Washington & Oregon Schools & Students in the Oil Train Blast Zone

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Washington & Oregon Schools & Students in the Oil Train Blast Zone

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Washington and Oregon Schools and Students in the Oil Train Blast Zone Contents: ■■ ■■ ■■ ■■ ■■ ■■ ■■

Schools and Students in the Oil Train Blast Zone p.#1 Fixing the Problem p.#2 Map: Washington schools in the blast zone p.#3 Map: Oregon schools in the blast zone p.#4 Oil Train Disaster Plans: A burning need for the truth about oil train fires p.#5 Pollution and Long-Term Health Threats from Oil Trains p.#10 Reference Links p.#12

Stand has calculated an estimate of the number of Washington and Oregon schools and students in the oil train blast zone, the one-mile evacuation area in the event of an oil train derailment and fire.

In June 2014 Stand (as ForestEthics) released the blast zone map tool, which uses rail industry data and Google maps to allow users to see where any address in the US or Canada is in relation to oil train routes. Our estimates are calculated using the Stand blast zone map and K-12 public and private school location and population data from the Department of Education: Schools: Oregon schools in the blast zone: Washington schools in the blast zone: Total Northwest schools in the blast zone:

284 464 748

Students: Oregon students in the blast zone: Washington students in the blast zone: Northwest students in the blast zone:

101,334 158,364 259,698

The June 3, 2016, derailment of a Union Pacific oil train 250 yards from the Mosier Community School highlights the very real concerns associated with the transport of toxic crude oil by train. The school remained closed a week after the derailment, subsequent fire, and toxic plume of smoke forced an emergency evacuation of 220 students. According to Mosier Fire Chief JIm Appleton, the school could have been directly impacted or incinerated under normal wind conditions.

Stand calculates that nationally, 25 million Americans live inside the dangerous one-mile blast zone, including 864,000 Washington and 559,000 Oregon residents.

Schools and student population data is drawn from US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics: Private School Universe Survey (PSS): Public-Use Data File User’s Manual for School Year 2011–12, and Documentation to the NCES Common Core of Data Public Elementary/ Secondary School Universe Survey: School Year 2013–14. Population counts are derived from the 2005-2012 American Community Survey, linked to 2010 US Census data.

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Oil trains are dangerous and unnecessary. The Bakken and tar sands crude moving by train is toxic and explosive. Prior to 2010, when the US was using as much oil as today, virtually no crude was moving by train. Since 2010, the amount of crude oil moved by train has fluctuated from roughly 2 to 5 percent of the total crude used in the US. On September 8, 2015, Stand released estimates of the number of schools and school children in the blast zone nationally at risk from a potential oil train derailment and explosion: Number of US schools in the blast zone: Number of US students in the blast zone:

14,848 5,700,000

Fixing the Problem The threat to students and the general US population from oil trains demands urgent action.

1) Stand Calls for an Immediate Ban on Oil Trains President Obama and Congress can stop these disasters.

There is no safe way to transport toxic, explosive crude oil by rail. Our rail system was never built for this hazardous cargo. It was built to connect population centers for commerce -- that’s why railroads run through our cities and towns, near homes, schools and businesses. We must alert communities to the presence of oil trains, prepare and equip emergency responders, and reroute oil trains around our cities and away from our water supplies. New rail safety rules must be strong and must give citizens the information they need to protect themselves and the power to say no to the oil industry.

Are you in the blast zone? Go to

Blast-Zone.org to see if your home, office or child’s school are within the danger zone for an oil train spill or explosion anywhere in the US or Canada.

2) Deny Permits for Expansion of Oil Train Infrastructure We call on Governor Inslee of Washington and Governor Brown of Oregon to deny all permit and lease applications for oil train infrastructure, including the Shell Anacortes proposal, the Westway proposal in Grays Harbor, and the Tesoro-Savage oil train terminal proposed in Vancouver, WA, which would be the largest in North America.

3) The Clean Energy Future is Here Now Our choice is between clean energy that puts people to work or extreme oil that is dangerous for our communities and destructive to our climate. The transition to clean energy has already begun and the choice is simple: we need to leave extreme oil in the ground and stop exploding oil trains.

