SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Oregon Officials Call for Ban on 'Bomb Trains' in Wake of Fiery Derailment
'We must have an immediate plan to phase out all fossil fuel infrastructure,' say climate activists
Jun 17, 2016
On the heels of a fiery derailment near the Columbia River Gorge city of Mosier, Oregon, officials in that state are calling for a suspension to oil-carrying trains.
The June 3 Union Pacific train derailment leaked over 40,00 gallons of Bakken crude, sending oil into the sewage system and forcing the evacuation of 100 residents.
The new request came in a letter dated June 8 from Oregon's Department of Transportation (ODOT) to the Federal Railroad Administration, a body whose duties include enforcing rail safety regulations.
The Associated Press reports that ODOT made the letter public during a presentation Thursday to the Oregon Transportation Commission.
Union Pacific officials said the derailment was caused by broken lag bolts, which AP describes as "fasteners which are used to attach the rail to the rail tie on a curved section of track."
"As the trains move around the curve, they apply a lateral force to that rail, shoving that rail out. What holds that rail intact are those lags," a Union Pacific spokesperson said last week. "If all those lags are broke for so many ties in a row, it allows that rail to spread out, which allowed the wheel to fall in. We had one wheel down at the point of derailment."
Despite multiple track inspections in the month before the derailment, the broken bolts were not detected. Union Pacific had tested the bolts every 18 months but will now test them every three months.
But that's not enough for Hal Gard, administrator of Oregon's Rail and Public Transit Division.
"Until the underlying cause of the bolt failures is understood and, a means of detecting this defect is developed, we request a moratorium on running unit oil trains over sections of track that contain track fasteners of this material within the state of Oregon," the Portland Tribune reports Gard as writing in the letter.
Tom Fuller, ODOT's director of communications, also asked, given that neither ODOT nor Union Pacific spotted the broken bolts, "Where else might this exist ... just waiting to have a derailment?"
Such an accident could put hundreds of young lives at risk, as a recent report from Stand (formerly ForestEthics), for example, found that over 250,000 students in Oregon and Washington state alone are enrolled in 748 schools within the "blast zone"--the one-mile evacuation area in the event of an oil train derailment and fire.
For climate activists, while a pause on the so-called bomb trains might be welcome, it fails to fully remove the inherent dangers of transporting fossil fuels.
Sparked by the Mosier derailment, the Fossil Fuel Resistance Network (FFRN) is organizing a direct action to take place Saturday in Vancouver, Washington, which is the proposed home for one of the nation's biggest crude-by-rail facilities.
On its Facebook page, FFRN says, "We must go beyond a temporary moratorium on oil trains, and we must have an immediate plan to phase out all fossil fuel infrastructure."
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
On the heels of a fiery derailment near the Columbia River Gorge city of Mosier, Oregon, officials in that state are calling for a suspension to oil-carrying trains.
The June 3 Union Pacific train derailment leaked over 40,00 gallons of Bakken crude, sending oil into the sewage system and forcing the evacuation of 100 residents.
The new request came in a letter dated June 8 from Oregon's Department of Transportation (ODOT) to the Federal Railroad Administration, a body whose duties include enforcing rail safety regulations.
The Associated Press reports that ODOT made the letter public during a presentation Thursday to the Oregon Transportation Commission.
Union Pacific officials said the derailment was caused by broken lag bolts, which AP describes as "fasteners which are used to attach the rail to the rail tie on a curved section of track."
"As the trains move around the curve, they apply a lateral force to that rail, shoving that rail out. What holds that rail intact are those lags," a Union Pacific spokesperson said last week. "If all those lags are broke for so many ties in a row, it allows that rail to spread out, which allowed the wheel to fall in. We had one wheel down at the point of derailment."
Despite multiple track inspections in the month before the derailment, the broken bolts were not detected. Union Pacific had tested the bolts every 18 months but will now test them every three months.
But that's not enough for Hal Gard, administrator of Oregon's Rail and Public Transit Division.
"Until the underlying cause of the bolt failures is understood and, a means of detecting this defect is developed, we request a moratorium on running unit oil trains over sections of track that contain track fasteners of this material within the state of Oregon," the Portland Tribune reports Gard as writing in the letter.
Tom Fuller, ODOT's director of communications, also asked, given that neither ODOT nor Union Pacific spotted the broken bolts, "Where else might this exist ... just waiting to have a derailment?"
Such an accident could put hundreds of young lives at risk, as a recent report from Stand (formerly ForestEthics), for example, found that over 250,000 students in Oregon and Washington state alone are enrolled in 748 schools within the "blast zone"--the one-mile evacuation area in the event of an oil train derailment and fire.
For climate activists, while a pause on the so-called bomb trains might be welcome, it fails to fully remove the inherent dangers of transporting fossil fuels.
Sparked by the Mosier derailment, the Fossil Fuel Resistance Network (FFRN) is organizing a direct action to take place Saturday in Vancouver, Washington, which is the proposed home for one of the nation's biggest crude-by-rail facilities.
On its Facebook page, FFRN says, "We must go beyond a temporary moratorium on oil trains, and we must have an immediate plan to phase out all fossil fuel infrastructure."
On the heels of a fiery derailment near the Columbia River Gorge city of Mosier, Oregon, officials in that state are calling for a suspension to oil-carrying trains.
The June 3 Union Pacific train derailment leaked over 40,00 gallons of Bakken crude, sending oil into the sewage system and forcing the evacuation of 100 residents.
The new request came in a letter dated June 8 from Oregon's Department of Transportation (ODOT) to the Federal Railroad Administration, a body whose duties include enforcing rail safety regulations.
The Associated Press reports that ODOT made the letter public during a presentation Thursday to the Oregon Transportation Commission.
Union Pacific officials said the derailment was caused by broken lag bolts, which AP describes as "fasteners which are used to attach the rail to the rail tie on a curved section of track."
"As the trains move around the curve, they apply a lateral force to that rail, shoving that rail out. What holds that rail intact are those lags," a Union Pacific spokesperson said last week. "If all those lags are broke for so many ties in a row, it allows that rail to spread out, which allowed the wheel to fall in. We had one wheel down at the point of derailment."
Despite multiple track inspections in the month before the derailment, the broken bolts were not detected. Union Pacific had tested the bolts every 18 months but will now test them every three months.
But that's not enough for Hal Gard, administrator of Oregon's Rail and Public Transit Division.
"Until the underlying cause of the bolt failures is understood and, a means of detecting this defect is developed, we request a moratorium on running unit oil trains over sections of track that contain track fasteners of this material within the state of Oregon," the Portland Tribune reports Gard as writing in the letter.
Tom Fuller, ODOT's director of communications, also asked, given that neither ODOT nor Union Pacific spotted the broken bolts, "Where else might this exist ... just waiting to have a derailment?"
Such an accident could put hundreds of young lives at risk, as a recent report from Stand (formerly ForestEthics), for example, found that over 250,000 students in Oregon and Washington state alone are enrolled in 748 schools within the "blast zone"--the one-mile evacuation area in the event of an oil train derailment and fire.
For climate activists, while a pause on the so-called bomb trains might be welcome, it fails to fully remove the inherent dangers of transporting fossil fuels.
Sparked by the Mosier derailment, the Fossil Fuel Resistance Network (FFRN) is organizing a direct action to take place Saturday in Vancouver, Washington, which is the proposed home for one of the nation's biggest crude-by-rail facilities.
On its Facebook page, FFRN says, "We must go beyond a temporary moratorium on oil trains, and we must have an immediate plan to phase out all fossil fuel infrastructure."
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.