(The Associated Press circulated the following article on March 9.)
WASHINGTON — More than half the 60,000 railroad tank cars carrying hazardous materials are not built to current industry standards and are more likely to break open after derailing, federal safety investigators said Tuesday.
The concern about the older tank cars punctuated a series of National Transportation Safety Board recommendations regarding track inspections and repairs designed to avoid train derailments such as the one in January 2002 near Minot, N.D., that killed one person and injured more than 300.
“This shows how important every link in the accident chain is,” board chairwoman Ellen Engleman Conners said. “Every aspect of safety must be addressed.”
The board said federal standards were needed for tank cars that carry hazardous materials. The 122-car Canadian Pacific Railway train in 2002 was carrying anhydrous ammonia, a fertilizer, when it derailed after hitting a damaged joint. Five of the cars broke open, spilling 146,700 gallons of ammonia, which had been carried as a liquid but quickly became a gas after coming in contact with air. The chemical formed a vapor cloud, forcing residents of the area in north-central North Dakota to remain indoors. One person was killed after breathing the fumes and 333 were injured, 11 seriously.
“We believe Minot serves as a warning that there is a risk out there to the public,” said Tom Lasseigne, a safety board investigator.
Of the almost 60,000 cars now in service, more than 35,000 were built before manufacturers began using stronger steel in 1989. The older cars, which included the five that ruptured in the Minot derailment, pose “an unquantified but real risk to the public,” the board said.
The board asked the Federal Railroad Administration to study the older cars and rank them by the likelihood of their coming apart in a crash, and to develop standards for new construction. Since the tank cars are expected to last 50 years, investigators said some of the cars most likely to break apart in a derailment will remain on the tracks until 2038.
To reduce the risk of derailments, the safety board said the railroad administration needed to require on-the-ground visual inspections of continuously welded rail — tracks welded together rather than having segments attached with joints that cause the clicking noise of rolling trains — plus ultrasound or other checks to try to detect small cracks. In addition, the board told the FRA to periodically review inspection data from the railroads and to require additional checks when necessary.
Investigators said railway inspectors never noticed the crack in the joint blamed for the Minot derailment, and the government never made sure the railroad was properly checking the track.
In 2003, 2,048 trains derailed, up from 1,989 in 2002.
“If you have a problem, it is much better to fix it before an accident than to talk about it after an accident,” Engleman Conners said.
Federal Railroad Administrator Allan Rutter said the agency was already improving its efforts.
“Despite this incident, the movement of hazardous material by rail is the safest means to do so,” Rutter said. “As a result of this accident, we look to make it safer still.”
And Pat Pender, Canadian Pacific’s vice president for product design and customer service, disagreed with the safety board’s findings. “There is no systemic problem with inspection practices on the railway,” Pender said.