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Oil Train Disaster Plans: A burning need for the truth about oil train fires Much of the crude oil carried by train is fracked shale oil from North Dakota Bakken oil fields. In January 2014 the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) issued a safety alert to “notify the general public, emergency responders and shippers and carriers that recent derailments and resulting fires indicate that the type of crude oil being transported from the Bakken region may be more flammable than traditional heavy crude oil.”

The other crude typically carried by train is tar sands, or diluted bitumen, from Alberta, Canada. Tar sands are an asphalt-like substance that requires the addition of light petroleum diluent so that it can be loaded into tank cars. Once mixed with diluent the resulting mixture, called diluted bitumen or “dilbit,” is toxic, highly corrosive, flammable and explosive. Bitumen oil spills sink in waterways, sticking to sediments and making cleanup nearly impossible. Despite industry claims to the contrary, two explosive derailments of tar sands in Gogama, Ontario, show that trains of dilbit are likely no safer than Bakken crude during transport.

In 2013 in Lac Megantic, Quebec, 47 people died when an oil train derailed and caught fire in the center of the small Canadian town. More than 1.5 million gallons of crude oil spilled in flowing “rivers of fire,” creating pool fires and filling sewers. Blocks away uncontrollable fires erupted from drains and manholes and more than 30 building were destroyed.

Five fiery oil train disasters in early 2015 in the US and Canada brought renewed national attention to the threat from trains hauling explosive crude oil. The rail industry has responded with a high profile public relations exercise to reassure the public that deadly disasters can be averted with emergency response.

In fact, the reality of oil train accidents—and the unanimous opinion of fire officials and federal rail safety experts—proves that there is no fighting an oil train derailment and fire. The scene of a burning oil train is an uncontrollable fire.

Images from oil train disaster response trainings sponsored and circulated by railroad and oil companies show firefighters standing close to burning tank cars, training hoses on small fires. But as Fairfield, Iowa, Fire Chief Scott Vaughan described in 2014, “If there was a spill or a fire, our big thing would be containment and evacuation,” he said. “We train for it, but training and actually doing are two different things… Very simply, there is no controlling an oil train fire.”

Those 2015 incidents in West Virginia, Illinois, North Dakota, and two in Ontario, were all in rural, relatively unpopulated areas. However, each of these trains passed through heavily populated areas before derailing and exploding. Each would have passed through many more cities and towns, and over critical water supplies, before reaching its final destination.

On Friday, June 3, 2016, an oil train bound for Tacoma through Portland, Vancouver, and Olympia, derailed and caught fire in Mosier, Oregon, a town of 460 people east of Portland on the Columbia River. Residents and the nearby Mosier Community School were evacuated. Thankfully, there were no reported injuries.

Mosier District Fire Chief Jim Appleton was quoted on local NBC News KGW saying the response was successful, “almost like a table-top exercise where everything worked out.” But he also noted the atypical lack of wind on that day and noted how dangerous the situation was: The true story here is the horror of what could have happened… From March to October it’s 30 miles per hour plus through here… I have a high degree of confidence that the school building would have been at a minimum effected if not completely incinerated.

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In a separate interview Appleton explained the approach emergency responders used to fight the burning oil train in Mosier. Firefighting foam was of little use for the first 8 to 10 hours of the fire. Because of the intense heat, crews concentrated on spraying water to cool adjacent rail cars so they would not catch fire. Appleton noted why firefighters did not spray burning tank cars: The rationale that was explained to me by the Union Pacific fire personnel is that the metal is too hot, and the foam will land on the white-hot metal and evaporate without any suppression effect‌ That was kind of an eye-opener for me.

Firefighters also kept well clear of burning cars for safety. In addition to fire and smoke related concerns, there is also the possibility of a violent explosion of the tank cars called a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion, or BLEVE. BLEVEs occur when a closed tank of volatile cargo remains in a pool fire long enough that a portion of the contents are lost through a pressure relief valve, allowing the upper surfaces of the tank car to become superheated while massive pressure builds inside the tank.

