From CBSNews.com
March 6, 2015: A freight train loaded with crude oil derailed in northern Illinois, bursting into flames and prompting officials to suggest that everyone with 1 mile evacuate, authorities said.
“BNSF is also taking precautionary measures to protect the waterways in the area and will conduct air quality monitoring,” the railroad added.
The derailment comes amid increased public concern about the safety of shipping crude by train.
According to the Association of American Railroads, oil shipments by rail jumped from 9,500 carloads in 2008 to 500,000 in 2014, driven by a boom in the Bakken oil patch of North Dakota and Montana, where pipeline limitations force 70 percent of the crude to move by train.
A train carrying Bakken crude crashed in a Quebec town in 2013, killing 47 people. That same year, another crash sent flames shooting into the sky in North Dakota. Last year, it happened in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Last month, a train carrying 3 million gallons of North Dakota crude derailed in a West Virginia snowstorm, shooting fireballs into the sky, leaking oil into a river tributary and forcing hundreds of families to evacuate.
So somebody explain to me how oil pipelines are worse for the environment and more dangerous to the population than hauling crude oil in trains. In a three week period, two oil trains derail, crash and burn. I’m not a Global Warming expert, but I think the diesel engines pulling those 500,000 train cars of oil are putting out more greenhouse gases than a pipeline. The fires that occur from the derailments aren’t helping either.