(The Baltimore Sun posted the following article by John B. O’Donnell on its website on May 24.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Nearly two years after rail cars carrying hazardous chemicals accidentally derailed and burned inside a Baltimore tunnel, the federal government still has no plan for the security of hazardous rail shipments, the investigative arm of Congress has concluded.
In a report released yesterday by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, a Baltimore Democrat, the General Accounting Office said the Department of Homeland Security is developing a security plan that focuses on intermodal transportation. It has not begun to work on specific plans for rail and other modes of transportation.
The GAO recommended that the departments of Homeland Security and Transportation develop “a risk-based plan” to specifically address rail security.
Yesterday, Cummings and three other House members asked the two Cabinet departments to develop the plan recommended by the GAO.
“It is unfortunate that a year-and-a-half after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the administration has still not made substantial progress in addressing the security of the nation’s rail system,” they wrote in letters to the agencies.
“We want to see action,” Cummings said at a Capitol Hill news conference. “We’ve got to start somewhere. We just cannot sit around and wait for an incident to happen or say to ourselves that it could never happen.”
Responding to the GAO, the Association of American Railroads, which represents the major freight carriers, said the industry has developed a plan in consultation with a number of federal agencies, including Homeland Security and Transportation.
Cummings and Rep. Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat, asked for a GAO investigation three weeks after terrorists hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.
“Concerns regarding the security of transportation assets have been heightened by recent reports that terrorists may be considering using the hazardous waste transportation system as a weapon,” they said in a letter to the GAO that also asked for an examination of the Baltimore derailment in July 2001.
The GAO report contained a few brief references to the Baltimore incident, which sent black smoke billowing over the city, caused cancellation of almost a week’s worth of Orioles games and took several days to extinguish.
The report estimated that 83 million tons of hazardous material were shipped by rail in 2001, down from 95 million tons in 1998.