When a train carrying crude oil derailed in the Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic in 2013, the results were catastrophic: The derailment and oil spill triggered explosions and fires that destroyed half of the community’s downtown, killing 47 people.
The Lac-Mégantic disaster renewed calls in Canada and the United States to phase out a particular type of tank car – known as DOT-111 – that experts say is unsafe for carrying hazardous liquids. Yet more than a decade later, there are still more than 25,000 of these tank cars in use nationwide, including on the Norfolk Southern train that derailed last year in East Palestine, Ohio, causing one of the nation’s most high-profile rail disasters.
In its final hearing Tuesday on the East Palestine derailment, leaders of the National Transportation Safety Board vented their frustration that these tank cars are still widely used, and will be for roughly five more years.
“We shouldn’t wait until 2029 to phase these out,” NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said. “We have recommendations we’ve issued since 1991 stating these should no longer be in service.”
Environmental groups and NTSB leaders argue that federal lawmakers should speed up the federal phaseout of DOT-111 if they want to avoid another East Palestine. But such action is unlikely. The rail industry has effectively sidelined rail safety legislation the Senate was considering. The chemical industry also warns that an acceleration of the phaseout could result in a shortage of tank cars carrying oil and chemicals used widely in manufacturing and energy production.
The DOT-111, a general service tank car, has long concerned safety experts because of its inability to withstand the impact of a crash. In the past decade, DOT-111s have been involved in a number of derailments across the United States and Canada, resulting in deaths and the release of ethanol, crude oil and other hazardous substances. When DOT-111 cars have been involved in accidents, 54 percent of them have released their contents, according to the NTSB.
In the case of East Palestine, three DOT-111 cars with flammable or combustible materials ruptured, including one carrying butyl acrylate, which is highly flammable and started a fire after the derailment. Norfolk Southern officials feared that fire could ignite separate tank cars carrying vinyl chloride, and trigger an explosion. To avoid that risk, officials vented and burned off the vinyl chloride, causing a black cloud of toxic fumes to waft over East Palestine and neighboring areas, frightening residents for miles.
In its hearing Tuesday, NTSB investigators and board members stated that the vent-and-burn of vinyl chloride-carrying tank cars was unnecessary, and could have been sidestepped if the DOT-111 cars had not started the fire.
“The breach of just three DOT-111 cars in a derailment led to the large raging fire that overwhelmed first responders and initiated a series of events that led to the vent-and-burn of five vinyl chloride tank cars,” NTSB member Michael Graham said.
NTSB investigator Paul L. Stancil added that “the vent-and-burn could’ve been avoided had there been no DOT-111 tank cars carrying combustible and flammable liquids on this train.”
After multiple derailments in the last decade involving DOT-111 cars, federal officials began looking for solutions. Following the Lac-Mégantic disaster, manufacturers developed a form of tank car less vulnerable to ruptures, which the NTSB has recommended to shippers. The DOT-117, announced in 2015, includes a steel jacket to provide thermal protection in case of a fire. The DOT-111 model lacks such protection.
Later that year, Congress adopted the FAST Act, which called for phasing out the use of DOT-111s to transport some hazardous substances – including crude oil by 2018 and ethanol by 2023.
Under the law, flammable materials – such as the butyl acrylate in one of the East Palestine tank cars – will not be allowed in DOT-111s past May 2029. There are 25,000 DOT-117s now being used to transport flammables, with 17,000 DOT-111s yet to be phased out, according to a 2024 report from the Association of American Railroads (AAR). But DOT-111s will still be allowed to carry other materials, including combustibles, which require a higher temperature to ignite than flammables.
Rail companies are not in control of the rail cars used – that decision lies with the shippers of the goods, according to Mike Rush, AAR’s senior vice president of safety and operations. These shippers are the ones subject to the phaseout regulations.
The switch to a different rail car model is primarily a financial decision for shippers, said Robert L. Sumwalt, executive director at the Boeing Center for Aviation and Aerospace Safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and former NTSB chair.
“The lifespan of these rail cars can be 20 to 30 years,” Sumwalt said. “If you bought a tank car in 2014, you’re planning on phasing that out in 2034, and now you’ve got somebody saying, ‘You need to get rid of those things.’”
Replacing or retrofitting the DOT-111s can be costly, and a shorter timeline may not be feasible due to limitations in how quickly new cars can be built and put into use, according to Jeff Sloan, senior director of regulatory affairs at the American Chemistry Council, which represents the chemical industry. As of last year, a new DOT-117 tank car cost between $150,000 and $170,000, according to the Railway Supply Institute.
The NTSB first released a study about the DOT-111 in 1991 which found that these tank cars have thinner shells than other models, making the cars easier to breach in case of a crash. A 2009 derailment in Cherry Valley, Illinois, of a train carrying ethanol killed a local resident and sparked investigations into this type of tank car. In 2015, another set of 107 train cars carrying crude oil derailed in Mount Carbon, West Virginia, forcing the local community to evacuate and shutting down two nearby water treatment plants.
After each incident, the NTSB released recommendations to improve construction standards and add thermal protection, though after additional incidents, some doubted that even the higher-standard DOT-111s were strong enough.
“The DOT-111 should not be on the rails anymore and everybody knows it,” said Kristen Boyles, an attorney with the environmental group Earthjustice.
“East Palestine was a tragedy and disaster, and I did have some hope Congress would act and speed up the deadline for removing all these [DOT-111s] and getting them off the rails,” she said. “But that didn’t happen.”
– – –
Justine McDaniel contributed to this report.
(c) Washington Post
Bad things seem to be associated with things called “Palestine”