“On Thursday, a train crash in South Carolina caused a deadly release of chlorine: 9 people were killed, 58 were hospitalized and hundreds more sought treatment. The ninth body was found yesterday, and thousands of people have been kept from their homes.
Last summer, a derailment in Texas caused a steel tank car to break open, spewing clouds of chlorine gas that killed three people.
The exact causes of the accidents are still under investigation. But the devastation they have wrought shows why tank cars have become an increasing concern not just to safety investigators but also to domestic security officials worried that terrorists could turn tank cars into lethal weapons.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation warned in 2002 that Al Qaeda might be planning to attack trains in the United States, possibly causing derailments or blowing up tank cars laden with hazardous materials.
And after bombings on commuter trains killed 191 people in Spain last March, security officials secretly persuaded one railroad to reroute toxic shipments that had routinely passed within four blocks of the Capitol in Washington, government officials said.
Federal authorities have been working with railroads and the chemical industry to improve security for trains. But there is still much to be done, particularly given the structural weaknesses of many tank cars, current and former federal officials say. George Gavalla, a former associate administrator for safety at the Federal Railroad Administration, said railroads had promised to beef up security when there was a credible terrorist threat.
So when such a threat arose a year ago in Las Vegas, Mr. Gavalla said, he sent an inspector there on New Year's Eve to assess the security measures in place. Those measures, he said, were virtually nonexistent.
When the inspector visited a rail yard 13 miles from the airport, he found no one watching over six tank cars with markings indicating that they might contain chlorine gas, according to a memorandum that he wrote about his visit. Two hours later, he visited another rail yard with four tank cars possibly carrying poisonous gas and they, too, were unguarded, the memorandum stated.
Finally, Mr. Gavalla said, the inspector visited a rail yard near several hotels. "None of the train crew members challenged me or even talked to me," the inspector wrote. A spokesman for the railroad administration declined to comment.”
Just how ruptured tank cars can endanger a community was underscored three years ago when a Canadian Pacific Railway freight train derailed just outside Minot, N.D. Five tank cars carrying a liquefied type of ammonia gas broke open, releasing toxic fumes that killed one resident and injured more than 300.
The National Transportation Safety Board, in a report on the accident released last year, said the steel shells on the five ruptured tank cars had become brittle, causing a "catastrophic fracture" that released clouds of toxic vapors. Those cars, the safety board found, were built before 1989 using steel that did not - as it does now - undergo a special heat treatment to make it stronger and less brittle. Tank cars built after 1989 use this specially treated steel.
The safety board warned that of the 60,000 pressurized tank cars in operation, more than half were older cars that were not built according to current industry standards, leaving them susceptible to rupture. And because these cars may remain in service for up to 50 years, some older ones could still be hauling hazardous materials until 2039.
Among the hazardous materials carried by the tank cars are liquefied ammonia, chlorine, propane and vinyl chloride. In most cases, the cars are owned by chemical or leasing companies, not the railroads.
"We are required to carry this stuff," said Kathryn Blackwell, a spokeswoman for Union Pacific, the nation's biggest railroad. "We'd rather not in many cases, but this is one of the things we would like chemical companies to be responsible for."
Although the rail industry now requires that tank shells be made with the special heat-treated steel, the safety board said that treatment alone "does not guarantee" enough protection against impact. Other manufacturing techniques should also be explored, the board said, but it cautioned that the industry and the railroad administration "have not established adequate testing standards to measure the impact resistance for steels and other materials used in the construction of pressure tank cars."
They found one of the missing railway workers today, killed by chlorine gas.
These shipments are a threat to every major city in the United States and represent the real status of “Homeland Security” A. Ingram
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/national/09rail.html?th=&pagewanted=all&position
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