(The following story by Jim Schlosser appeared on the News and Record website on November 4.)
GREENSBORO, N.C. — More than 20 times a day, Norfolk Southern freight trains a mile or more long whiz through downtown. They pass apartments, condos, offices and restaurants.
What’s in those rail cars?
You don’t want to know. It’s best not to think of the catastrophe that might result from a derailment.
The odds of it happening are miniscule, but it has happened elsewhere.
A tanker on a Norfolk Southern train derailed in 2005 in Graniteville, S.C., and leaked 10,500 gallons of chlorine. Nine people died and 590 became sick from chlorine inhalation. Some 5,453 people were evacuated and didn’t return home for a week.
On the plus side, that same year, the Association of American Railroads reports that trains with hazardous cargo reached destinations 99.997 percent of the time. The industry says chemical transportation safety has improved 80 percent since 1990.
The railroads don’t hid the hazardous chemicals — 80 percent of which are chlorine, used mainly for water purification, and anhydrous ammonia, used as fertilizer that can burn eyes, skin and the respiratory system. Rail cars are clearly marked, but railroads don’t shout what’s aboard.
A 1970 incident perhaps helps explain why railroads avoid publicizing cargo.
That year the Army announced it would transport nerve gas rockets from a military depot in Lexington, Ky., to Sunny Point Military Ocean Terminal near Wilmington to be dumped at sea.
The train traveled through southern North Carolina. Protests arose when the shipment plan was announced. Towns along the route increased security. Medical personnel stood by.
As it turned out, hundreds of curious spectators stood at the tracks to watch the train go by. Soldiers waved from the cars. The train reached the coast safely.
The same day the nerve gas rolled along, freight trains passed through Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh and other cities carrying materials as dangerous — or worse. No one noticed. Trains carrying military ammo have passed through Greensboro for years.
If the AAR and its member railroads, including Norfolk Southern, had their way, they’d stop carrying hazardous chemicals. It’s not worth it, they say. The quantities are small, only 1,700 cars a year — one-third of 1 percent of all rail cars — crisscrossing America.
Still, the tiny amount gives the railroads the jitters and makes them sick financially when accidents happen.
“Every time a railroad moves one of these shipments, it faces potentially ruinous liability,” a February AAR report says. “The revenue that highly-hazardous materials generate does not come close to covering the potential liability to railroads, … and the insurance industry is unwilling to insure railroads against the multi-billion dollar risks associated with high-hazardous shipments.”
But federal law requires railroads to carry dangerous chemicals. Industries and farms depend on the chemicals for manufacturing and fertilizing. Greensboro and other cities use chlorine for water purification.
It would be too costly and time consuming to keep firetrucks and ambulances along tracks in Greensboro each time a train with chemicals rolled through.
But the emergency crews stay ready to move quickly. Train dispatchers know the contents of every train and can pass the information to first responders.
Operation Respond Institute, a not-for-profit hazardous materials information gatherer, also sends data to emergency responders.
“You have a lot more information on the way to the scene because of the data we have gathered,” Dan Collins of Operation Respond said at a meeting of emergency responders in Greensboro recently. It beats getting there and trying to figure out the location of the dangerous stuff on a train, he said.
The meeting also included a special passenger train brought from Raleigh to demonstrate new technology being tested on North Carolina’s Piedmont and Carolinian passenger trains.
The technology amounts to a sophisticated “panic button” that will eventually be on freight trains, too. The button automatically alerts emergency authorities the instant a train derails. Before, passersby or the engineer or crew alerted authorities — if they were still alive.
If rail cars were to spill dangerous chemicals here, a system already in place called “reverse 911” goes to work.
For example, if a train derails beside Church Street near the Fisher Park and Aycock neighborhoods, an emergency dispatcher would record a message and activate the reverse 911 system. It would ring phones in every house in the area. The automated voice would tell people to flee and in which direction.
The system helped in evacuations during recent California wildfires.
David Spears, deputy chief of the Greensboro Fire Department, can’t recall any chemical rail car spills here. The closest disaster came in 1997 when 18,000 gallons of hydrochloric acid — capable of eye, nose and throat irritation — spilled from a storage tank at Holland Chemical (formerly Worth Chemical) in southwest Greensboro. People working and living nearby were evacuated. No one became sick.
Another incident, this one involving a Norfolk Southern freight train, happened in 1988. A locomotive hit a gasoline tanker truck trying to cross the tracks to the petroleum tank farm near Piedmont Triad International Airport. The explosion killed the engineer, who had complained for years about the many crossings through the tank farm. Fears of secondary explosions caused evacuations of businesses and homes.
Alarm about the threat of a derailment doesn’t arise until a disaster happens, such as the 2005 incident in Graniteville, a town of about 10,000 between Aiken, S.C., and Augusta, Ga.
A track switch set in the wrong direction caused a train carrying chlorine to enter a siding and smash into a parked train. Chlorine, if inhaled, can shut down respiratory systems and cause serious eye and skin damage.
The federal government, already nervous about rail security because of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is considering new regulations for trains carrying Toxic Inhalation Hazards. These are the most deadly kind of chemicals and include chlorine and anhydrous ammonia.
The proposed regulations would require railroads to analyze safety and security procedures annually. Railroads say they already do this, and results are reflected in vastly improved safety records .
The Federal Railroad Administration and others in the federal government also want the railroads to look for possible rail routes to avoid moving chemicals through cities, if this could be done safely and without adding a huge extra cost.
Still, the AAR and the Federal Railroad Administration realize diverting trains with chemicals to lesser maintained branch lines may only exacerbate the problem, shifting danger from one place to another and increasing the chances of derailment. Single-track branches aren’t maintained as rigorously and sometimes have lighter rails and more curves, and cross more roads, increasing chances of train-vehicle collisions.
Main lines, on the other hand, use heavy rail and have long, double-tracked sections, fewer curves, fewer grade crosses and more underpasses and overpasses to keep vehicles and trains separated.
“I would be surprised if there were major rerouting, but there may be some, ” says Tom White, AAR spokesperson.
The ultimate solution, White says, is for the government to let railroads stop carrying the materials. Or to find a way to make chemicals safer.
White says some cities are eliminating chlorine in favor of other purification methods.
In Greensboro, the water department goes to extra expense to ensure the safe arrival of chlorine. It arrives by truck, and each load of chlorine is diluted to 10 percent. It takes 10 truckloads to get the needed amount of chlorine. If safety weren’t a concern, one truckload would be sufficient.
Marilyn Braun, coordinator of Greensboro Emergency Management, says the city at least knows what’s aboard a train. Not so with trucks.
“With trucks virtually anything comes down the highway,” she says. “I wouldn’t know what was in a truck with the exception of highly radioactive materials.”
Braun’s research has pinpointed 70 companies in Greensboro that use extremely hazardous materials. She is gathering data on how these chemicals arrive. She suspects trucks, but trucks can’t carry the same amounts as trains. Emergency authorities have plenty of experience with trucks wrecking and leaking chemicals and fuel. Just last week, a portion of N.C. 64 near Siler City had to be closed and people living nearby evacuated after a truck wrecked and leaked ammonia.
Even though the AAR would like to rid trains of dangerous cargo, Tom White says he’d rather be in an automobile passing a train carrying chemicals than a truck.
“Wouldn’t that be comforting,” he said, “to know that the truck next to you is carrying chlorine?”