WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congressman Evan Jenkins says rules aimed at improving the hauling of Bakkan crude on the railroad need to be tightened. He says new rules that would do that have stalled over the last four to five years.
“They have been working their way through various government agencies,” said Jenkins. “We’re sitting here in 2015, over four years and counting, and rail car standards have not been promulgated and finalized.”
In the wake of the Feb. 16 Mount Carbon derailment and explosion, Jenkins is lighting a fire of his own in Washington to get the rules moving. He and other members of Congress have signed onto a letter to various state agencies calling for the rules to be finalized and brought before them. He said the time it has taken to get those in place has taken far too long.
“This is unacceptable,” he said. “We need standards that if this crude is transported it is transported in a safe way.”
Jenkins visited the crash site in Fayette County and shuddered at what he saw. The accident destroyed one house, but Jenkins said another 100 yards further down the track and dozens of homes would have been in the blast zone. Five miles earlier the doomed train was passing the dorms at WVU Tech.
“This could have happened almost anywhere,” Jenkins said. “This did not appear to be such a unique set of circumstances that anybody said, ‘Wow that will never happen again.'”
Jenkins said there’s been no hit at this point what caused the rail accident in West Virginia, but he’s confident investigators will find the cause eventually. He said it’s up to the experts to create laws and require better standards on the tanker cars to haul the much more combustible and explosive crude oil from the northern plains. He is confident there will be a next time and fears it may be a far more deadly. He hopes changes to the law will prevent a tragedy down the road.