate, FUCK YOU.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Most of the Keystone Pipeline is already in operation, another portion is being built. The only part currently being blocked is the portion that would bring Alberta Tar Sands product to the Gulf Coast, which is not what this train was carrying anyway. Face it, that portion of the pipeline is a retarded idea anyway, the Canucks should be refining it nearby rather than sending it several thousand kilometers away for refining. The only reason they wanted that portion of the pipeline is because oil company executives are so resistant to investing in new infrastructure with more than a 3 year payback (why would they spend that money if it will reduce the value of their stock options when they hop to another job, after all?)
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
You don't walk the rails, I take it. I've spent plenty of time walking down miles of railroad track over the years, and it has always surprised me how few incidents there are considering the state of the tracks.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
It doesn't have to be faster or cheaper than a commuter air flight. It just has to scale better.
I don't know how often you fly SF LA, but there are a lot of flights going on there and frequently I've been bumped or heavily delayed because of something that happened far before I even turned up to the airport.
Anything that can change how the transport system works and scales over changing loads will be welcome.
The main problem is that the railways are now run as profit. Many companies have been bought out by a few large companies (similar to the banks), and when that happened, a LOT of experienced railroad employees were fired. They were replaced with inexperienced people who get paid a lot less, but also make dumb mistakes. The fact that this was an oil shipment means little. They are actually pretty lucky, because a lot of rail cars carry industrial amounts of poison gases. THAT would have caused a lot more problems than an oil spill.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/warren_buffett_the_keystone_pipeline_and_crony_capitalism.html
It's that last bit in the article: In the last quarter of 2009 about 2,700 carloads of crude oil were moved by rail. This had grown to 81,100 in the last quarter of 2012.
One main problem is that they are so swamped with crude orders that they are running old and out of date DOT-111 tanker cars.
The train that derailed would have, about 20 hours later, come next to my office and then under downtown Everett, WA. That concerns me a bit.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Wow. Talk about a tenuous implication (to put it as politely as possible).
Fundamental error in one part of OP raises serious credibility issues in all of OP.
A tanker did not just "roll downhill"!!!
From the Bakken offices in ND to Lac-Megantic QC is 1,939 miles!
Pretty big fucking hill.
The railroads did exactly that in many cases when they were first laid down.
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
Looks like there's nothing but partisan hacks who can't comprehend anything more complicated than a 5 word sound byte in this discussion.
Let me summarize what I just read, even as implied in TFA. Obama and anyone who opposed the Keystone XL pipeline are at fault for the explosion and not the rail company.
Because it's impossible to improve rail safety. Because it's impossible to address the concerns raised about the Keystone XL pipeline. Because from what I can gather big oil has decided to throw a temper trantrum because they didn't get the instant gratification of having *their* way *now* and many of our right-wing authoritarian members here are in full "authoritarian aggression" mode carrying out that temper tantrum.
Why, in this day and age of information technology and satellite tracking systems, do we have trains colliding with each other AT ALL?
Oh, I know why, because a good deal of you posting today, and you know exactly who you are, are too busy holding the POTUS and environmentalists and hippies and anybody else you don't like accountable while giving the rail company an implicit pass.
Jeebus. Oil *will* run out some day. The shit fits some of you are having are so utterly stupid. We need to reduce our reliance on pumping crude out of the ground NOW. The best ways we have of doing that is nuclear fission and biodiesel (NOT corn, there are better ways to make the stuff--apparently an algea process or hemp if I recall are the most promising, so take your pick). Then we can still have the crude for better uses than just literally burning it up while we figure out how to replace those things with alternatives then too.
The paranoid, outraged, partisan world some of you live in is frightening.
I refuse to believe that in some abstract sense a species that can put one of their own on their own moon and has sent robots all over its home solar system can't tackle the problem of growing energy demands and dwindling supply of the easiest energy source available. Thank goodness we live in a world where crude oil from the ground isn't the only energy source and when it's gone it doesn't need to be all over, go back an live in caves! Thank goodness there are other ways! However, take that same species, convince them they're all "temporarily embarassed millionaires" and then pit them against each other on issues as asinine as how to get something safely from point A to point B and then convince them that if their side doesn't win, they'll never be millionaires again!, then we are headed straight for another dark age.
