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Oil trains sparking concerns in small towns
December 23, 2013
Freight trains hauling crude oil out of the Northern Plains are growing more frequent by the day, mile-long processions of black tank cars that rumble across the continent.
Freight trains hauling crude oil out of the Northern Plains are growing more frequent by the day, mile-long processions of black tank cars that rumble across the continent.
As common as they have become across the U.S. and Canada, officials in dozens of towns and cities where the oil trains travel say they are concerned with the possibility of a major derailment, spill or explosion, while their level of preparation varies widely.
Stoking those fears was the July crash of a crude train from the Bakken oil patch in Lac Megantic, Quebec — not far from the Maine border — that killed 47 people.
"It's a grave concern," said Dan Sietsema, the emergency coordinator in northeastern Montana's Roosevelt County, where oil trains now pass regularly through the county seat of Wolf Point. "It has the ability to wipe out a town like Wolf Point."
The number of carloads of crude oil hauled by U.S. railroads has surged in recent years, from 10,840 in 2009 to a projected 400,000 this year.