Feds Issue Emergency Order On Crude Oil Trains

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Joan Lowy writes for AP that the Department of Transportation has issued an emergency order requiring that railroads inform state emergency management officials about the movement of large shipments of crude oil through their states and urged shippers not to use older model tanks cars that are easily ruptured in accidents, even at slow speeds. The emergency order follows a warning two weeks ago from outgoing National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman that the department risks a 'higher body count' as the result of fiery oil train accidents if it waits for new safety regulations to become final. There have been nine oil train derailments in the U.S. and Canada since March of last year, many of them resulting in intense fires and sometimes the evacuation of nearby residents, according to the NTSB. The latest was last week, when a CSX train carrying Bakken crude derailed in downtown Lynchburg, Va., sending three tank cars into the James River and shooting flames and black smoke into the air. Concern about the safe transport of crude oil was heightened after a runaway oil train derailed and then exploded last July in the small town of Lac-Megantic in Canada, just across the border from Maine. More than 60 tank cars spilled more than 1.3 million gallons of oil. Forty-seven people were killed and 30 buildings destroyed in the resulting inferno. Hersman says that over her 10 years on the board she has 'seen a lot of difficulty when it comes to safely rules being implemented if we don't have a high enough body count. That is a tombstone mentality. We know the steps that will prevent or mitigate these accidents. What is missing is the will to require people to do so.'"

Comments

Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out.

[Sarten-X]

Well, yes... but trains are romantic. Pipelines are big and ugly tubes running over the land, requiring destroying thousands of acres of forests, while train tracks just require a few rails. Pipelines require maintaining hundreds of miles of pipe (at which, of course, we know technology will fail), while train cars are nice, small, human-manageable pieces that can be inspected with just a quick visual check. Pipelines are managed by people in suits in a remote office in a big city somewhere. Trains are run by engineers who wave at the kids as they go by.

At least, that's how the narrative goes...

Disclaimer: I'm not trolling. Every one of those are claims I've heard from my anti-pipeline friends, who don't realize how wrong they are.