Well, this is new; Bomb Trains! As if you didn’t have enough to worry about.
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The Bomb Trains
As promised, Joe Biden has issued an executive order revoking the March 2019 permit for construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. That project, for the time being anyway, is dead. Joe has fulfilled his pledge to those who think we can run our economy without fossil fuels. Workers are already being fired, and energy costs will inevitably begin to rise.
Let’s look at another less discussed implication of this disastrous decision, however. Let’s look at how many people Joe just condemned to death.
The AOC’s of the world assume that cancelling the permit to allow the construction of the pipeline means that the oil it would carry will no longer be produced and no longer reach market. That is not at all what it means. The oil will still find its way to refineries, but now instead of being pumped safely and securely in a pipeline, it will be carried by other means.
That means mostly by train, and trains derail. When they derail, especially if they are carrying the particularly volatile Bakken Crude Oil, the consequences can be deadly.
On July 6, 2013 a 73-car freight train carrying Bakken Crude derailed in the remote Canadian town of Lac-Megantic. Multiple tank cars caught fire and exploded in the center of the small community. Forty-two people were killed. More than thirty buildings were destroyed. All but three of the thirty-nine surviving buildings had to be demolished. The blast radius from the explosions was one kilometer.
If there is an upside to that terrible story, it is that the derailment happened in a small town with a limited population. The trains that carry Bakken Crude don’t just run through rural areas, however. They go through the heart of our biggest cities. And, many of them are much, much bigger than the 73-car train that blew up in Lac-Megantic.
Changes in the way oil is now shipped have contributed to the danger. Crude oil used to be carried on the rails “by manifest,” that is, on trains with a variety of other cargoes. Today trains typically carry only one cargo, the highly volatile Bakken Crude, which reacts much more like gasoline than crude oil in a derailment. These trains usually have in excess of 80 cars. When a 109-car Bakken Crude train jumped the rails in Mount Carbon, West Virginia, in 2015 the entire town had to be evacuated.
Twenty-five million Americans live within a mile of a train track on which Bakken Crude bomb trains travel. Virtually every major city in the nation, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco, has such trains running on tracks right through the heart of heavily populated areas. In 2015 a three-locomotive, 111-car CSX freight train came off the tracks while traveling through Philadelphia. Fortunately, the cars stayed upright, and no crude oil was lost. There was, through sheer luck, no explosion. There could just as easily have been a massive explosion in the heart of one of our great cities.
The reality of the danger posed by the transport of Bakken Crude by train is terrifying. If the oil catches fire and explodes what results is devastation. The fire is uncontrollable. All firefighters can do is evacuate the area and wait for the fire to burn itself out.
As Fairfield, Iowa, Fire Chief Scott Vaughan described in 2014, “If there was a spill or a fire, our big thing would be containment and evacuation,” he said. “We train for it, but training and actually doing are two different things. Very simply, there is no controlling an oil train fire.”
Just as scary is the ease with which such an eventuality can occur. If an oil train derails at any speed over ten miles an hour a dozen or more cars typically come off the tracks, decouple, and are thrown from their wheels. If tank cars are punctured, the explosive Bakken Crude will generally either self-ignite or be ignited by some other source. You don’t have to imagine a train racing out of control to have this happen. This could happen anytime, anywhere.
In December 2013, a westbound train carrying grain derailed in Casselton, North Dakota. One car fell on the eastbound tracks. Two minutes later a crude oil train traveling on the eastbound tracks struck that car. Eighteen tank cars were ruptured releasing 450,000 gallons of Bakken Crude.
First responders to the scene set up a command post a quarter mile from the crash. Almost immediately they had to move further away due to the intense heat. The Department of Transportation’s Emergency Guidebook says emergency responders to a tank car disaster should evacuate everyone within a half mile in all directions. That is for a single-car wreck.
No attention is paid to directions for fighting the fire. In fact, federal guidelines say quite clearly, “In the event of an incident that may involve the release of thousands of gallons of product and ignition of tank cars of crude oil in a unit train, most emergency response organizations will not have the available resources, capabilities or trained personnel to safely and effectively extinguish a fire or contain a spill of this magnitude.”
A report on oil train safety by the Interagency Board, which coordinates local, state, and federal agencies on emergency response, described the situation on the ground during the 2015 Mount Carbon, West Virginia oil train accident:
“During the derailment sequence, two tank cars were initially punctured releasing more than 50,000 gallons of crude oil. Of the 27 tank cars that derailed, 19 cars became involved in the pileup and post-accident pool fire. The pool fire caused thermal tank shell failures on 13 tank cars that otherwise survived the initial accident.”