The scenario that unfolded in Mosier is what we expect to see in a slow speed derailment. When an oil train derails at any speed over the puncture velocity of roughly 10 miles an hour (for a common CPC-1232 tank car) a dozen or so cars typically come off the tracks, decouple and are thrown from their wheels. If tank cars are punctured, by something on the ground or the couplers on the ends of the cars, the crude (either Bakken or diluted tar sands, both highly volatile) can find a spark or other ignition source. This scenario is what happened in Mosier, OR, where 16 cars derailed and four cars caught fire.

Observations published by FEMA from County Emergency Manager Dave Rogness on the oil train explosion that rocked the small town of Casselton, ND, describe the derailment and the size of the spill: On December 30, 2013 in Casselton, a BNSF westbound train with 112 grain cars went off the tracks. Thirteen of the cars derailed, and one fell on the eastbound tracks. Within two minutes, a BNSF eastbound crude oil train hit that car. That caused two front locomotives, a hopper car, and twenty cars on the eastbound train to derail, and 18 of them ruptured, exploded, and released 450,000 gallons of Bakken crude oil.

First responders to the Casselton accident were forced to pull far back from the scene because of the intense heat: The command post was originally set up one-quarter mile from the scene, but they had to pull back to a half mile because it was too hot for the responders even inside their rigs.

A similar situation occurred in Galena, Illinois, where the fire from the March 2015 derailment burned for days.

First responders, who unloaded emergency equipment nearby to fight the fire, were forced to abandon $10,000 in equipment on the scene when they pulled back to a safe distance.

The DOT Emergency Response Guidebook is quite clear on the initial response to a single tank car disaster: “If tank, rail car or tank truck is involved in a fire, isolate for 800 meters (1/2 mile) in all directions.� But this direction is for a single tank car, and oil train disasters almost always involve many more than one car.

As in Mosier, emergency response to oil trains traveling across the US and Canada is left to municipal fire departments. Few fire departments have the manpower, training, or equipment to respond to more than a single burning 10,000-gallon tank truck of crude. An oil train tank car carries triple that, and most oil train disasters involve more than a single tank car. As North Dakota Emergency Manager Rogness describes:

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There were few options for fighting the fire. Water should not be put on exploding crude oil. Firefighters did not have enough foam in four counties together to put the fire out, plus the foam would freeze in the cold. Dry chemicals were not available. The only choice was to let it burn, which BNSF responders said would take about 12 hours. It took more than 24. Political leaders were skeptical of the strategy.

In fact, federal guidelines for emergency responders for oil train fires state very clearly that the only option is to let the oil burn itself out: In the event of an incident that may involve the release of thousands of gallons of product and ignition of tank cars of crude oil in a unit train, most emergency response organizations will not have the available resources, capabilities or trained personnel to safely and effectively extinguish a fire or contain a spill of this magnitude.

In 2015 in Mount Carbon, West Virginia, tens of thousands of gallons of burning crude escaped punctured cars, flowing into the nearby river and forming a pool fire under other tank cars. Under the intense heat those additional cars began to rupture and explode. A report on oil train safety by the Interagency Board, which coordinates local, state and federal agencies on emergency response, described the situation on the ground during the 2015 West Virginia oil train accident: During the derailment sequence, two tank cars were initially punctured releasing more than 50,000 gallons of crude oil. Of the 27 tank cars that derailed, 19 cars became involved in the pileup and post-accident pool fire. The pool fire caused thermal tank shell failures on 13 tank cars that otherwise survived the initial accident.

Emergency responders at the Mount Carbon, WV incident reported the first thermal failure about 25 minutes after the accident. Within the initial 65 minutes of the incident, at least four tank car failures with large fireball eruptions occurred.

The 13th and last thermal failure occurred more than 10 hours after the accident.

With oil trains continuing to run across North America, it’s a question of when, not if, we will experience the next fatal oil train accident. As Christopher A. Hart of the National Transportation Safety Board explained in January 2016: “We have been lucky thus far that derailments involving flammable liquids in America have not yet occurred in a populated area… But an American version of Lac-Megantic could happen at any time.”

