Oil train disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Québec 07-06-2013

This is what we consider to be a "worst case scenario." From the things I've heard, almost everything that could have gone wrong, did. This reflects the .001% chance of things like this happening but sadly, it did.

newpylong wrote:All the news sources are saying Crude Oil train, and from what pictures that are out there it looks to be. To anyone who thinks Crude Oil won't burn and burn heavily, did you forget the Gulf War? The vapors are what causes the explosions...

Absolutely true; however, many of the news sites continue to mention pressurized railcars. Are crude oil tank cars typically pressurized? I didn't know they were, but honestly I never gave it any thought until today. That's why I wondered if this might have been a mixed train, perhaps with LNG or LPG cars in the consist. Not sure about LNG, but LPG cars certainly would be pressurized, and both would be very likely to cause the massive explosions that we saw in Lac-Mégantic. Those explosions, given their violence and the amount of heat they produced, could have easily caused the crude oil leaking from the oil tankers to ignite and burn.

Reuters interviewed Ed Burkhardt, MMA chairman:

Reuters wrote:In an interview with Reuters in his office near Chicago's O'Hare airport, Burkhardt said the railway had had minor derailments, but no fatalities. "In the 10 years or so we've been in business, this is the only serious derailment we've had," he said.

He said he expected claims would "be a lot of money," butthe company and its insurer could handle it financially.

Read more at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/ ... 0L20130707" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

charlie6017 wrote:

MEC407 wrote:Meanwhile, the U.S. media has already shifted its focus nearly 100% to the 777 crash in SFO and virtually forgotten about the horror going on just north of us.

Sadly, I'm not shocked at all. At one point I considered majoring in journalism........I'm glad
I didn't. Many media-types are very twisted individuals, in my humble opinion.

Only 2 people confirmed dead from that incident, yet news of half a town wiped out & possibly of 100 dead isn't worthy of coverage. It's all about fearmongering in the US news circuits.

I still say this train had Ethanol tankers in the mix. Crude oil will burn but its very heavy and needs a flammable source to get it to burn.
It will burn however. Lets wait for the NTSB or its Canadian counterpart to sort out exactly what this train was carrying. Has anyone been able to spot the Hazardous labels on any tank car? The 4 digit number will tell us what it was carrying.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/ ... -fire.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

More info and fresh footage.

Crude oil coming out of a well has volatile gases in it- and not just methane- they're burned in flares or otherwise separated before the crude is transported to the refinery. Think of all those pipeline and ocean tanker spills we've seen that weren't on fire. In Kuwait, 1- the geology provided the oil pressure, and 2- the Iraqis blew up the well heads(?). Oil in a tank car is at atmospheric pressure- it can leak, but it needs an existing fire to burn. Although after reading the latest, I admit I can't say just what the composition of each car was. I find I'm frustrated by the news- they never write about the things I want to know.

I wonder if nitrogen is involved. Ammonia gas is a common fertilizer (usually spring), and many of the rail crash evacuations that make national news are for ammonia.

Unit crude oil train. Crude is carried in DOT 111 "non-pressure" general service tank cars. DOT 111 class has many variants, customized to meet shipper/regulatory requirements based on the commodity/service. Specs for crude are evolving.

http://www.mmarail.com/sections/news/fi ... elease.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I doubt there was anything in the train but oil, MM&A has not been carrying ethanol unit trains, and while the railroad does carry a few carloads of propane, most oil related products would be heading west from the Irving refinery at St John and not east toward it. Take a look at the jack-knifed train and it is understandable why there was a fire. The oil from the Bakken fields is light sweet crude, highly combustible/ this type of oil is used to make gasoline.
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2013/jul ... ls-quebec/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The train was heading east so the locos would have been in the lead, the train could not have moved without the locos moving first. I think the picture of the detached cars is that the cars that did not derail at the end of the train were unhooked and moved away from the fire.
http://storage.canoe.ca/v1/dynamic_resi ... 3115289329" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The train derailed just before the Lac Megantic station and the big curve in town. Don't see any pictures of the locos, whether they made it through town and then the train derailed somewhere in the middle on the curve.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/a9g ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The town is badly damaged
http://news.yahoo.com/oil-train-derails ... 17042.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I would expect there to be major dialogue on the safety of rail transport for oil products (and mostly unfairly), and that the economic pressure on the MM&A will be enormous. The only way out would be if there was sabotage and not of carelessness.

........"Unit crude oil train. Crude is carried in DOT 111 "non-pressure" general service tank cars. DOT 111 class has many variants, customized to meet shipper/regulatory requirements based on the commodity/service. Specs for crude are evolving"........

I am glad that somebody has finally "called out" the dummies in the msm and the general public on this issue.

Regarding burning crude oil:

This train had been enroute, across the mid west, for many days. The weather conditions have been extremely hot with daily air temps reaching 100 degrees or more in some places. The tank cars are painted black, the worst possible color for hot days. The skin of those cars would be hot enough to burn flesh if touched, especially in mid day. The contents had been heated to a large extent. When crude oil, or any petroleum product is heated, it becomes much more volatile and easier to light afire. In Red Adair's biography, repeated reference is made to the steel framework around the well heads, and the ability of a spark of steel on steel, is quite capable of lighting hot crude oil on fire. Adair and his crews applied millions of gallons of water to the oil wells and the steel in the vicinity, to cool it down before putting the fires out, so it had little chance of reigniting. Steel tank cars crushing one another, created plenty of "sparks" methinks. This is usually what lights crude oil on fire in train wrecks!

