#Oiltraincatchesfire in #Virginiaderailment #Tankersofcrudeoil tumble into #Jamesriver after coming off rails and catching fire in #cityofLynchburg Share Tweet this Email Associated Press in Lynchburg theguardian, Thursday 1 May 2014 02.03 BST Jump to comments (…) Train on fire after oil tankers derailed in Lynchburg, Virginia. A train carrying crude oil partly derailed and then caught fire on Wednesday along the James river in Lynchburg, Virginia, with three leaking tankers ending up in the water. It is latest in a series of fiery accidents involving oil transported on North Americas rail network. Nearby buildings were temporarily evacuated but officials said there were no injuries. The city of Lynchburg said firefighters on the scene made the decision to let the fire burn out. Three or four of the tankers were breached on the 15-car train that train company CSX said had been on its way from Chicago to unspecified destination. Photos and videos posted online showed large flames and thick black smoke immediately after the crash. Later photos showed the fire mostly out. In July 2013 a runaway oil train derailed and exploded in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, in Canada near the Maine border. Forty-seven people died and 30 buildings were incinerated. Canadian investigators said the combustibility of the 1.3m gallons of light sweet crude released in Lac-Megantic was comparable to gasoline. In all there have been eight significant oil train accidents in the US and Canada in the past year involving trains hauling crude oil, including several that resulted in large fires, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. This is another national wake-up call, said Jim Hall, a former NTSB chairman said of the Lynchburg crash. We have these oil trains moving all across the United States through communities and the growth and distribution of this has all occurred, unfortunately, while the federal regulators have been asleep. This is just an area in which the federal rulemaking process is too slow to protect the American people. In the Virginia accident there was no immediate indication about how much crude leaked into the river but the city said there was no impact on the drinking water for its 77,000 residents due to spillage into the James. Officials for the city of Richmond said its public utilities department was drawing from an old canal system instead of the James River as a precaution. A burning tanker lies in the James river in Lynchburg after the oil train derailment. A burning tanker lies in the James river in Lynchburg after the oil train derailment. Photograph: Parker Michels-Boyce/AP CSX said it was responding fully, with emergency response personnel, safety and environmental experts, community support teams and other resources. The NTSB said it was sending investigators to the scene, as was the Federal Railroad Administration. Grady Cothen, a former Federal Railroad Administration official, said recent wet weather and the nearby river might have softened the ground and weakened the track. In one of her last acts before leaving office last week, the outgoing NTSB chairwoman Deborah Hersman warned the Obama administration it must take immediate steps to protect the public from potentially catastrophic accidents involving trains carrying oil or ethanol, even if it meant using emergency authority. We are very clear that this issue needs to be acted on very quickly, Hersman said theguardian/environment/2014/may/01/oil-train-burns-after-virginia-derailment
Posted on: Thu, 01 May 2014 16:12:00 +0000
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