Risk-Management Under Study

"Despite measures taken by the regulator and the industry, most non-pressurized tank cars used in the transport of hydrocarbons and other dangerous goods remain vulnerable to puncture and continue to present risks, even following impacts at moderate operating speeds."
Canada, Transportation Safety Board, 2004

The use of tank cars of a particular manufacture named DOT-111A in transporting sometimes dangerous material, including chemicals like sulphuric acid, or gasoline and diesel fuel, where those tank cars are susceptible to being punctured in a derailment has been raised once again. It takes an utter calamitous disaster to raise the attention of regulating authorities in response to the outrage and pain of people whose lives have been horribly impacted.

And in the case of the Lac Megantic disaster with a 72-car, four-locomotive train carrying crude oil en route to Irving refineries in New Brunswick, derailing in the centre of the railroad town, then exploding, levelling the centre, and killing fifty people who had the dire misfortune to be sleeping in their apartments or enjoying one another's company at one of the town's pubs that night, it was a disaster of horrendous proportions.

Cause and effect. Investigators will be diligently examining all evidence available to pinpoint cause. The effect is by now well enough known and deplored. Who might have imagined, living in small rail towns all of their lives, that those regularly scheduled trains chugging through town might represent the potential of such a monumental tragedy? To be sure, some aware people, usually those on municipal council were uneasy. But people have a tendency to think briefly and then get on with their lives.

Until the unthinkable occurs and it's too late to get on with the lives of the fifty who died, and whose relatives and friends will find it exceedingly difficult to get on with their spared lives without overwhelming feelings of grief and remorse. Journalists have been busy collecting personal stories from those most immediately affected whose anguish at the loss of family members and close friends seems unassuagable.

"It's a very difficult situation. Normally when you have a transportation accident, the people who were hurt or killed were on the airplane or on the train. But in this situation these are just people living their normal lives in that town and this random act comes along so that whole community is affected. That struck me as a very powerful thing."
Wendy Tadros, Chair, Transportation Safety Board

Figures released by the Railway Association of Canada reveal that there are 310,000 tank cars currently in North American rail car fleets. Of that number, 240,000 are DOT-111As. The North American tank car committee representative of federal regulatory bodies and industry associations issued a directive requiring that all DOT-111 cars ordered beyond October 2011 must include thicker, puncture-resistant shells, extra protective head shields at both ends of the tank car, protection for top fittings and higher flow capacity pressure release valves.

The newer, improved designs are meant to reduce the risk of rollover and puncture during a derailment by an estimated 50%.  And that represents the way ahead, but there is no requirement in the United States or Canada, for the refitting of older models. Those older models have a projected lifespan of roughly forty years' use. Back to the drawing board, perhaps.

Ryan Remiorz / The Canadian Press   A fireman walks through the debris as work continues at the crash 

site of the train derailment and fire Tuesday, July 16, 2013 in Lac-Megantic, Que. that left 37 people 

confirmed dead and another 13 missing and presumed dead.

 

Between 2004 and 2008, according to the Association of American Railroads one fatality and 11 injuries resulted from derailments of DOT-111 rail cars with 3.5-million litres of materials spilled, costing about $63-million. And then transportation of crude oil by rail increased exponentially, from 500 carloads in 2009 to 140,000 in 2013. And in one fell swoop, in Lac Megantic, the number of dead resulting from derailments rose to 50.