{"id":40353,"date":"2015-07-27T11:34:39","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T16:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=40353"},"modified":"2015-07-27T11:34:39","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T16:34:39","slug":"as-crude-oil-rides-the-rails-to-houston-texas-firefighters-prepare-for-the-worst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2015\/07\/27\/as-crude-oil-rides-the-rails-to-houston-texas-firefighters-prepare-for-the-worst\/","title":{"rendered":"As Crude Oil Rides The Rails To Houston, Texas Firefighters Prepare For The Worst"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_40355\"  class=\"wp-caption module image center\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-40355\" alt=\"crude by rail photo2\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/crude-by-rail-photo2-620x414.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"414\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/crude-by-rail-photo2-620x414.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/crude-by-rail-photo2-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/crude-by-rail-photo2.jpg 1015w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Courtesy of KUHF<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">crude by rail photo2<\/p><\/div>\n<p>There was a rail disaster northwest of Houston last week but you probably didn\u2019t hear about it. That\u2019s because it was staged as part of a training exercise at a Texas firefighting school where a new risk is changing the curriculum.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s scene that\u2019s a nightmare for first responders. A train has left the tracks. Tanker cars have piled on top of one another. Two tankers are full of a flammable liquid. One\u2019s on fire, the other\u2019s leaking. A dozen firefighters are spraying the cars with water and foam.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s hot. It\u2019s hot. It&#8217;s very hot,\u201d says firefighter Adrian Munoz, a volunteer for the Alvin Fire Department. &#8220;It was awesome. It was a great experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/216197941&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" height=\"166\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<!--more-->A great learning experience. Because this isn\u2019t real, it\u2019s all happening on the outskirts of the Texas A &amp; M campus at a place called Disaster City. Dozens of firefighters from around Texas and other states are learning techniques for fighting fires and rescuing people.<\/p>\n<p>Disaster City is like an amusement park where instead of rides, there are catastrophes but where nobody is supposed to get hurt, even though the smoke and flames are real. Golf carts are used to take visitors on tours. The route goes past a parking garage that\u2019s collapsed, a refinery that\u2019s on fire, and the train that has derailed.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_40360\"  class=\"wp-caption module image left\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-40360\" alt=\"Firefighters train to battle a crude oil train wreck. \" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/crude-by-rail-photo6-300x199.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/crude-by-rail-photo6-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/crude-by-rail-photo6-620x412.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/crude-by-rail-photo6.jpg 976w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Courtesy of KUHF<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Firefighters train to battle a crude oil train wreck.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Near the rail accident is a tent where the lecture part of the class is held. The tent has a big white sign with red letters that say \u201cCrude by Rail.\u201d It\u2019s a new program A&amp;M just started a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe built this project because there is so much interest out there and there\u2019s so many people wanting a rail class,\u201d says Dennis St. John, a senior director of these firefighting classes.<\/p>\n<p>Why all the interest? We duck under the tent where students are listening to an instructor, Mike Hunt.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe majority of us have railroads coming through our communities. And crude is really getting to be a commodity that\u2019s going all over the country because of the boom in the oil business,\u201d Hunt tells a group of students.<\/p>\n<p>Hunt is talking about how the United States is producing so much oil now in places like North Dakota and Texas that there aren\u2019t enough pipelines to get it to refineries along the Gulf Coast. So it\u2019s coming by rail.<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"related-content alignright\"><h4 class=\"related-header\">Related<\/h4><div class=\"links\"><h5>Posts<\/h5><ul><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/09\/04\/finding-land-for-boom-in-freight-trains\/\">Finding Land For Boom In Freight Trains<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2015\/01\/19\/from-pipeline-to-pump-how-gasoline-gets-to-your-car\/\">From Pipeline to Pump, How Gasoline Gets to Your Car<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2013\/11\/15\/looking-at-pipeline-safety-after-the-chevron-gas-line-explosion\/\">Looking at Pipeline Safety After the Chevron Gas Line Explosion<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/div><div class=\"topics\"><h5>Topics<\/h5><p class=\"topic\"><a href=\"\"><\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div>Hundreds of tank cars every week carry crude through Houston, according to state data. But to get to Houston\u2019s refineries, the trains have to pass through much smaller communities. The kind of towns most of these firefighters are from.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou get a call out in the middle of the night and they say there\u2019s a train derailment,\u201d instructor Hunt tells the class. \u201cWhat are some of the first things you\u2019re going to do? You\u2019re gonna call for mutual aid.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They may need to call for help because containing crude fires and spills can a big challenge for a small town department. Heightening the safety concern is the type of crude many of the tankers carry. The crude coming from North Dakota is a lighter variety that can burn more easily and has been involved in fiery accidents this year in Illinois and West Virginia.<\/p>\n<p>Community activists have warned that not nearly enough is being done in Texas to prepare. City of Houston officials refused our multiple requests for interviews. But one major rail line, BNSF, says it\u2019s training firefighters in communities along crude-by-rail routes and is staging specialized equipment at spots including in Houston and north of Austin.<\/p>\n<p>A&amp;M\u2019s Dennis St. John says that\u2019s all good but that crude isn\u2019t uniquely dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen they have an incident it\u2019s big. So there\u2019s a lot more crude being moved by rail so there\u2019s lots more incidents. But as far as dealing with it and the hazards, it\u2019s not worse than any other material,\u201d St. John told News 88.7.<\/p>\n<p>The firefighter from Alvin, Adrian Munoz, says they\u2019ve already had one \u201creal\u201d incident in his town involving a train hauling crude but it was only the engine car that caught fire.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnything to prepare us for that, luckily for us it was just the engine that was on fire, but if it had gotten out of hand, this right here properly trains you for that,\u201d said Munoz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There was a rail disaster northwest of Houston last week but you probably didn\u2019t hear about it. That\u2019s because it was staged as part of a training exercise at a Texas firefighting school where a new risk is changing the curriculum. It\u2019s scene that\u2019s a nightmare for first responders. A train has left the tracks. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40353"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40365,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40353\/revisions\/40365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}