DEREGULATION!
Putting Corporate Profits above PUBLIC SAFETY explains a great deal.
We won't know the cause for ~ one year, but innocent communities have no way of knowing what's traveling in those freight cars and the threat they pose.
Mayor in N.D. seeks change in how oil is shipped
By Dave Kolpack
| Associated Press January 01, 2014
Bruce Crummy/Associated Press
Crude oil tanker cars continued to burn at the site of an oil train derailment near Casselton, N.D., a town of 2,400.
CASSELTON, N.D. — A North Dakota town narrowly escaped tragedy when a train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded nearby, the mayor said Tuesday, calling for changes in how the fuel is transported across the United States.
No one was hurt in Monday’s derailment of the mile-long train that sent a great fireball and plumes of black smoke skyward about a mile from the small town of Casselton. The fire had been so intense as darkness fell that investigators could not get close enough to count the burning cars.
Worries about the smoke plume prompted officials to ask Casselton’s 2,400 residents to voluntarily evacuate Monday evening, and most did. The recommendation was lifted Tuesday afternoon, but officials urged residents south of the derailment to remain vigilant about changing conditions, Cass County Commissioner Ken Pawluk said.
Residents said the blasts continued for hours, shaking their homes and businesses. A BNSF Railway spokeswoman said 18 tanker cars burned.
Pawluk estimated that the fire was about 80 to 90 percent burned out by Tuesday afternoon.
National Transportation Safety Board officials on the scene said the agency’s investigation will examine the train recorder, the signal system, the condition of the train operators, train, and tracks, as well as the response to the derailment.
Board member Robert Sumwalt said the tankers involved were DOT-111s, a model that has shown a tendency to rupture in other accidents, but he said it was not clear whether they were newer, safer DOT-111s or the older models.
The tracks run straight through Casselton, about 25 miles west of Fargo. Mayor Ed McConnell estimated that dozens of people could have been killed if the derailments had happened within the town.
‘‘There have been numerous derailments in this area,” he said. ‘‘It’s almost gotten to the point that it looks like not if we’re going to have an accident, it’s when. We dodged a bullet by having it out of town, but this is too close for comfort.”
A train carrying crude from North Dakota’s Bakken oil patch crashed in Quebec last summer, bursting into flames and killing 47 people.
Shipping oil by pipeline has to be safer, McConnell said.
North Dakota is the number two oil-producing state in the United States, trailing only Texas. The state’s top oil regulator said earlier this month that he expected as much as 90 percent of North Dakota’s oil to be carried by train in 2014.
North Dakota oil drillers increasingly use trains to ship crude to locations not served by pipelines, in part because of the difficulty in securing permits for the structures.
The number of crude oil carloads hauled by US railroads surged from 10,840 in 2009 to a projected 400,000 this year. But the rate of accidents has stayed relatively steady.
Authorities have not been able to untangle exactly what caused the derailment.
BNSF said each train had more than 100 cars.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/01/01/all-clear-coming-for-town-near-oil-train-derail/P1Nm3b9KSO9xrn8vOmBweO/story.html
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