(The Portland Tribune posted the following story by Todd Murphy on its website on October 3.)
PORTLAND, Ore. — There’s no fencing here. No barbed wire. Certainly no security guards.
Just two rail tank cars, each labeled “anhydrous ammonia — inhalation hazard,” sitting together on a railroad track adjacent to U.S. Highway 30 in St. Helens.
A Tribune reporter — who had walked up and touched the sides of the tank cars, looked at them from all sides, taken pictures — couldn’t easily tell whether the cars were full of ammonia or empty. But if one was full and its contents were released, the resulting toxic cloud could endanger everyone living within a-4-mile radius around the tank car, according to documents about similar tank cars filed with the federal government.
And at 9 a.m. on this day in early September, they’re still within feet of where they were — in this same public and open place — 24 hours earlier.
For those who worry about chemical terrorism, the tank cars represent two loaded guns.
“You can go to any rail yard in the United States and, unfortunately, walk up and touch them,” chemical security consultant Dean Blauser said of tank cars that carry anhydrous ammonia, chlorine or other toxic gases. “That’s just a big problem there. Because how do you defense against that?”
When the United States began bombing al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan in October 2001, authorities and the railroad industry so feared terrorist retaliation in the form of chemical sabotage that railroads voluntarily imposed a-72-hour moratorium on transportation of hazardous materials. But that changed just a few days later, according to news reports, when a shortage of chlorine threatened to end water service to millions of customers in Los Angeles. The moratorium was lifted.
The U.S. economy depends, in fact, on the manufacture and transportation of hazardous chemicals. They purify the nation’s water, make lifesaving medicines, produce lightweight car parts and make possible thousands of other products.
Each day, trains, trucks and boats in the United States deliver more than 800,000 loads of hazardous materials. And security around most miles of those trips is largely nonexistent.
A 1999 federal investigation found that chemical barge terminals were “freely accessible” from the water, rail and truck transportation “had no security beyond staging areas,” and rail cars containing hazardous gases and liquids often “were parked alongside residential areas.”
Transport plans required
New security concerns since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have brought a few changes, including a federal Department of Transportation requirement that chemical producers and transporters have security plans for chemical transportation.
But rail industry officials, and some emergency managers, question how vulnerable the transportation system still is to terrorism.
“(Transportation) security measures are very good, and they’re getting better,” said Mike Eyer, a hazardous materials specialist with the Oregon Department of Transportation.
Chemical tank cars have no outward signs detailing whether they are full or empty of chemicals. And some parked tank cars have undoubtedly made their deliveries and are largely empty of chemicals.
Still, for several weeks in September, a Tribune reporter monitored hazardous-chemical tank cars throughout the Portland area. And full or empty, they sat next to major highways, often within blocks of residential neighborhoods. They sat on rail spurs just outside of chemical facilities or in rail yards loaded with other tank cars.
There never appeared to be any security around them.
Federal regulations require that hazardous-chemical tank cars not be stopped for longer than 48 hours when they are “in transit.”
But the 48-hour rule doesn’t apply once the railroad has notified a customer that a delivery is ready — a delivery that may be waiting in a rail-yard tank car far from the customer’s facility, said John Bromley, spokesman for Union Pacific Railroad.
Nor is there a limit on how long a chemical company can store a hazardous chemical tank car on a rail spur just outside its facility.
Waiting for days
On a mid-September morning, four tank cars labeled “anhydrous ammonia” were linked in a small rail yard near Portland’s Rivergate Industrial District, waiting to become part of a train and moved out.
Such hazardous-materials tank cars can sit “sometimes for days at a time,” said a railroad worker watching the movement of the yard’s cars that morning. Without being asked about sabotage, the worker offered that “someone could put a bomb under them” with little trouble or notice from anyone. The worker declined to give his name.
“It’s a huge danger, and a gap in the existing laws,” said Sanford Lewis, a Boston environmental lawyer and hazardous chemicals researcher, about the lack of security around the tank cars.
But ODOT’s Eyer said the marketplace helps regulate the movement of chemical tank cars; they don’t stay in one place for long because they’re expensive. Whoever owns the tank cars will want to keep them moving, he says.
And J.B. Collins, a Portland rail worker for Union Pacific and president of a local rail workers’ union, said that in rail yards, at least, “normally there’s too much activity around” rail cars to allow unfettered access.
People familiar with hazardous chemical tank cars also say they are exceptionally sturdy. Their tanks generally have a couple of layers of steel, from three-quarters of an inch to an inch in total thickness. They almost always survive derailments without major leaks, emergency responders say.
“It takes a significant impact to puncture one of these tanks,” Eyer said.
Still, the design and construction of tank cars has been entirely devoted to making them durable in accidents. The tank cars on the rail aren’t built specifically to withstand intentional sabotage.
“I don’t want to talk about what it would take to penetrate (a tanker),” said Sal DePasquale, a former security manager for Georgia-Pacific Corp. and now an Atlanta-based security consultant. “But it’s not that difficult.”