Realistic oil train disaster preparations would not involve firefighters spraying tank cars for the press. The first, most important step would be to recognize -- as emergency responders across the country freely admit -- that no municipal fire department can control an oil train fire.

An upcoming Department of Transportation rulemaking is intended to provide oil train information and preparedness (materials and training) for first responders around the country. Unfortunately, that new rule has been delayed for years and the draft rules are not expected until late 2017. It will be years before the final rules are released, leaving dangerous tank cars, volatile crude, and unprepared communities to bear the risks of oil train traffic.

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As thorough reporting by DeSmog Blog on the weak existing regulatory standards and the oil and rail industry’s failure to meet them demonstrates, there have been no improvements in the safety of the 100,000 unsafe tank cars in the US fleet. The steps oil shippers have promised to improve the safety of oil trains are as hollow and inadequate as the promise of firefighters dousing burning oil tank cars.

Real emergency preparedness for oil trains would involve preparing for massive amounts of spilled crude oil by developing evacuation protocols for the 25 million Americans who live in the oil train blast zone. It would include modeling the flow of burning crude, likely toxic plumes and wildfires. It would also require much better information sharing and coordination with emergency officials on oil train hazardous cargo, routes, and scheduling, information which railroads have strongly resisted sharing.

According to the National Fire Protection Association 69 percent of the 1.1 million firefighters in North America serve in volunteer fire departments. They are not trained or equipped for effective oil train emergency response – in fact, the scale and danger of an oil train fire puts our emergency responders, like the millions who live along the tracks, at unacceptable risk. The railroads are providing some highly touted emergency training to a tiny sliver of this massive force, but the reality is that these efforts are staged to misinform the public, not prepare emergency responders.

Pollution & Long-Term Health Threats from Oil Trains Even without the threat of fire, oil trains create hazardous air pollution from diesel exhaust and emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are known to cause smog pollution. This air pollution is especially hazardous in environmental justice communities that already suffer a significantly higher burden of airborne toxics and accompanying respiratory disease.

The antiquated tank cars currently used to move crude oil leak. They were not designed to carry volatile chemicals or contain chemicals at high pressure. The unpressurized DOT 111 and CPC 1232 tank cars currently permitted to carry crude under federal rules vent carcinogens and other toxic gases into the atmosphere, and frequently lose liquid product through valves and covers.

In a process called shrinkage, one oil research company calculated a loss of one percent of volume from oil tank cars on a journey from North Dakota to the Gulf Coast from off-gassing through pressure relief valves and anticipated leakage. At this rate a 100-car, three-million-gallon train, may lose as much as 30,000 gallons of volatile, cancer-causing chemicals as it rolls down the tracks past homes and schools on the way to coastal refineries. New federal requirements announced in May 2015 do nothing to improve containment of volatile air pollutants.

For example, the October 2014 environmental review for a Phillips 66 oil train unloading project in California, San Luis Obispo County admits that the proposed project will create “significant and unavoidable” levels of air pollution, including toxic sulfur dioxide and cancer-causing chemicals. The review cites increased health risks— particularly for children and the elderly—of cancer, heart disease, respiratory disease, and premature death.

In 2012, The Whatcom Docs, a group of more than 180 physicians from Whatcom County, WA, outlined their conclusions on the potential health impacts from increased train traffic based on research published in major medical journals. Their findings on the chronic health threat from coal trains – which are similar to mile-long crude oil trains -- are also directly relevant to anyone living along oil train routes, and in particular environmental justice communities where air emissions from industrial facilities, road traffic, and other sources are higher than average.

Many thanks to Fred Millar for his research and analysis for this section.

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Research compiled by the Whatcom Docs establishes:

Diesel particulate matter from passing and idling trains, and increased road traffic due to delays at road crossings, is associated with:

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Impaired pulmonary development in adolescents; Increased cardiopulmonary mortality and all-cause mortality; Measurable pulmonary inflammation; Increased severity and frequency of asthma attacks, ER visits, and hospital admissions in children; Increased rates of myocardial infarction (heart attack) in adults; Increased risk of cancer.

