Is Your Audience in an Oil Train Blast Zone?

February 25, 2015

Credit: AP Photo/ Office of the Governor of West Virginia, Steven Wayne Rotsch

After a February 16, 2015, oil train derailment and explosion in West Virginia, new concerns have arisen over the public's right to know about the dangers oil trains pose to communities.

Now trackside communities have some data and maps to help them protect themselves.

Railroads and some states have resisted a federal mandate to disclose routing information for the trains — which often carry explosive blends of crude in strings of 100 or more less-safe tanker cars through communities where even local firefighters may not be warned.

In West Virginia, the state "homeland security" agency refused to give oil-train routing information to the Charleston Gazette in October 2014. This despite the fact that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) had ordered the information to be disclosed and that most of it was already public. Their excuse? Trade secrets. Even though the FRA had ruled that oil-train routing information could not be claimed as trade secrets.

The billowing oil fire was no secret to Morris Bounds Sr. of Ansted, W.V., who saw the oil train crash and start to burn some 50 feet from his house, fleeing in his socks in sub-freezing weather because he did not have time to grab his shoes. He lost his house though he escaped with his life.

On May 7, 2014, the FRA issued an emergency order directing freight carriers to use safer tank cars and to disclose routing information to state emergency response agencies. Under heavy lobbying by the railroads, some state agencies chose not to reveal the dangers to the public — although many states did make the information available.

Such secrecy protects the railroads, but not the public. Track maintenance costs money. The idea that secrecy prevents terrorist attacks has lost credibility at a time when a newly revealed U.S. Transportation Department study predicts ten oil or ethanol tank-car crashes per year. Many could be prevented by upgraded tankers and better track maintenance.

The week after the West Virginia explosion, the state of Texas, which had previously refused to disclose oil train routing records to the Associated Press, said it had decided to disclose them. When it will do so is not known.

Most major oil-train routes are already known. People who live nearby can not fail to see the long strings of tankers rumbling by. And maps (some interactive) have been published. Trains magazine published a map of the major routes in 2014 (not available free online). Not long after, the environmental group ForestEthics published a more elaborate "Oil Train Blast Zone" website compiling most known routing information and overlaying it on maps of vulnerable populations and geographic features.

"Oil Train Blast Zone" interactive map site is online here.