Toxic Train Chemicals: What’s Rolling Through Your Town?

Toxic Train Chemicals:  What’s Rolling Through Your Town?

Oil Train Derailment

Did you know that there are hundreds of freight train derailments ever year in the United States?  Many of these occur in the heart of populated areas, whether cities, suburbs or small towns.  Others occur near lakes, rivers or other important sources of our drinking water.  Trains are so common-place that we often forget the danger they represent, but it’s important to be mindful of what risks you may encounter if a derailment occurs in or near your community.

Fortunately, there are only about 50 derailments a year that lead to fires or the leakage of toxic chemicals.  However, the sheer volume and diversity of chemicals that cars can carry is enough to kill or seriously debilitate thousands of innocent people.  To make matters worse, the government does very little to regulate the routes that trains use in order to minimize exposure in the event of an accident.  Furthermore, the cars and train tracks themselves are often poorly-maintained, in a perpetual state of disrepair and don’t meet modern and accepted safety standards.

Enormous Risk

We all know that tanker cars on trains are big.  One car can hold up to 30,000 gallons of chemicals of oil.  Considering that some trains are exclusively carrying tankers, the potential for a disaster is nothing short of extraordinary.  Couple that with the fact that most trains carry a mixture of different chemicals, and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see what could happen if a serious derailment takes place.

What officials are reluctant to talk about is how many cars are poorly-designed and prone to rupturing.  While the federal government has instituted new regulations to force rail companies to use cars with thicker material, these improvements are nominal at best.  Then there’s the issue of poorly-maintained tracks that are laid across uneven terrain, on dangerous slopes, near the edges of bodies of water or cross old and fragile bridges that are in a serious state of disrepair. 

Common Chemicals

Trains commonly carry a lot of crude oil along with a wide-range of chemicals that are used to make almost anything that we use in our daily lives.  However, these chemicals are often highly-toxic, corrosive and come in the form of gases or liquids that can be deadly upon contact.  Chlorine, sulfuric acid, methanol, radioactive material, and two of the world’s most toxic compounds, methyl bromide and ethyl trichlorosilane, are rolling through our communities at any given point in time. 

Many of these chemicals are so dangerous that automatic evacuations that cover a radius of up to 10 miles are recommended if a spill or fire occurs.  So, when it comes to a derailment in a populated area, it could have the potential to impact hundreds of thousands of people with little warning.  Couple that with the fact that a sudden evacuation due to a derailment is the farthest thing from the minds of most people, you can see how such a contingency can turn into a SHTF situation in a matter of minutes.

Responses

The first challenge that first responders will face is determining what substances have spilled or caught fire.  Rail companies are required to submit manifests to state authorities for every train that carries hazardous material.  In the event of an emergency, local responders would need to either physically identify markings on the side of impacted rail cars or contact the state agency for information.  This could take minutes or longer.  Then there’s the reality that repeated occurrences of rail companies adding cars to trains without changing manifests is commonplace.

The bottom line is that getting to the stage where a mandatory evacuation would be issued could come too late for too many people.  Furthermore, the delays of spreading the word to residents and the ensuing chaos would be a recipe for disaster on so many levels. 

How to Prepare

There’s really little that we can do to prepare except have a bug-out-bag ready and know about multiple escape routes.  If you do know what hazardous material is coming your way, you can also prepare accordingly by understanding what kind of protective measures you can take as well.  The key is to be prepared and in a position to react within minutes, because if a derailment does occur in your community, it will happen without warning. 

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