Страховка пари до ₽1500 от БК GGBet.ru

Промокод: BR1500

Get a bonus

Users' Choice

The Weyauwega train derailment occurred on March 4, 1996, forcing the evacuation of 2,000 people who had to leave their pets behind. —PHOTO: Courtesy

Hazards that enabled the Weyauwega train disaster 20 years ago still exist

A ferocious explosion and fireball followed a Wisconsin Central train wreck in the frigid predawn hours of March 4, 1996, in Weyauwega, Wisconsin. Two thousand citizens, many fleeing without their pets or medications, evacuated for 18 days as the fires burned.

Authorities feared additional explosions that would catapult shrapnel a mile or  more from the derailed propane tank cars. Gas lines were shut off; water pipes  froze in unheated houses.

Four days after the initial explosion, Wisconsin National Guard armored  personnel carriers transported residents into the danger zone to rescue their  pets. Wearing helmets and flak jackets, the evacuees dashed into their abandoned  homes to retrieve hungry dogs, cats and parakeets.

Ever so slowly, specialists drained the railroad tank cars of their volatile  cargo and Weyauwega pulled back from the brink.  Federal investigators blamed a cracked rail and deficient track maintenance for  the derailment.

March 4, 2016 is the 20th anniversary of the Weyauwega catastrophe.  Unfortunately, railroad track failures remain a concern today — a concern  greatly magnified by massive increases in explosive crude oil train traffic in  recent years.

Wisconsin, now one of the busiest routes in the nation for this dangerous cargo, is part of a nationwide surge. In 2008, railroads carried 9,500 tank carloads of crude oil in the United States. By 2013, that number had risen to 407,761.

Connect the dots on the systemic danger the oil trains bring — and the details of the Weyauwega incident — and a reasonable citizen would question whether a  Weyauwega scale disaster, or worse, is looming.

Key points: highly explosive crude oil from North Dakota is traveling in tank  cars that are aging and were never designed with this kind of volatile cargo in  mind. In addition, the sheer weight of mile-long oil trains stresses railroad  tracks and aging bridges.

Those concerns grew when a Canadian government investigation traced the path of an oil train that exploded in Lac Megantic, Quebec on July 6, 2013, killing 47 people.. The train had traveled through Wisconsin and Milwaukee on Canadian Pacific tracks before exploding in Quebec.

As knowledge of the dangers of oil train traffic spread, something else became  clear: a lack of transparency on the part of the railroads.  Milwaukee citizens, local elected officials and journalists sought to obtain  safety inspection reports for the corroded, century-old, 1st St. railroad bridge.

Canadian Pacific railroad officials refused to share the inspection reports for half a year. Federal Railroad Administration director Sarah Feinberg announced a new program to obtain bridge safety reports on Feb. 19, 2016, indicating some progress.

But bridge inspection reports are only the tip of the iceberg. Railroads are not sharing information on what levels of insurance they carry, their worst-case accident scenario plans or how they make critical routing decisions that bring  oil trains through densely populated areas.

Any illusion that federal regulators are exercising effective due diligence on  oil train traffic faded when the Department of Transportation released an audit  of the FRA on Feb. 26, 2016.
That report’s opening words cite the Lac Megantic disaster and the vast increase  in crude oil train traffic. However, the audit summarizes FRA’s overview of oil  train traffic as dysfunctional and lacking analysis on the impact to towns, cities and major population areas. It also notes a lack of criminal penalties  for safety violations.

When citizens push, governments move into action. Insist that your elected  representatives take effective action to protect our communities from dangerous  crude oil train traffic.
Outdoor writer Eric Hansen is a member of Citizens Acting for Rail Safety - Milwaukee Area. He will be one of the presenters at “Your Right to Know - Oil Train Risks to Metro Milwaukee”, a March 12 forum hosted by the League of Women
Voters. For more information, see 
lwvmilwaukee.org 

 

Leave a reply

The website you are trying to access is not one of our trusted partners.
You will be forwarded to the website
Visit site