When the Obama administration imposed new safety rules on oil trains last week, the railroad industry said its goal was to have zero accidents in the future.
It took only a few days to miss that difficult target.
A BNSF train hauling 109 tank cars derailed in rural North Dakota at 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, May 6, and 10 of the cars caught fire, sending flames shooting into the sky, state authorities said. No injuries were reported, but about a dozen residents of the nearby town of Heimdal, about 80 miles south of the Canadian border, were evacuated, Wells County Emergency Manager Tammy Roehrich said in an interview
About two dozen accidents involving trains hauling crude have occurred across the U.S. since 2013, and several more in Canada. All are related to booming petroleum production from Texas to North Dakota and Alberta. Crude shipments by rail have skyrocketed, from 29,605 cars in 2010 to 493,126 in 2014, but the growth rate appears to have flattened out over the last 12 months.
It took only a few days to miss that difficult target.
A BNSF train hauling 109 tank cars derailed in rural North Dakota at 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, May 6, and 10 of the cars caught fire, sending flames shooting into the sky, state authorities said. No injuries were reported, but about a dozen residents of the nearby town of Heimdal, about 80 miles south of the Canadian border, were evacuated, Wells County Emergency Manager Tammy Roehrich said in an interview
About two dozen accidents involving trains hauling crude have occurred across the U.S. since 2013, and several more in Canada. All are related to booming petroleum production from Texas to North Dakota and Alberta. Crude shipments by rail have skyrocketed, from 29,605 cars in 2010 to 493,126 in 2014, but the growth rate appears to have flattened out over the last 12 months.