And this shit is only gonna get worse in 2014, isn't it? At least maybe in a few years I'll be able to buy some cannabis downtown so I can just tune all this shit out and be happy and drugged (no, not all of us who are interested in using it know where to get it).
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
Basically we should stop digging for oil! :-\
We were on the eastbound Amtrak Empire Builder (runs from Seattle to Chicago in two days), and found out the evening of the derailment when we reached Minot, ND. All eastbound passengers that were to get off between Minot and Grand Forks were removed from the train, and bused to their destinations. They were the lucky ones.
Since we were ticketed through to Minneapolis, we were told to stay on the train, while it was re-routed SE directly towards Fargo. The idea was that BNSF was routing all eastbound traffic east of Minot directly through Fargo, and all westbound traffic from Fargo via Grand Forks and the northern tier (which is the normal Amtrak Empire Builder route) to lessen two-way congestion on those segments of the rail lines.
This worked OK until we found ourselves about 30 miles northwest of Fargo (not on the same rails as the derailment, which was due west of Fargo) behind two freight trains that ran out of time for their crews, due to their detour from their regular route along the northern tier. There is a hard and fast and apparently completely unbreakable rule that requires crews to park their train when they reach 12 hours, even if the train is on the main line, and will block all trains behind it. There they will sit, until a relief crew can reach them by car. Sometimes the only available relief crew must come from their original relief station, which may be hundreds of miles away. In the meantime, everyone else on the line behind them can simply just pound sand, including a passenger train filled with 300 passengers. If the freights could have run just a half-hour longer, they would have reached the Fargo yards, and we could have proceeded. It occurs to me that there should be some means of allowing 'bending the rules' in extraordinary circumstances, but I realize that permission to do so would have to come 'from the top', say the Secretary of Transportation, otherwise there could be all sorts of abuses.
So we sat all night, waiting for the two freights to get their relief crews. The outside temperature was well below zero, and there had been recent snow, not conducive for anyone attempting to travel the roads in the area. I bet you can guess the next issue -- yep, our crew was about to 'expire'. So we backed up about 10 miles at about 10 miles an hour to a convenient US highway crossing, and waited for our relief crew to come from, you guessed it, St. Cloud, MN, which was almost all the way to Minneapolis on the far side of Fargo.
So, after a long wait, we were finally under way, but we were told that for some reason (supposedly something to do with the track conditions) we were not allowed to proceed any faster than 10 miles an hour all the way to Fargo, a distance of some 30 miles. Another 3 hours go by, and we arrive in Fargo now about 12 hours late. The train proceeds to serve lunch, since it had provisions for all the way to Chicago, which it normally arrives by mid- to late-afternoon. In spite of Fargo being a 'service' stop, they DO NOT TAKE ON ANY PROVISIONS. In fact, the only time the Empire Builder takes on provisions is in Seattle and Chicago, carrying everything they need for the two day trip. The only other thing they do on 'service stops' is to drain the black tanks on the cars, and take on water, and fuel the engines. So you can guess the next thing that happens on a train that is running more than 12 hours late -- they start to run out of food. More about that later.
So, after leaving Fargo, we get all the way to Moorhead, MN, which is only a couple miles east of Fargo, when we stop again, and the announcement this time is that our whistle is broken. That means that we can only go at 10 miles an hour (maybe this is the reason for the slow trip into Fargo, but that was never explained as being related to a broken whistle). So, the plan was to wait for a freight engine to arrive, hook to the front of our train, and then use the freight engine's whistle. After waiting another hour or so, some bright guy with a blow torch managed to thaw
I heard the Kalamazoo Disaster was related to pushing asphalt through a pipe built for oil.
Sounded like a bad idea that required an MBA to engineer.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.