Just 22 train tank cars filled with LNG hold the same amount of energy as the Hiroshima bomb, a coalition of environmental groups wrote in comments to regulators opposing the LNG rail rule change in 2020. “The risks of catastrophic LNG releases in accidents is too great not to have operational controls in place before large blocks of tank cars and unit trains proliferate,” the NTSB wrote in a comment on the proposed rule. The decision was opposed by local leaders, unions, fire departments and the NTSB. Trains can now run 100 or more tank cars filled with 30,000 gallons of the substance, largely from shale fields to saltwater ports. Still, the US transportation department (DoT) in 2020 approved a rule to allow liquified natural gas, or LNG, to be shipped via rail with no additional safety regulations. “We are a prime candidate for a major derailment and explosion.” “The railroads are playing Russian roulette with Pittsburgh,” he said. Rail traffic is projected to increase through the region as a new Shell plastic plant comes online and rail infrastructure, like tracks and bridges, are in a precarious state, said Glenn Olcerst, founder of RPPP. Up to 50% of volatile Bakken crude oil refined on the east coast currently runs through metro Pittsburgh, RPPP estimated, and about 176,000 Pittsburghers live in the derailment blast zone. A broken axle on a train car is thought to be the source of the East Palestine accident.
COLUMBUS OHIO NEWS FIRE CRACK
A crack in a track ignored by rail companies caused a 2018 derailment, while another train hit a dump truck at a crossing with inadequate safety equipment. The causes of the Pittsburgh accidents highlight the myriad ways in which things can go wrong. The Pittsburgh region alone has seen eight train derailments over the last five years, according to the public health advocacy group Rail Pollution Protection Pittsburgh (RPPP), and about 1,700 annually occur nationally. In February 2020, a crude oil train derailed and exploded outside Guernsey, Saskatchewan, and an ethanol train in Kentucky derailed and burst into flames a week later. The latest accident comes after 47 people were killed in the town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, in 2013 when a runaway train exploded. “If something is not done, then it’s going to get worse, and the next derailment could be cataclysmic.”Ībout 4.5m tons of toxic chemicals are shipped by rail each year and an average of 12,000 rail cars carrying hazardous materials pass through cities and towns each day, according to the US Department of Transportation. “The Palestine wreck is the tip of the iceberg and a red flag,” said Kaminkow, who is secretary for the Railroad Workers United, a non-profit labor group that coordinates with the nation’s rail unions. Ineffective oversight and a largely self-monitoring industry that has cut the nation’s rail workforce to the bone in recent years as it puts record profits over safety is responsible for the wreck, said Ron Kaminkow, an Amtrak locomotive engineer and former Norfolk Southern freight engineer. By one estimate, 25 million Americans live in an oil train blast zone, and had the derailment occurred just a few miles east, it would be burning in downtown Pittsburgh, with tens of thousands of residents in immediate danger. Though no one died in the accident, the catastrophe serves as a wake-up call to the potential for more deadly freight rail derailments, public health advocates warn.
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