These are notes that I am writing to help me learn our industrial history. They are my best understanding, but that does not mean they are a correct understanding.
Friday, April 26, 2019
Tank Car Safety: UP and BNSF derailed ethanol trains in Texas
(3D Satellite, the stable that burned is across the tracks from the abandoned incinerator)
<update>
On June 13, 2020, UP torches a few more tank cars.
safe_image for Massive Explosion Seen After Train Derails Near Rock Springs
Nathan Cervantes posted two photos with the comment:
The Rock Springs WY derailment 2020. Yes some of the cars melted from the extreme heat. I was here on related business and I was able to survey the area.
[If you scroll down, this article contains the whole video from which the above image was extracted at about 0:09.]
John Scott: That tank car in the top obviously ruptured in a BLEVE.
Christopher Siders: Thermal misalignment, and incorrectly tamped track was what caused it per the company. [A comment confirmed that "thermal misalignment" is UP's current euphemism for "sun kink."]
From just looking at the first photo it appears the car suffered a ductile failure caused by flame impingement on the vapor space of the tank car tank shell. I was the principal FRA HM inspector at the derailment at Criagsville, PA where there was a similiar failure to a couple of tank cars of crude oil. https://apnews.com/article/7d616bacc7b8290e5421c402e527a6b5
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</update>
I've been writing about incidents that "stress" tank cars. But I think this derailment is significant enough to warrant its own post.
A UP southbound ethanol train derailed at 12:40am, 4/24/2019. Five of the 20 cars burned for hours. A stable next to the tracks caught fire and three out of the 10 horses were killed. [NBC's video] The ties and stable were still smoldering when it got light enough for a helicopter to make a video for news channels.
Kameron Joseph It was a 98 car train. Crew didn’t receive a flash flood [warning] and hit a washout.
FORT WORTH, Texas — At least 20 homes were evacuated after a train derailment near Yuma Drive and Riverside in south Fort Worth Wednesday morning.
Small fires are still smoldering at a nearby family farm whose horse stable also caught fire, killing three horses. [KHOU11]
They were worried about "chemicals" in the air. That is why the homes were evacuated.
"Firefighters said they are working to contain the fire as Union Pacific will investigate the cause of the fire." [KHOU11] I think it is pretty obvious what caused the fire --- they smashed some tank cars full of ethanol. It would be interesting to know what generation of safety design the tank cars were and if they performed as expected.
(new window) At 2:10, they zoom in on a little jet of flame. But according to the report below, this video is seven hours after the main fire.
There was a lot of rain because this video said the cars in the lower level of the parking garage of Love Field (their airport) were in 3 feet of water. (I skipped the "talking faces" part.)
I captured the above because of the strong current past the wheelsets. Then when I stopped the video a few seconds later I got the following. Those are two rails down in the drainage ditch! Then I noticed all of the ties on the side of the embankment. Rails and ties are supposed to be on top of an embankment, not next to it. It appears UP was also lucky that the locomotives and crew got across this area before the embankment caved in.
Screenshot @ -30:58
Soon after you see that all of the smoke is coming from burning ties and an excavator is using its bucket to pour water from the drainage ditch onto the smoldering ties.
Screenshot @ -25:35
[Look at the hole on the right side of the top tank. Did it explode or was it ripped open on impact?]
Screenshot @ -24:20
[We go from an embankment to a cut and the tracks are in a river of water. When is BNSF and UP going to quit testing the soil strength of a saturated embankment?]
Screenshot @ -18:33
[A view that has the "big hole", the ties on the side, the rails in the ditch, and the jet of flame.]
The rest of the video is rather redundant unless you want to see a horse in the field at -11:10 and the smoldering stable. This was the stable.
Screenshot @ -32:40
[It looks like Fox caught ethanol pouring out of a puncture. There might be some drunk fish in the neighborhood. This video was taken before the above video because there are more trucks and wheelsets in the water. Actually, at -30:13, it looks like the above video. The news channels contract with the same helicopter for their footage? I moved the slider several times and the rest of the video looks the same.]
KENS5 video looks a little different, but it is very similar. It might have been a second cameraman in the same helicopter flight.
This is what the Chicago Tribune had about it on 4/25/2019 in their News Summary section. But KHOU11 reports this command vehicle caught fire when it came in contact with overhead wires. It had nothing to do with the train derailment fire.
A Fort Worth Fire Department emergency vehicle burns at the scene where a train of tanker cars carrying ethanol derailed and caught fire in a residential area of the city early Wednesday. Authorities said no one was injured in the accident. (Fort Worth Fire Department )
[Bought in 2008, it cost $1.25 million, the department said. [NBC5]]
HazmatNation has even less information than the mainstream media had.
I was going to skip this news article because the advertisements kept fighting me, but it has the information that the train had a mix of the old DOT-111 and new DOT-117 tank cars. It also has updated numbers: "Of the 24 tanker cars, nine leaked at least some of their ethanol cargo, including the four cars that witnesses saw burn up in the fire, officials said." "Jim Southworth, NTSB investigator in charge, said Thursday he was not aware of any ethanol making its way into any nearby creeks or other waterways, including Echo Lake, a small body of water adjacent to the derailment site." I guess nobody showed him the video above where I speculated about drunk fish in Sycamore Creek. The drone video shows that they brought in at least two mobile cranes and a photo shows a couple of sidebooms in action.
A Jan 8, 2022 derailment by BNSF
This is very disturbing because I thought BNSF has avoided PSR and had retained car inspectors and track maintenance. At this time of the year (Jan), it should not have been caused by a sun kink. This accident doesn't help the argument of the safety of railroads vs. pipelines. Note that the fire started as a 9-car ethanol fire and became a 29-car fire even though just 12 cars actually derailed. Fortunately, there must not have been any BLEVEs. And todays euphemism is that "fully involved" seems to mean "on fire."
Wichita West Volunteer Fire Department posted 19 photos with the comment:
***UPDATE as of 0615 hours***
Our crews have cleared the scene. There are a few rail cars still burning, but BNSF elected to let them burn themselves out.
***UPDATE as of 1645 hours***
29 tanker cars are now involved. Tanker shuttles are being used to provide water to the incident.
Wichita West Firefighters on Scene of Train Derailment.
Wichita West is assisting Wilbarger County, at US-287, near Oklaunion. 9 tanker cars carrying ethanol are on fire, with more cars threatened. 12 cars have derailed and 20 agencies on scene. One abandoned home fully involved.
Wichita West Volunteer Fire Department: This was between Vernon and Electra, near Oklaunion. BNSF is investigating the cause of the derailment.
Brandon Brock: What are those "pools" of water for? Wichita West Volunteer Fire Department: Brandon Brock Those are storage tanks for the water. Due to the lack of hydrants in the area, we are having to shuttle on water, drop the water in tanks, to be used for firefighting operations.
[There are some videos of the "Oklaunion" train derailment after this post on the Facebook page.]
13 Frank Koch: when letting it burn results in less ground contamination -less soil to be dug up and hauled to Texas.
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15 [Are they trying to fight an ethanol fire with water or are they trying to keep uncompromised tank cars cool?]
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17 [This makes it look like they are putting water on the fire.]
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Screenshot from a news report "According to an official with BNSF Railway company, 28 of the 98 cars on the train derailed at approximately 10 a.m. this morning."
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