“Emergency responders at the Mount Carbon, WV incident reported the first thermal failure about 25 minutes after the accident. Within the initial 65 minutes of the incident, at least four tank car failures with large fireball eruptions occurred. The 13th and last thermal failure occurred more than 10 hours after the accident.”
All the precautions in the world will not prevent the inevitable. Sooner or later one of these massive trains carrying highly volatile Bakken Crude is going to come off the rails while transiting a major urban area. There is going to be a massive fire, continued explosions as tank cars cook off, and we are going to be reduced to watching block after block of one of our cities burn to the ground.
Joe has fulfilled his promise. The proponents of the Green New Deal are high-fiving and celebrating. Meanwhile, out there in the real world, the bomb trains are on the move, and the clock is ticking.
https://andmagazine.com/talk/2021/01/26/the-bomb-trains/
Bleve
Trains carry all manner of toxic materials including chlorine gas, which, while not combustible, enhances the combustion of other substances. Chlorine reacts violently with many organic compounds, ammonia, hydrogen, and finely divided metals, causing fire and explosion hazards. And all those aforementioned chemicals are routinely carried on trains.
As to the Keystone Pipeline? It’s already a done deal, completed. Underground pipes carry tons of Canadian crude to Texas refineries each and every day. What’s not understood is that there are many pipelines under construction and many others that merely changed their names. The ban on the Keystone is a sop for the naive.
“The section of pipeline on her property links a pre-existing pipeline hub in Cushing, Okla., to the Texas Gulf Coast. Initially billed as the southern leg of the Keystone XL, the 487-mile segment was rebranded as the “Gulf Coast Project” in 2012, after the larger Keystone XL became a political hot potato.”
“The Obama administration, which opposed the northern part of the Keystone XL, fast-tracked the Gulf Coast Project, and TransCanada (since renamed TC) began running crude through it in 2014.”
https://www.kut.org/energy-environment/2021-01-25/the-keystone-xl-pipeline-is-dead-again-what-does-that-mean-for-texas
A Chlorine bomb explosion…
Mixing chlorine with, say, ammonia, results in a deadly gas and chlorine and other household cleaning agent mixtures can be explosive.
Chlorine is far more dangerous than most other transported chemicals….
The biggest risk for most Americans comes from chlorine gas. Chlorine gas is transported in
huge tanks on trains, on tractor trailers and stored in huge amounts in locations in almost every city and town. If tanks rupture and gas is released, it can produce a toxic cloud that hangs low to the ground. It can eat away at skin on contact, destroy our respiratory tract and burn our lungs to the point where we are no longer able to breathe. It can also burn our eyes and cause blindness. Chlorine gas exposure is one of the biggest chemical risks to communities, yet very people know about it, much less prepared to deal with an emergency.
so now there’s yet another thing to worry about….
When I was a Reserve Deputy back when Christ was a child we had hazmat instruction. The most dangerous accident a cop can investigate is a grocery store shipment. Many people have been sickened or poisoned by the mixing of cleaning agents ruptured in a crash. As some of us know, household cleaning products can be turned into nearly or actual military grade weapons.
Good to know ;0
If I recall correctly, I believe ammonia and chlorine make cyanide gas.
Wow, great post
I’ more worried about these.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbUU_9bOcnM
Welp, he’s going to write an EO to make the internal combustion engine illegal and heating oil for houses illegal so we won’t have to worry about bomb trains. Just freezing to death and not being able to leave our houses.
No need to worry about bomb trains.
A majority of this oil will be transported by BNSF railway with connection points to CSXI and N-S railroads in Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis, Birmingham and New Orleans. Several years ago, Warren Buffet purchased the BNSF. He is also a big democrat contributor.
If you want the answer, follow the money.
Uncle Warren’s pal Charlie Munger provided very large amounts of backing to the various anti-pipeline groups. Buffet also owns a pipeline and natgas operation purchased a few months ago.
Watch and see how fast they would jump on the pipeline were it to suddenly be available for pennies on the Dollar and how fast it would become “safer and more green friendly.”
Please tell me more about stealing and how it’s wrong as it’s happening all around us and killing us and putting us out of work.
“There could just as easily have been a massive explosion in the heart of one of our great cities.”
Most of our ‘great cities’ are blue, so there would be some poetic justice in burning them down with rail car oil.