SRM

Here is a link to the website of Rail World, Inc. - a holding company that comprises the Montreal Maine & Atlantic as well as several other rail properties mainly in Eastern Europe (former Soviet Bloc) countries. It appears to be the successor to Wisconsin Central which sold its rail properties to the Canadian National and are operated through CN's US subsidiary Grand Trunk Corporation.

The interview between Mr. Burkhardt (RW CEO) and a Reuters reporter that is earlier linked here by Mr. Maine Central suggests that RW/MMA is adequately insured to meet all potential claims, what is not said is that can the self indemnity portion ("deductible") be met? These commercial policies have quite high "deductible' clauses and are intended to cover only catastrophic occurrences, to which obviously this incident arises.

We have had other reports at the site, mainly regarding the VIA Rail incident near Toronto, that the Canadian rail safety investigative agency is "pretty darned good". To what extent our NTSB, widely regarded as the best in the business, will have any jurisdiction in a matter occurring on Canadian soil and a Canadian corporation (somewhere there is a Canadian subsidiary for MMA's Canadian lines) is questionable.

Volks, I cannot underestimate the significance of this incident regarding handling crude oil anywhere in North America. The railroad industry is looking at considerable traffic losses arising from environmental concerns over coal and diversions of post-PANAMAX container traffic either to shorter hauls or outright loss to highway transport. That the industry appears to be a long term "player" in the movement of Crude rather than the construction of pipelines could well be in jeopardy. Anyone with a stake in the railroad industry's fortunes should be following this matter closely.

But a final word: patience, not speculation.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. According to MMA official heard in news yesterday, a locomotive part of subject train came on fire because of a broken fuel line. I'm assuming it was a GE unit and fire has started in the engine room then. Some people (MMA crew??) decided to separate the cars from locomotive consist to prevent propagation of fire on the tankers. From this point; What is the approx. grade of the track where they left the cars? How many Hand Brake (HB) they applied? Did they applied full air brake application on cars prior HB application? Is another locomotive was coupled with these cars? If yes how the brakes were setup? Independent brake only? Ind. plus Full Service Auto brakes?

From Mr. David Othen at the NERails Yahoo Group:

David Othen wrote:It appears that the train was parked on a siding at Nantes (about 8
miles from Lac Megantic) about 11:30 pm on Friday night and the
conductor (one man crew apparently) checked into a hotel. About 1 am on
Saturday morning the train got loose. Part of the train remained in the
siding but the locomotives and a string of crude oil tank cars ran away
down a 1% grade. From what I can gather the locomotives became detached
and presumably derailed about 0.5 mile outside Lac Megantic but the
heavy tank cars continued down grade until they reached a curve in the
centre of town and the cars derailed and piled into one one another.
According to Kevin Burkholder's report four propane cars were parked on
an adjacent siding and after being hit these exploded demolishing
several downtown stores and setting alight buildings up to three blocks
away and providing a heating and ignition source for the crude oil.

Does this scenario sound plausible to those of you who work in the railroad industry and/or the fuel industry?

Thats tragic. That town has a long recovery ahead of it. Great move on towns in Maine to send over firefighting equipment and supplies. The pictures in the links are just scary. If there are no more deaths it will be a miracle. Wish all the people there the best of luck.


Side-note: there was also an airliner crash at San Francisco international yesterday as well. There was only 2 confirmed deaths there. If u see pics of that plane u will wonder how more weren't killed by fire. Wish all those effected by both accidents the best of luck. If the fatality counts stay low on both crashes this will be a 4th of July miracle. (Hoping the count stays low)

Volks, I cannot underestimate the significance of this incident regarding handling crude oil anywhere in North America. The railroad industry is looking at considerable traffic losses arising from environmental concerns over coal and diversions of post-PANAMAX container traffic either to shorter hauls or outright loss to highway transport. That the industry appears to be a long term "player" in the movement of Crude rather than the construction of pipelines could well be in jeopardy. Anyone with a stake in the railroad industry's fortunes should be following this matter closely.

I can easily believe there will be ramifications that will ripple through the industry. I've been wondering about them since this event occurred. Could one of them be renewed interest in accelerating the PTC mandate on Class II's and even Class III's that carry fuel? Currently only the Class I's seem to be working to any sort of time schedule, all other RRs have been given a more relaxed time-table and/or exemption based on the presence (or lack of) passenger service.

Mind you, I'm not arguing the presence of PTC would have prevented this accident, but the whole PTC effort came about by regulators and politicians that unilaterally mandated it following an accident in CA. PTC was sold to the general public as a safety issue that will prevent accidents. Even if the main thrust of PTC is to prevent collisions, not derailments and resulting fires, the public was told, "it's all about safety". The finer points of what PTC is really all about will be lost to not only the general public, but also the smaller town and regional politicians who see oil trains running through their home town. Local politicians have their hands tied to some extent when they deal with common carriers, but they have virtually unrestricted access to higher up politicians, and as a rule, those higher up at the national level make an effort to listen to the more local politicians.