Increase in oil trains heightens awareness of safety record

When he considers the increase in the movement of oil by rail, Hunter sees it as only a matter of time before a local catastrophe occurs.

“Hopefully not in my lifetime,” he said, “because I really don’t want to see it.”

‘Reportable’ incidents

Clark County has seen major rail accidents before.

In January 1980, for example, a mudslide slammed into the midsection of an 81-car Burlington Northern train moving north of Ridgefield along Lancaster Lake.

Approximately 19 cars derailed, including four locomotives. At least one car leaked anhydrous ammonia. An estimated 500 gallons of diesel fuel gushed from one of the locomotives into the lake.

Ammonia fumes filled the air. Several families were evacuated. Two members of the train’s crew were hospitalized. Several days later, they died. Both had inhaled ammonia fumes.

Often, problems stem from the tracks themselves. As an inspector, Hunter rode in a “high-rail” truck, a vehicle capable of trundling along both rail tracks and roads.

“You’re visually inspecting the track, how it rides,” Hunter said. “You can feel a broken rail when you run over it.”

A track may buckle from heat. It may shrink from cold and, as Hunter put it, “tear itself apart.”

Bolts go missing. Ties break.

“You fix it physically,” Hunter said, “or put a speed restriction on it.” Or, he added, you take it out of service.

Crumbling tracks aren’t the only potential causes of train accidents.

Tracks curve and dip. The contents of train cars shift. The jostling may rock a train off a track.

Then there’s human error. A person falls asleep, misses a signal. A dispatcher calls it wrong, setting up a head-on collision.

Dangerous at-grade crossings, mudslides, plugged culverts, washouts, broken train wheels — all are also potential factors in train accidents.

Clark County’s rail accidents during the past decade have taken on many forms. Everything from improperly aligned switches to operators’ failure to apply or secure brakes have caused derailments and collisions, records show. In July 2008, a mechanical issue caused a derailment that resulted in more than $250,000 in damage to tracks and equipment in Vancouver, according to one report.

The 33 incidents reported over 10 years in Clark County were far more than its neighbor to the east, Skamania County, which saw just three. That’s largely because Clark County is home to much more track and a major BNSF yard in Vancouver. Cowlitz County, with plenty of industrial sites served by rail, saw 34 reported incidents during the same time period.

That’s not the entire story. “Reportable” incidents for railroad equipment are generally those that cause at least $10,500 in damage. Minor accidents falling below that threshold usually don’t generate a report to federal regulators.

The Vancouver yard is one of BNSF’s busiest in the region, connecting two main line routes and switching some 1,000 cars in a single day, said BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas.

Rail oversight mostly falls to federal authorities, and has for decades. Local responders don’t receive direct word of rail incidents unless they need to, said John Wheeler, emergency management coordinator at the Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency. If it’s significant enough, they’ll be notified through 911 calls, he said.

“It’s really going to depend on the severity of the incident,” Wheeler said. “We’re not a regulatory agency.”

CRESA does receive mandatory reports of hazardous material spills, but that requirement only applies to facilities — “in other words, not moving,” Wheeler said. “That’s not going to capture trains.”

At the state level, lawmakers and officials have called for railroads to be more forthcoming about what they carry so emergency responders can be better prepared for a possible disaster. Pressure increased as the number of oil trains climbed. BNSF and other railroads reluctantly began providing more detailed oil train counts and route information last year.

Even as BNSF has come under fire at times for its lack of transparency, it has stressed its commitment to safety. The rise of oil by rail may have raised the stakes.

“It just makes safety that much more important,” Melonas said. “And all eyes are on oil trains 24/7.”

Oil: ‘Risk is here now’

The conversation around rail safety reached a turning point on July 6, 2013. That’s the day a runaway oil train derailed and exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, killing 47 people and leveling part of the town.

It remains the worst oil train disaster to date, but it wasn’t the last. Public concern has intensified as additional derailments and explosions have grabbed national headlines.

The U.S. Department of Transportation recently predicted that trains hauling crude oil or ethanol will derail an average of 10 times per year over the next two decades, causing more than $4 billion in damage and possibly killing hundreds of people if an accident occurs in a densely populated part of the U.S.

The prediction came just a week after an oil train derailment in West Virginia. Less than a month later, another train hauling crude derailed and burst into flames in Galena, Ill.

Local and state governments, meanwhile, are grappling with how to respond to public concerns.

In Olympia, state lawmakers have floated multiple bills aimed at boosting the safety of transporting crude by rail.

In Vancouver, the city council adopted a resolution opposing the rail-to-marine oil transfer terminal proposed by Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies at the Port of Vancouver. The city has also imposed a ban on new oil-by-rail facilities, but the moratorium doesn’t apply to the Tesoro-Savage terminal or a separate, smaller proposal by NuStar Energy. Both were already in the works when the council took action.

“We will only accept what the regulations require or better,” Riley said.

Tesoro has operated other oil transfer terminals, but nothing on the scale of what’s proposed in Vancouver. The company’s refineries include a facility in Anacortes that began receiving Bakken crude oil from North Dakota in 2012, according to the state Department of Ecology. Bakken oil is the same type of crude — considered highly volatile — that would go to the Vancouver terminal, and already travels through Clark County daily.

Once operational, Vancouver Energy will be “manned 24/7,” Riley said. A 5 mph speed limit on oil trains in the terminal is among the safety measures that aim to prevent any kind of spill or incident, he said.

“We will operate under the premise that all accidents are preventable,” Riley said. “We will train our workers so that we can accomplish that.”

Critics aren’t convinced.

The facility has led some observers to call Vancouver the epicenter of the national debate over oil trains and rail safety. U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., is among those leading the charge on tightening standards for tank cars and the volatility of crude oil transported by rail. During a visit to Vancouver earlier this month, Cantwell evoked the Lac-Mégantic disaster that remains a common reference point almost two years later.

“If that happened in Vancouver, the effects would be catastrophic,” Cantwell said recently, standing in an east Vancouver fire station. “An incident of this type would impact thousands of residents. … We can’t continue to put our communities at risk.”

As the senator spoke, Vancouver Fire Chief Joe Molina and other local officials watched nearby. At one point, Molina was asked about seeing oil trains roll through the city — and right past City Hall — on a daily basis.

The fire chief answered matter-of-factly:

“The risk is here now.”