Government might drop rail warnings

[locomutt]

Firefighters prefer labels despite possible terror risk

This is an article on the very front page of the Courier - Journal from this
morning. Here's the link for the article.

http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2004/09/05/A1-train0905-10632.html

Just thought those of you who are engineers and current/former firefighters
would find this interesting. Paula (cherokee woman) pointed out the
article to me. She got to the paper before I did this morning.

[Anonymous]

I'd like to see the article, but the link isn't working...

LC

[JoeKoh]

Mark
you are correct.have a friend at work who is a firefighter and used some of the trains articles for his research project.It would delay the repsonse time until the firefighters know what they are dealing with.I try to watch for defects on trains when I can.
stay safe
Joe

[Anonymous]

That is about as stupid as that guy who wanted to change all the RR's to ten foot guage-

D'uh

I want this said now- this is like Death- Stupid, and When somehting screws up, i'll be here to laugh, and say I told you so-

Mark that down in your book FEDS-

[CShaveRR]

I seldom use the placards in my observations any more. All I need is the big, bold lettering toward the right end of the sides. It's a lot easier than looking up the number (though I must admit that I know a few of those commodity numbers from memory).

It is also fairly easy for a person who knows what he's looking at to distingui***he type of tank cars used for carrying pressurized commodities from those carrying liquids, or even to distinguish a chlorine tank from an LP gas tank (size does matter!). I haven't put my finger on exactly what makes an acid tank car look different from a corn-syrup car or a molten sulfur car (all of which can be about the same size), but I know that I could tell them all apart.

The color-coded placards (assuming one can see them in the wake of a disaster involving the car!) were definitely an advance in emergency-response preparedness.
Before that, all placards were white or off-white cardboard, with a bunch of small print and the word "Danger" (or "Dangerous"--it's been a while) in red. Not much help there.

I guess my point is that I haven't received more than the limited hazmat training that's required of all railroad employees. Because I've trained myself to make a few of these observations, I can do better than your typical employee in figuring out these cars. So could any terrorist who wanted to take the time to study such things. He won't need the placards. But somebody dealing with the aftermath might...so I'd leave them there.

[jeaton]

OMG, are these folks insane? I'd be willing to bet the farm that a rational analysis would show that removal of the placards would increase the risk of casualties to safety responders by factor far greater than the possible reduction in casualties that might be caused by a terrorist checking out the placards.

If a terrorist is too dumb to locate car contents from other sources, he is probably too dumb to read the placards.

If I read correctly, the "White House" asked for a second look at this idea. Our motto: Simple solutions for simple minds."

[Anonymous]

It makes perfectly logical sense to me. Washington does everything so well. 8^@

[Anonymous]

This whole "national security" thing is blown way out of proportion! Today, we are at yellow alert, no! wait! it's orange. What are we supposed to do any different on the day it's yellow vs. orange??

Remove the placards? Lets hide the "fire extinguisher" label too, sheeee***hey might use that dry chemical on you! Paranoid bobble heads, all of them!

[morseman]

I may be wrong but are these the square placards that are the same as the ones on the trucks on our highways? .........I believe these square placards were designed by the United Nations and are used world-wide on trucks and trains ????????

[Anonymous]

Sorry but thats about the dummist thing I've ever heard of. I'm supposed to make an initial attack on a tank, hopper or box car with out having a DOT placard!!!???? That scares the hell out of me. If the locomotives are involved in the collision, derailment or (God forbid ) explosion, how are my officers going to find the manifest to determine the contents so we can take appropriate measures.

Sorry but the Feds need to get their heads out of their butts. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!![banghead][soapbox]

[tree68]

"Paranoia strikes deep.
Into your life it will creep...."

Now, if some chemical firm had suggested the same thing for some reason other than "homeland security", the Feds would come down on them SO hard...

By the way - if you have any interest in this, take the time to read the Feds document http://hazmat.dot.gov/69fr-50987.pdf and send comments.

[Anonymous]

OK, I've read the article. It does seem like an overreaction to questionable threats.

I do think that under the right circumstances a train could be a very dangerous weapon.

LC

[Overmod]

The issue of whether or not a train IS a dangerous weapon isn't as important, imho, as the perception of it being a weapon in a terrorist's mind. (A mind that perhaps by definition is lacking in some aspects of normal rationality...)