Oh, don’t worry too much. There are tankers full of poisonous, flammable stuff running around all over the place and have been for many, many decades. There is a LOT more to that train wreck in the unfortunate (targeted as a demonstration project, one can plausibly argue) little Canadian town than will ever be printed in an MSM article. For relative danger to any individual, just driving around in your car is much more likely to result in your injury or death than proximity to a railroad. If you live in a diverse American city, you are in MUCH more danger from some of your fellow citizens than a tank train.
We aren’t too far away from not needing to haul all that oil anyhow. Look for refined product numbers to begin heading way, way down just as soon as it can be conveniently arranged. When they really clamp down on air travel with another lockdown and internal passport (Covid vax proof), and long term demand for that jetfuel decreases, they have to stop refining so much oil. And that is just the start o f exactly what they have been telling us they are going to do.
So trains are NOT what you should be concerned about. Just another diversion from what is really important.
For the record, Canada is building a pipeline from the oil sands to the west coast. They already dealt with the Greens and First Nationers to build it. I suspect Canada all along hedged their bet.
Chinoiserie eh?
Let’s not forget the Bakken oil train derailment in December just north of Bellingham, Washington. While officials do not admit it was sabotage, at least 41 attempts at sabotaging the Burlington Northern tracks in the area occurred in 2020. Note, Bellingham is the home of Western Washington University, a renown hotbed of Progressive thought.
But, I’m sure the eco-freaks had nothing to do with the derailment.
Who needs oil anyway?
The “greens”will have us running on unicorn farts in no time and they don’t pollute.
AOC is the type of girl who would hijack a train in Arizona, and demand to be taken to Havana.
Hey, Stuck – ever seen what happens when pipelines go boom? Here is one from Mejico: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/20-dead-54-injured-ruptured-pipeline-explosion-outside-mexico-city-n960516
While we are at it, don’t live near the coasts (tsunamis you know), near mountains (avalanches, landslides, volcanic eruptions), don’t live in the Midwest (tornadoes), don’t live anywhere adjoining the Gulf of Mejico or much of the eastern seaboard (hurricanes), don’t live in the west coast states (earthquakes), stay out of states north of the Mason Dixon Lin (blizzards), stay out of the Mississippi and Missouri basins (floods), stay away from all big cities (BLM and Antifa rioters), stay away from anywhere with dams (burst) or with overpasses (they collapse).
So, I have finally identified a one half acre piece of land where every citizen can congregate (hope they all fit) that avoids all these potential disasters. For a small fee, I will give you the location.
You are welcome!
You speak ’em with Forked Tongue!
Australia has the most creatures with deadly venom …. more than any other country/continent on earth. Below are the top 30.
Why you no tell us that before we move?
I also heard there are a lot of convicts who live there.
.
Just about everything that walks, crawls or swims can kill you in this damn country. I mean, there are fucking birds and seashells that can kill you, along with myriad spiders, snakes, crocodilians, sharks, marsupials, dingoes, buffalo, wild pigs, etc.
Did I mention snakes? See that number one on your list? Eastern brown snake? They are thick as thieves where I live. You know that 2*4 you used on the raccoon? Well, I have shovels perched all around my house so as to gong snakes (not that I would ever do that as it is illegal, mr policeman, I am really only joking).
Fucking snakes.
Hey, buddy – ever seen what happens when (((hedge funds))) go boom? Here is one from Wall Street:
There are 5-10 stocks they have played apparently to suck in the Masters of the Universe and they are taking it to them big time. Gamestop has a price target of $16 from analysts and it was hundreds today, all from naked shorting and short squeezing. Supposedly being coordinated and carried out on Reddit. One hedge fund has been blown up and bankrupted so far.
Also known as “When Cattle Attack”.
This is why (((they))) oppose White cohesion.
Because when there is cohesion, their schemes crumble.
I put $1K on AMC and I don’t care if I lose it.
One hedge fund has been blown up and bankrupted so far.
THAT is the big story, everything else right now? If that cascade grows momentum….I may go rewatch the Big Short movie tonight…dum dum dum…ominous sounds….
That’s right.
It’s called When Cattle Attack.
This is the one thing that they fear.
Not only Loose Cattle, but Unified, Cohesive Cattle.
Wake up, girl, from your brainwashing.
Dust off that dusty womb and get ready to be lead by Aryan Cattle.
For anyone who is wondering WTF is going on:
ZH has an article about it, too.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/sec-joins-biden-admin-actively-monitoring-option-volatility
i don’t know anon,samuel hydenson sounds awfully non christian to me–
Oil trains, chem trains, hi-speed boondoggles…
I’d be more concerned about empty boxcars sitting on a siding nearby than any of the above.
