HazmatCrude-oil train accidents endanger 1.5 million Pennsylvania residents

About 1.5 million people living in Pennsylvania are in danger if a crude-oil train derails and catches fire, according to a PublicSource analysis which looked at populations living or working within a half-mile on each side of rail lines where trains haul more than one million gallons of Bakken crude oil at a time.

A half-mile is the federal evacuation zone recommended when a crude oil tank car catches fire. Within that evacuation zone are 327 K-12 schools, thirty-seven hospitals, and sixty-one nursing homes in Pennsylvania.

The study comes a few weeks after residents living near Mount Carbon, West Virginia had to temporarily evacuate from their homes after a crude oil train derailed and some tank cars exploded. A July 2014 analysis by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), reports that federal authorities expect oil train accidents to be commonplace in the United States over the next twenty-years. About fifteen derailments are expected to occur in 2015 alone.

The Erie Times-News reports that residents and emergency officials in Pennsylvania are looking to take all necessary steps to prevent future derailments of crude oil trains coming from the Bakken region of North Dakota to refineries on the East Coast. On their part, first responders are learning how to deal with potential oil train fires. “We’ve got the training and the determination … but, God, I hope we don’t ever have to respond,” to an oil train fire, said Rick Molchany, director of general services for Lehigh County. First responders in Molchany’s county have attended state and national workshops sponsored in part by railroad companies to help municipalities prepare for worst case scenarios.

In the Mount Carbon fire, first responders were forced to let tank car fires burn for days before they were safe enough to extinguish. “If something catastrophic happens, there’s no municipality along the railroad that can handle it; the volume is too great,” Pottstown Fire Chief Richard Lengel told the Pottstown Mercury. “We just have to hope that nothing happens, honestly.”

Federal regulators, tasked with regulating the rail industry, have ordered railroads carrying more than one million barrels of Bakken crude oil to share routing information with state emergency officials. In some states like Pennsylvania, citizens are not entitled to information on oil train shipment routes, citing potential terrorism. PublicSource notes that roughly sixty to seventy trains each week carry Bakken crude oil through Pennsylvania to Philadelphia and other East Coast cities with refineries.

Michael Huss, Pittsburgh’s deputy director of public safety, suggests that the crude oil trains could be rerouted around Pittsburgh. “When you look at Pittsburgh … we don’t have a refinery in the city and therefore I believe that material could be rerouted,” he said. “Our hands are tied” in terms of regulation, Huss said.

Patricia Reilly, senior vice president of the Association of American Railroads, has said that rerouting trains around cities is unlikely. Current routes were selected on many factors such as population, terrain, class of track, and weather conditions, she said. “Rerouting might sound like a very good solution, but the reality is rerouting those trains might mean moving it to a track which is not the best track to move hazardous or flammable liquids,” she said.

Governor Tom Wolf has written to President Barack Obama asking for prompt action on improving crude-by-rail safety. “The potential for disaster is too great to ignore,” Wolf wrote. DOT’s new rail safety rules is currently under review at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. Wolf said the standards for tank cars and braking systems are “not sufficient,” pointing out that the CPC-1232 tank car considered by the rail industry and regulators to be an improved model for crude oil transportation has failed in recent derailments, including the one near Mount Carbon.