Dave Rogness, emergency manager of Cass County in North Dakota, talked at the Regional Interagency Steering Committee meeting about the 2013 Casselton train derailment. He began by pointing out that roughly 80-120 trains a day come through Cass County. Each week more than 40 of those trains, each a mile long, is hauling more than three million gallons of Bakken crude oil. That is the most crude-by-rail traffic in North Dakota.
The county realized the potential problem from Bakken crude oil and had sent a plan for dealing with oil car explosions to all fire departments and done training exercises for derailments. Casselton, for example, has an all-volunteer fire department; however, all 28 firefighters are trained to National Fire Protection Association 472 Awareness Level, most to the operations level, and there is a regional hazmat team based in Fargo that is trained to the technician level.
The explosion was observed for 20 miles; it is the largest release of Bakken crude oil by rail in the U.S. so far.
No one on the train crews was hurt.
If the explosion had happened in just a slightly different location, the results could have been much worse. It happened in the countryside, 20 miles west of Fargo, a city of 100,000, and ¼ mile west of Casselton, with a population of 2500. It was also just one-quarter mile east of a large ethanol plant. It was adjacent to a city park – but with a temperature of minus 1 degree Fahrenheit, and a wind chill factor of 20 below, the park was empty. The school, a little more than a mile away, was out for Christmas vacation.
Initial callers thought people were still on the trains, and that the fire was from either grain or ethanol. When responders saw the placards on the railroad cars, they were able to learn within 15 minutes that the train was carrying Bakken crude.
Rogness then described the key incidents and problems of the response to the disaster:
- The command post was originally set up one-quarter mile from the scene, but they had to pull back to a half mile because it was too hot for the responders even inside their rigs. It was later moved to the school when they realized the response would take hours and they needed to get out of the cold.
- Rogness said bringing in trained crews and expertise from BNSF into the command structure was critical to the success of the response. The railroad eventually deployed more than 300 staff and contractors to the event. “Bring that rail company in,” he says. “They are legally responsible for the derailment. Get them on your side before those issues arise.”
- Other units in the command structure included law enforcement (for scene control and also to investigate the incident), Emergency Medical Services (monitoring medical needs and assisting with the evacuation), and Public Health (monitoring the air quality as well as the spill recovery and mitigation).
- Media issues were a problem. Passersby were taking photos and posting them on social media that went worldwide before responders even got there. The public information officer was getting calls from as far away as Africa and Asia. He would hang up from one call on his cell phone and find 6-10 messages waiting.
- There were few options for fighting the fire. Water should not be put on exploding crude oil. Firefighters did not have enough foam in four counties together to put the fire out, plus the foam would freeze in the cold. Dry chemicals were not available. The only choice was to let it burn, which BNSF responders said would take about 12 hours. It took more than 24. Political leaders were skeptical of the strategy.
- Air traffic was thick from media and private operators wanting to see the fire. Fearing an air accident, the responders got the airspace closed.
- The cold weather made the air pollution monitoring unreliable.
- A shelter-in-place advisory shifted to an evacuation advisory as the wind shifted; the evacuation area was later expanded to the whole township, and the 19 residents and two pets that had come to the local shelter were moved to a school in Fargo. The evacuation order was lifted at 3 p.m. the following day.
- Demolition and removal of the cars began in the early morning hours after the accident, even though a few of the oil cars were still burning.
- Assets began demobilizing at the close of business the day after the event.
The Casselton explosion was just one example of the hazards that can result from oil-car derailments.
Chemical hazards, Rogness pointed out, include asphyxiation from hydrogen sulfide, cancer from benzene and the typical house-fire hazards of carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and smoke particles.
The explosion alone can also be devastating. He pointed to the example of the fireball of Bakken crude oil in Lac Megantic, Quebec, in July of 2013 that left 47 dead and 30 buildings destroyed. Blazing oil flowed over the ground, drained into storms sewers, and erupted as huge fires from other drains, manholes, and even chimneys and basements of other buildings.
How real is the threat? The U.S. Department of Transportation predicts more than 200 crude and ethanol trains will derail over the next 20 years, including 10 in urban areas, Rogness said.
At least one of those urban derailments could be catastrophic.