My training was in Marine Operations which encompasses intermodal transportation, rail and truck.
While train accidents tend to be very dramatic and accidents like those of Lac-Megantic draw a lot of attention, rightly so, accidents tend to be low speed and rail switching accidents. All transportation of dangerous goods has risk involved regardless of method of movement.
By far pipeline IS the safest method of transporting dangerous goods but rail is pretty safe considering the tonnage and miles hauled, compared to the number of serious accidents. Crude, imo, is best shipped via pipe because of the quantities being shipped. Other dangerous cargo’s such as ammonia, chlorine, caustic soda etc etc are not shipped in quantities sufficient to warrant building pipelines so rail generally is the better option, even over trucking.
Heres are charts from 2019 from BC here that shows incidents if interested.
https://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/stats/rail/2019/sser-ssro-2019.html
I wouldn’t get overly excited about rail transport just yet… But thats just me….
Pipelines are not only safer, they are a lot cheaper…Gas around here in AZ went up 30 cents a gallon after this moronic decision…
BTW – I want to give a HUGE round of applause to STUCKY the MAGNIFICENT, and to the Admin, whom we all owe for his dedication to this site and his truth telling.
These regular threads Stuck is posting are a boost to the site, and take the load off our incredible, dedicated Admin, who also does not get nearly the credit he deserves (managing this zoo is hard work). It is simply outstanding work, by both of them, and I thank them very much indeed.
Thank you so very much, gentlemen.
Well, shit … I was gonna go dark starting tomorrow. But, now, how can I??
Ok, seriously … thanks for that wonderful Atta-boy! Thanks very very much. Does my old heart good …..
You are truly a combination of Germanic brilliance and incredible fucking denseness.
Thanks. It’s a gift. And a curse.
llpoh,
i was agreeing w/you till the last line–
gentlemen?i don’t think so–
Tampa – I know for a fact that Stuck and Admin are gentlemen, at least around ladies. Hence why they BOTH managed to marry far, far above their stations. They both somehow managed to get great women to kiss the frog. And no prince was uncovered, that is for sure.
Around here, I get your point though.
I rarely am concerned by those who vote down, but damned if it is not incredibly disappointing that a post thanking Stuck and Admin for all they do gets disapproval. They are the backbone and beating heart of this place, and have been for many years. Even if someone does not like their positions, for whatever reason, I find it disturbing that there are those that do not respect the efforts and skill they bring to this site.
Seriously, whoever voted down, please leave this place. It is disgraceful what you have done.
Thank you again, my good Injun/Aussie friend.
I have come to terms with the down votes. In the above case, it was only two people voting down. Doesn’t bother me … I’m more grateful for the 6 up votes.
Just as Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, there are always two people at war with me, or so it seems. As TampaRed rightfully said above, I haven’t always been a gentleman around here. So, I’ve made enemies … at least a couple of permanent enemies. They see my name, and the down vote is automatic. So be it.
Last year I made a comment … then thought about it for about 5 minutes, and went back and edited it by deleting it. Well, you can’t delete a post, so I just inserted a period … and nothing else . It got 5 down votes!! hahahaha And, btw, I’ve seen that happen to you , and a few others, from time to time. Voting around here is often WEIRD. No big deal.
Well, except one instance, last week. I posted a little personal story in context with the thread …. how my mom saw her mother being raped by a Russian soldier. Deeply personal and highly laden with emotion for me, as you can imagine. That got two thumbs down. Yes, my friend, that one hurt for a while. Real bad.
I seriously considered leaving this place … at least for a while. But I was able to reason it out … why should I let a couple of scummy HATERS drive me away from a place that I love? I won’t!!!
I realized I have far more friends here … people like you … than I have enemies. I will not deprive myself of that just because of a few fools. A free and open and popular forum such as TBP will inevitably draw in kooks&nuts … some stay for a short while, others stay for a long time.
Screw those Haters! If they wanna rain on my parade, go ahead. I’ll just open up my umbrella.
Thanks again.
The differences between a conservative and the triggered snowflakes.
One opens an umbrella the others screech, cry and then resorts to ‘Your’re an idiot or moron.
Don’t sweat the trolls… they are generally anon cowards that don’t have anything substantial to give.
Good info. Thanks.
And who profits? )))Warren Buffett((( and his stake in Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad. Pay back
when searching for a location to wait out the chaos, remember, stay at least 10 miles away from locations that have rail lines, college campuses, military installations, and prisons.