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SCRANTON — A report released Monday by the environmental advocacy group PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center listed the Wilkes-Barre area among the locations throughout the state with neighborhoods most at risk of potential evacuation in the event of an oil train accident.
“Danger Around the Bend, The Threat of Oil Trains in Pennsylvania,” identified areas by Zip Code and ranked eastern Wilkes-Barre in the 18702 sector third behind locales in West Philadelphia and northern Reading. A total of 29,277 people living locally within the half-mile evacuation zone would be affected by derailments of trains carrying highly volatile crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale Formation.
Scranton trailed in fifth place, with 15,426 people affected in its North and West sides. But it climbed a peg higher when ranking cities statewide with the most people living in a potential evacuation area. Philadelphia topped the list of cities, with an affected population of 709,869. Scranton ranked fourth with a 61,004 people. The Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery in south Philadelphia is the largest consumer of Bakken crude.
Lina Blount, eastern Pennsylvania field associate for PennEnvironment, said the report followed an analysis by the U.S. Department of Transportation that predicts 10 derailments a year of trains carrying crude oil or ethanol over the next two decades.
She also referenced the derailment and explosion last month in Mount Carbon, West Virginia of a train carrying Bakken crude oil bound for a Pennsylvania and a letter Gov. Tom Wolf wrote to President Barack Obama asking for transportation safety improvements for trains carrying the Bakken crude.
Blount acknowledged pipelines “are considered safer” than oil trains, but not the solution.
“In the long term we think moving to cleaner fuel is absolutely necessary. In the short term there must be increasing standards both for these oil train lines and pipelines,” she said.
Scranton Fire Department Superintendent Pat DeSarno and his Deputy Chief Al Lucas sat in on Blount’s presentation at City Hall.
The fire officials agreed with Blount that more information from railroads on what passes through the city would help in their planning and preparation for an accident.
This summer the city will be able to send 23 fire fighters to be certified as hazardous materials technicians, DeSarno said.
“We would like to keep our personnel trained as best we can to respond,” he said.
Lucas, the department’s hazmat officer, added the certification will allow firefighters to suit up in protective gear and go into a “hot zone” to turn off a valve on a rail car rather than work at a distance to contain a leak or spill.
But he told Blount that he was responsible for handling whatever came his way.
“There’s a lot more stuff coming through these rail lines every day that concern me as a hazmat responder than crude oil,” Lucas said.
Wilkes-Barre Fire Chief Jay Delaney had not read the report. The department receives no notification from the railroads on what their trains are carrying, he said. Still, its prepared to respond to accidents and can call for help if necessary. “We know how to get the resources,” he said.
Cooperation is necessary because there’s no single fire department in Northeastern Pennsylvania that can handle a million-gallon spill or leak from a derailment, he said.
His department has received training from railroads in the past and one of the captains reached out to them a few weeks ago for another training program, Delaney said.
Ed Greenberg, spokesman for the Association of American Railroads, had not seen the report either, but said safety is “front and center” for the industry.
“Railroads share the public’s deep concern regarding the safe movement of crude oil by rail and remain focused to improve the safety of their operations every day,” Greenberg said.
Ensuring the safe shipment of crude oil by rail “is a complex issue,” he said. Railroads rely on policy makers for rules and on shippers to comply and properly classify tank car contents. “We welcome the efforts of shippers and government agencies to ensure that each shipment of crude oil is labeled correctly as part of this important collaborative approach at making rail transportation even safer,” Greenberg said.
More than 20,000 first responders receive training from railroads on hazmat emergency response. The industry offers crude oil-by-rail training at a special facility in Colorado, he said.
In the big picture more than 2 million freight trains moved across the country last year and 99 percent of the rail cars carrying crude oil arrived safely at their destinations, Greenberg said. In terms of overall rail traffic, crude oil accounted for 1.7 percent last year.