Outdated oil tank cars involved in another Midwest derailment

Five days after federal regulators announced strict new rules for the tank car trains that hauled more than 490,000 loads of oil last year, a train derailed and burst into flames Wednesday, forcing the evacuation of a North Dakota town.

It marked the second time in about eight weeks that similar outdated tanks cars being hauled by the same rail company derailed in the Midwest, causing huge fireballs and raising safety concerns.

Both Wednesday's derailment in North Dakota and March's in Galena, Ill., involved the CPC-1232 model, which is being phased out.

At the time of the Galena accident, a Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway spokesman described the cars involved as 'the next grade up” from the older DOT-111 tank cars.

Those DOT-111s, which make up 70 percent of U.S. tank cars, were involved February in a smaller derailment and fire near Dubuque.

'Today's incident is yet another reminder of why we issued a significant, comprehensive rule aimed at improving the safe transport of high hazard flammable liquids,” Sarah Feinberg, acting administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, said Wednesday.

The tiny town of Heimdal, which is northeast of Bismark and has about two dozen residents, was evacuated Wednesday after the derailment. At least six of the cars burst into flames, creating a plume of black smoke.

Feinberg dispatched a team of investigators to the scene of the fifth major derailment of an oil train in North America this year. In two other cases in the United States, and one in Canada, a massive fire resulted.

All of the derailments have taken place in remote, rural regions. But lawmakers and the Obama administration, with Feinberg taking the lead, are fearful that one of the trains could jump the tracks and explode in a major urban area.

For example, dozens of them pass through Chicago as they make their way from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota and Montana to refineries in East Coast cities.

On Friday, the federal Transportation Department announced a series of new rules for tank car design and the trains that pull them.

The rules require that tank cars be manufactured or retrofitted with an outer metal jacket that makes them less prone to leak in a derailment, and that trains be equipped with new braking systems to prevent 'accordion-like” pileups in derailments.

Trains with 70 or more tank cars are required to slow to 40 mph in 'high-threat” urban areas, and railroads must take into consideration 27 safety factors - including the quality of track maintenance and the rail bed's grade and curvature - in selecting routes for tank-car trains.

The Association of American Railroads welcomed the new rules, saying it supported an 'aggressive retrofit or replacement program.” But this week, some railroad executives were less laudatory of the rule.

Norfolk Southern chief executive Charles 'Wick” Moorman told the Wall Street Journal that the Transportation Department 'made some serious mistakes in the regulations” that would make shipping oil by rail too expensive.

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., maintains that the Transportation Department is not moving fast enough to implement the new rules. On Monday, he introduced a bill that would require all older model tank cars be removed within two years, rather than by 2023.

Wednesday's accident happened when a BNSF oil tanker derailed around 7:30 a.m.

A statement released by BNSF said the burning tank cars were unjacketed CPC-1232 models that are to be phased out. That is the same type of tank cars involved in the derailment near Galena.

February's derailment of a Canadian Pacific freight train near Dubuque involved at least some DOT-111 tank cars carrying ethanol. In July, regulators proposed a two-year phaseout of DOT-111s for carrying some flammable liquids, such as crude oil and ethanol, unless the tanks are retrofitted.

The Washington Post and KCRG-TV9 contributed to this report.