Noise pollution exposure from train traffic causes:

· · · ·

Cardiovascular disease, including increased blood pressure, arrhythmia, Stroke, and ischemic heart disease; Cognitive impairment in children; Sleep disturbance and resultant fatigue, hypertension, arrhythmia; and increased rate of accidents and injuries; · Exacerbation of mental health disorders such as depression, stress and anxiety, and psychosis.

Frequent long trains at rail crossings will mean: ·

Delayed emergency medical service response times;

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Increased accidents, traumatic injury and death.

Visit the Stand Blast-Zone.org website to see if your school, office or home is in the dangerous one-mile oil train evacuation zone. Stand.earth

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Reference Links 1. http://explosive-crude-by-rail.org/ 2. http://www.thedalleschronicle.com/news/2016/jun/06/mosier-community-school-remain-closed/ 3. http://www.thedalleschronicle.com/news/2016/jun/04/mosier-students-evacuated-td/

4. http://www.kgw.com/news/local/mosier-fire-chief-oil-train-crash-could-have-incinearated-school/234586594

5. http://www.forestethics.net/news/students-in-blast-zone 6. www.phmsa.dot.gov/pv_obj_cache/pv_obj_id_8681A938B81B71A0E897AC2B9E38B8242DC70000/filename/1_2_14%20Rail_Safety_Alert.pdf 7. www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/final-rule-on-safe-rail-transport-of-flammable-liquids 8. www.nap.edu/catalog/21834/spills-of-diluted-bitumen-from-pipelines-a-comparative-study-of 9. http://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/medias-media/communiques/rail/2015/r15h0021-20150317.asp 10. http://tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/rail/2013/r13d0054/r13d0054.pdf 11. http://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/few-iowa-emergency-responders-ready-for-crude-oil-train-derailment-20140629 12. http://www.kgw.com/news/local/mosier-fire-chief-oil-train-crash-could-have-incinearated-school/234586594 13. http://www.opb.org/news/series/oil-trains/oil-sheen-slick-found-columbia-river-mosier-train-derailment/ 14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_liquid_expanding_vapor_explosion 15. https://www.lbcg.com/media/downloads/events/505/crs15-day-1-9-40-edward-patterson-bob-pickel-part1.8207. pdf 16. https://www.fema.gov/challenges-faced-during-2013-casselton-train-derailment 17. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/06/3630622/another-bakken-oil-train-derailment/ 18. http://phmsa.dot.gov/pv_obj_cache/pv_obj_id_7410989F4294AE44A2EBF6A80ADB640BCA8E4200/filename/ ERG2012.pdf 19. http://www.phmsa.dot.gov/hazmat/osd/emergencyresponse 20. http://www.interagencyboard.org/system/files/resources/HHFT-%20Facts%20Paper%20Final-012716.pdf 21. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/ntsbs-10-most-wanted-list-for-2016-underscoresneed-for-rail-safety/2016/01/13/be3d1a8e-ba19-11e5-829c-26ffb874a18d_story.html 22. http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/05/09/report-card-only-225-out-over-100-000-unsafe-tank-cars-retrofit-firstyear 23. http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/05/01/new-oil-rail-regulations-are-big-win-oil-and-rail-industries-won-t-stopbomb-trains 24. http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/05/09/report-card-only-225-out-over-100-000-unsafe-tank-cars-retrofit-firstyear 25. http://www.blast-zone.org/ 26. http://www.nfpa.org/research/reports-and-statistics/the-fire-service/administration/us-fire-department-profile 27. https://rbnenergy.com/crude-loves-rock-n-rail-brent-wti-bakken-netbacks 28. http://www.slocounty.ca.gov/Assets/PL/Santa+Maria+Refinery+Rail+Project/Phillips+66+Company+Rail+Spur+ Extension+Project+%28Oct+2014%29/Individual+EIR+Section/0_3_Executive+Summary.pdf 29. http://www.coaltrainfacts.org/whatcom-docs-position-statement-and-appendices 30. http://www.coaltrainfacts.org/whatcom-docs-position-statement-and-appendices#appendixA

June 4, 2016 | Authors: Matt Krogh, Extreme Oil Campaign Director Eddie Scher, Communications Divrector