(The following story by Ben Goad and David Danelski appeared on The Press-Enterprise website on March 31.)
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — The Federal Railroad Administration on Monday unveiled plans to overhaul safety regulations for tank cars that carry the most dangerous chemicals along U.S. rails — chemicals blamed for more than a dozen derailment deaths in three states.
The proposal would require the gradual replacement of the entire fleet of tank cars that carry chlorine, anhydrous ammonia and other “poison inhalation hazards.” The replacement cars would vastly stronger.
In addition, new speed limits would be imposed on trains hauling such chemicals, and older, less-crashworthy tank cars would be retired within five years.
The ambitious measures are intended to stave off repeats of deadly spills during train wrecks in North Dakota, Texas and South Carolina, said Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Boardman.
“We should not settle for incremental measures,” Boardman said during a news conference Monday morning.
Boardman said work on the proposal began after a January 2005 train collision that sent a chlorine gas cloud into the small town of Graniteville, S.C., killing nine people.
Inland Southern California, home to one of the nation’s busiest train hubs, narrowly avoided disaster in 2005 when a Union Pacific train carrying a variety of poisonous chemicals jumped the tracks in San Bernardino and forced the evacuation of hundreds of residents.
A tank car loaded with potentially deadly chlorine cracked. If it had ruptured, the chlorine could have wafted through the neighborhood in minutes, experts said.
“It was a horrible, horrible day,” recalled Esther Hernandez, 63, who lives next to the track. “Men up in a helicopter said to evacuate because deadly chemicals were coming from the train.”
Hernandez, who lives on Macy Street in southwest San Bernardino, said the train crash was the third near her home since she moved in 37 years ago. In the 1970s, a derailed freight car knocked down her back fence.
“This place is going to be a cemetery,” she said as she sat in her yard. “I get scared every time a train goes by.”
No one was hurt in the 2005 derailment, but a Press-Enterprise investigation of the crash revealed issues ranging from inadequate track inspections and emergency-response mistakes to concerns about the age of the 28-year-old tank car that cracked in the derailment.
Under the proposal released Monday, cars like that one would be among those targeted for accelerated removal from the rails because of questions about their ability to withstand the force of a collision or derailment without rupturing.
Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad officials withheld comment on the federal proposal Monday, saying they were still reviewing the measures.
Officials with the Association of American Railroads, an organization of major railroads and affiliated companies, announced that they would postpone their own new tank car safety standard, which has been scheduled to go into effect today, while they review the 186-page federal plan. The association’s standard would be voluntary.
Plan Details
Roughly 30 million shipments move along U.S. rails each year, railroad association spokesman Tom White said. Of those, about 100,000 — one-third of 1 percent — carry chemicals characterized as poison inhalation hazards.
Such chemicals were released in the train wrecks cited by federal officials Monday:
A 2002 derailment in Minot, N.D., killed one person and injured more than 1,000. Seven tank cars ruptured or exploded, releasing 200,000 gallons of anhydrous ammonia and blanketing part of the town in a dense fog of ammonia gas.
A 2004 collision in Macdona, Texas, ruptured a tank car. Escaping chlorine gas overcame a crew member and two people in a nearby house, killing all three.
In Graniteville, people sleeping in their homes or working the graveyard shift in a textile mill near the tracks were trapped in the deadly chlorine cloud.
The proposed rules would require tank cars that carry those chemicals to be five times stronger than cars being built today. The new cars must be able to withstand a head-on collision at 30 mph or a side-impact collision at 25 mph without breaking open, Boardman said.
“There are no cars out there that meet this standard,” Boardman said.
Such a standard would force the industry to replace an estimated 15,300 tank cars in the next eight years. The Railroad Administration estimates the cost at $350 million, spread over 30 years.
Officials with Chicago-based Union Tank Car Co., the nation’s largest manufacturer of tank cars, said the company already is working with Union Pacific, Dow Chemical and Midland Manufacturing to build a safer tank car.
“Production of the next-generation railroad tank car is on schedule for the first quarter of 2010,” Jim Shirvinski, the company’s general manager of manufacturing, said in an e-mail.
Boardman also proposes mandatory 50 mph speed limits for trains carrying the poisonous chemicals. Until the new cars are on the rails, a 30 mph limit would be imposed in non-signaled or “dark” areas, which make up about half of the nation’s rail lines. Currently, speed limits are voluntary.
All pre-1989 tank cars that carry those chemicals would be removed from service within five years. Because of differences in the steel used to build them, those cars may not hold up as well as newer models in an accident.
The government’s proposal will be published today in the federal register.
The Railroad Administration will hold hearings with industry officials and allow public comment for 60 days before revising the proposal and issuing final rules. Boardman said he expects the final rules to be in place by the end of the year.
U.S. Transportation Department officials say the cost of the new tank cars would be outweighed by savings in decreased casualties, fewer evacuations and lawsuits and less property damage.
Beyond that, Boardman said, ensuring public safety — not saving money — should be the priority.
“This is a major improvement,” he said. “This is the right thing to do.”
Local Reaction
Gail Beckman, hazardous materials coordinator for the San Bernardino County Fire Department, cautioned that stronger tank cars won’t end all the toxic risk.
“More metal and more steel is always good, but nothing is a hundred percent,” she said by telephone.
Spills could still be triggered by track failures and human error, she said. Slower speed limits could invite new risks because manufacturers might stockpile hazardous materials at industrial sites and make bigger shipments to compensate for slower deliveries, she said.
Fred Millar, a hazardous materials expert who has pushed for rerouting hazardous shipments away from large cities, said the plan is positive but doesn’t go far enough.
“We’re still going to be putting enormous quantities of poison gases in our cities,” Millar said. The proposal does nothing to protect the nation from a terrorist attack involving chemical shipments, he said.
He also criticized the time it has taken federal officials to release their safety plan. The government has moved with “glacial speed” to address an important issue, he said.
As a train rolled by her yard in west San Bernardino, Hernandez worried that the proposal gives the industry as long as eight years to put safer tank cars in service.
Many people have moved away since the 2005 derailment, but not everyone can leave, she said.
“People are people,” she said. “They got to live out here.”