(The following article by Jeremiah Stettler was posted on the Saginaw News website on February 23.)
SAGINAW, Mich. — Avice Heckman shudders when the train whistle blows.
The Freeland woman hasn’t forgotten the overturned chemical tankers that burst into flame just 50 feet from her home, forcing the evacuation of 3,000 people and leaving her home in ashes.
Heckman, 65, can’t help but wonder if the toxin plume caused by a 1989 derailment of a Dow Chemical Co. train is somehow to blame for her husband’s cancer-related death less than three years ago.
The Freeland derailment was blamed on an improperly loaded rail car. But the threat of an accidental or sabotage-related derailment through Saginaw’s core is no less concerning at a time when terrorism is forefront on the national agenda.
The Wall Street Journal recently questioned the security of chemical-laden trains passing through Washington, D.C. It noted graffiti artists gaining easy access to the tankers.
District of Columbia officials are now considering a law that would regulate or ban the movement of dangerous chemicals through the capital. They say such shipments are a tempting terrorist target.
Saginaw ranks considerably lower on the target list. But that hasn’t stopped emergency personnel from planning for terrorist activity on the county’s railroads.
Timothy Genovese, emergency services director for Saginaw County, said chemical shipments are a potential hazard — enough so that his department considered staging a mock train crash on the bridge between Covenant and St. Mary’s hospitals for training.
The bridge, which crosses the Saginaw River near Emerson, is labeled a possible terrorist target in the county’s vulnerability assessment.
Genovese defined the railroad as a “soft spot” in the county’s terrorism prevention efforts.
“Transportation is the weak link,” he said. “You can put security on plants, but you can’t sit and guard miles and miles of track.”
Safer than the highway
Railroad officials insist that the tracks are safe — safer, in fact, than highways for delivering hazardous waste and other chemicals.
CSX Transportation Inc., the Jacksonville, Fla.-based company that operates and maintains the Saginaw railroad, reported this month that it delivered 480,000 loads of hazardous materials in 2002 with only eight spills.
“Experts will say there is no 100 percent guarantee to anything,” said CSX spokesman David A. Hall. “But the public should know that CSX is prepared and remains prepared to keep their community safe.”
Hall said the company inspects each mile of track daily, either by truck or train.
It also has a security program that is tiered according to the terror level. When the threat rises, Hall said, the railroad may increase surveillance of the tracks, post security guards at bridges or tunnels or monitor the railroads in “real time.”
Hall declined to give specifics about local measures, but said the railroad would “ratchet up” security during a threat situation.
He would not disclose how many hazardous waste shipments travel through Saginaw each year, nor the routes those trains travel.
Whether rail shipments are indeed safer than highway delivery, environmentalist Terry Miller said officials should not write off the risks of moving dangerous chemicals through a community.
The Freeland derailment, which left chemical tankers burning for days, could have happened anywhere, he said. It could happen again.
“They do go off the track,” said Miller, a member of the environmental watchdog group Lone Tree Council. “With the materials that the Dow trains carry, we need to be aware of that.”
Miller’s group has urged the railroad to better maintain its tracks, to abide by appropriate speed limits and to separate locomotives from chemical tankers to reduce the risk of fire during derailment.
Securing the source
When it comes to sabotage, however, Dow Chemical officials say their shipments are tamper-free.
Spokeswoman Terri M. Johnson said Dow takes “extreme precautions” to ensure that no graffiti artist or saboteur can come within a stone’s throw of the company’s railcars.
She would not divulge specific security measures, but said each rail car undergoes an inspection prior to entering the plant. The tankers are then moved to a secure location within the facility that is guarded electronically and by random patrols.
“When the cars are on site, they are very secure,” Johnson said. “We take pride in our security measures for the site and the rails.”
Officials said neither Dow nor the chemical industry has ever received a credible terrorist threat.
Living along the rails
Bobby Bragg, 68, has lived along the rails since 1956.
He’s no stranger to the rumbling of a passing freight train or to the stink of diesel fumes from an idling locomotive. His home sits just 30 feet from the tracks at 3965 Carrollton.
Bragg watches the Dow train pass two or three times a week, sometimes pulling as many as 60 cars. He couldn’t tell you what’s in the tankers. He just knows the tankers are traveling to and from Dow.
But the shipments don’t bother him.
“I don’t have any concerns about it,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do. I just hope and pray it doesn’t jump the track.”
Bragg said he hasn’t seen a derailment or chemical spill in all the years he has lived on Carrollton. The tracks are too safe for that, he said.
But just in case something does happen, Genovese said his department has a plan in place to deal with it.
Not only has Genovese receive $248,000 in the last three years for equipment to deal with a hazardous material spill, but he said a mock train crash is on his agenda for next year to ensure that emergency crews are ready for a tragedy on the tracks.