(Gannett News Service circulated the following article on March 13.)
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — Thousands of gallons of explosive liquids and tank cars full of toxic gases roll past homes, schools and businesses in the Southern Tier nearly every day, though people living near area railroads might not give it much thought.
The propane like that which sent a fireball into the skies Monday after a derailment east of Syracuse is regular cargo on the tracks that wind their way through the region. So are carloads of caustic ammonia, and tankers of chlorine gas so toxic that a leak could require people for miles around to be evacuated.
“Pretty much everything” that can be shipped by rail flows through the Triple Cities, said Lt. Gary Williams, a member of the Binghamton Fire Bureau’s hazardous-materials response team.
On Monday afternoon, two tank cars labeled “Chlorine” sat on a siding in the neighborhood near Gerard and Chapin streets, a stone’s throw from a child’s swing set in a yard at 202 Chapin. On the same train along the Norfolk Southern tracks was a tank car marked “sodium hydroxide” — a caustic material used in products that burn dirt from ovens and drains. A day earlier, three rail cars marked “anhydrous ammonia” sat on the siding a long home run from home plate and the 6,000 seats at NYSEG Stadium.
“It is scary,” said Bill Schock, who lives on Gerard Avenue with two of his children, about the tons of chemicals that fill some of the tank cars that regularly trundle through his working-class neighborhood barely three blocks northeast of Binghamton High School. “I don’t want to be breathing that (junk) in.”
Binghamton is served by the Norfolk Southern line, which moves freight between Buffalo and the New York-New Jersey area; and the Canadian Pacific Railway, which provides north-south freight service between Syracuse and the Philadelphia area.
The railroads tell local fire departments what they’re shipping on their trains, Williams said, and engineers carry lists of what the cars contain. But the law says they don’t have to say when those trains will be passing through particular communities, leaving emergency personnel to rely on markings, car shapes and — if they can get to it — the engineer’s list to tell what is on a derailed train.
“The railroads would tell you it’s a security breach if they were to tell any particular community” when a hazardous cargo would be in the area, said Patricia Abbate, executive director of Citizens for Rail Safety, a nonprofit, public interest group dedicated to improving rail safety in the U.S. “But citizens should have the right to know what travels through their communities.”
The contents of the cars are among the roughly one million tons of hazardous materials that crisscross the country each day fueling the American economy, Abbate said. Chlorine, a bleach used in making paper products, was used as a weapon during World War I — until the gas was deemed too inhumane for war.
Most of the materials moving over American rail lines are shipped safely, and railroads are the safest way to transport cargo, Abbate said. Nationwide, the Federal Railroad Administration reported this month that derailments and other train accidents declined in 2006 for the second straight year; 2,834 accidents were reported nationwide.
In New York, the number of rail accidents declined from 105 to 89. Pennsylvania’s numbers fell from 107 to 96.
Still, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said derailments today and earlier this winter justify a federal investigation of rail safety in New York.
“We cannot continue to treat these derailments as isolated incidents,” Clinton said in a letter to the head of the Federal Railway Administration, released Monday after portions of a 79-car CSX train left the tracks in Oneida and cars carrying propane burned for hours. “We cannot continue to treat these derailments as isolated incidents.”
Two derailments occurred in the Buffalo area on the same December day; a train carrying propane derailed on Long Island Jan. 16, forcing homes and businesses to be evacuated.
Binghamton firefighters get regular calls from people who suspect problems with trains, Williams said. Most turn out to be nothing, he said, and accidents are rare.
But when accidents involving such chemicals happen, disaster can strike. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
* Nine people died and 529 sought medical treatment in January 2005 when two freight trains collided 10 miles north of Atlanta, releasing about 11,500 gallons of chlorine gas.
* One person died and 333 were injured in 2002 when 200,000 gallons of anhydrous ammonia leaked after a derailment in North Dakota.
* Thousands of gallons of sodium hydroxide polluted the soil and destroyed wetlands last year when a train derailed along the Norfolk Southern tracks in Norwich Township, Pa.
Norfolk Southern could not be reached Monday evening.