Its priority is to bring people home safe to Mosier, where 16 of 96 tank cars train derailed Friday and started a fire in four of the cars.
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Shipments through the Columbia River Gorge have dramatically increased in recent years and oil companies have proposed building the largest oil-by-rail terminal in the country 70 miles downstream from Mosier, at the the Port of Vancouver.
At an emergency meeting Sunday afternoon, the council approved a motion demanding that oil be remo.
Some industry experts say they’re skeptical that a fastener alone could be the cause of a derailment that size. As a precaution, she said, operating trains will only pass through the area at speeds of 10 miles per hour.
The derailment sparked a fire that led to mandatory evacuations and damaged essential city services.
“The rationale that was explained to me by the Union Pacific fire personnel is that the metal is too hot, and the foam will land on the white-hot metal and evaporate without any suppression effect”, he said. “We have done our best to reroute what we can, but unfortunately there is just a lot of people that are waiting for their goods”.
Russ said the only other option to move trains through a rail line to the south, but that would be expensive in both time and money.
Union Pacific has not released an estimate of how many barrels were spilled but the company told Reuters that most of the oil has either been contained or was burned up by the fire. She said the railroad plans to resume normal operations soon.
The company’s announcement came just minutes after Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, Sens.
Department of Ecology response manager David Byers said Monday that sewer pipes near the railroad tracks were damaged after Friday’s fiery train derailment.
It’s anything but normal there, but for Union Pacific, which operated the train in Friday’s derailment, business continues. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, as well as Reps.
While Mosier city officials, state and D.C. lawmakers call for a halt to all trains hauling Bakken crude oil following the derailment in Mosier last week, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation has expressed its deep concern as well. “I think it’s insane”, Appleton told OPB.
Still, some who live in the gorge are less convinced any assurances can make oil trains safe.
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“I looked outside and there was black and white smoke blowing across the sky, and I could hear the flames”, said Mosier resident Dan Hoffman, 32, whose house is about 100 meters (328 ft) from the derailment. (This map shows some rail lines that transport oil, as well as sites where accidents have occurred.) In 2014, national railroad operators agreed to eight voluntary measures to lower the risk of derailments, including reducing speed in some cities and increasing inspections, but communities still aren’t getting the information they would need to effectively respond to disasters, let alone prevent them.