And yes, the presence of certain kinds of placards would be just the sort of thing that a depressingly large variety of amateur terrorists... dare I mention the folks who want to jam train radios or short-circuit block signals? ... would find indicative of good targets for their "attention".

Behind the scenes, OREIS is promising to give emergency response agencies almost immediate knowledge, car by car, of hazardous materials and the methods that are best used to deal with them... within a few seconds or minutes of the incident itself, or in other words before the firefighters are down the pole, let alone by the time the apparatus arrives at the incident scene...

There may be some initial screwup or 'missed switches' in the way the data get onto the computer system, or are retrieved or coordinated by the agencies on the spot. But this is something that simple technology can effectively address. I speak with some authority on this point.

Taking the placards off the cars themselves would be like removing the labels from the chemicals under your sink... if you had a master database that could identify what's in the bottles as soon as you asked. Note how much more difficult it would be for some amateur with a copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook to make explosives or gas in such a situation... they'd have to start pulling off caps, sniffing, and testing.

A very well-established principle of security is: If nobody knows something is important in the first place, they won't try to steal it or tamper with it. To me, that applies in this sort of situation.

Now, a case could be made that civilians should be able to tell if something that derails 'in their backyard' is dangerous. How many civilians know what the placards mean, or what the correct way to deal with leaking contents might be?

[ericsp]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jeaton

OMG, are these folks insane?

No. The idea probably came from some beaucrat. Maybe in response to a letter from a citizen. It is probably a derective from someone who has worked in the government or politics all of his/her life and does not know about such matters to some who does know more to look into it. It sounds like SOP for government, regardless of who is in power.

Overmod has some good points.

Railroads can send information about haz-mat shipments to jurisdictions that the train will go through. This could be printed on the printout the responding fire engine/truck companies get. The problem would be what if a car goes out on the wrong train. I was given a train consist list a few years ago by a conductor. Some of the cars listed were not on the train.

Of course haz-mat placards are not perfect either. I have seen tankcars with half of the placards missing, cars placarded for LPG and stenciled Gasoline, and a tankcar heading for a fertilizer plant placarded for MTBE.

I am not advocating either method. I do not know which way is better. I am just pointing some things out.

[daveklepper]

This argument brings politics into railroading, but I don't see any objections --so far. Can I please start a thread on the questions of the importance of freight railroading to NATIONAL DEFENCE and the importance of passenger railroading, yes Amtrak also?
Or is this too political?

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by tree68

"Paranoia strikes deep.
Into your life it will creep...."

Now, if some chemical firm had suggested the same thing for some reason other than "homeland security", the Feds would come down on them SO hard...

By the way - if you have any interest in this, take the time to read the Feds document http://hazmat.dot.gov/69fr-50987.pdf and send comments.

Larry- you got me pulling my hair our-

Where is that song from?

[Overmod]

I waited, but nobody answered him:

Buffalo Springfield (named after the gun, btw). The name of the song is "For What It's Worth" but I don't think one person in a thousand who remembers the song knows that.

Paranoia strikes deep,
Into your heart it will creep
Starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the Man come and take you away
You better stop -- hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's goin' down...

[Hugh Jampton]

When we had the IRA blowing up stuff a few years ago things went a bit nuts.. Sad thing is, you ain't seen nothin yet.. You'll be surprised at what the beurocrats can come up with.

[dknelson]

Meanwhile a guy is running for US senate here in Wisconsin with a TV ad about the tough stance he will take towards homeland security and terrorists -- his TV ad shows a guy taking pictures of .... trains! And talking on a cell phone!
Dave Nelson

[tree68]

QUOTE: Originally posted by kevinstheRRman


Larry- you got me pulling my hair our-

Where is that song from?

Thanks to Overmod for covering that for me - wasn't online after I posted it until just now.

Actually, the Buffalo Springfield name came from a steamroller the group saw in Hollywood, although the Springfield was a popular rifle...

For those who may not have heard the song, it remains strangely pertinent, nearly 40 years after it was written:

For What It's Worth
Stephen Stills, 1966

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, now, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

[tree68]

QUOTE: Originally posted by ericsp


Railroads can send information about haz-mat shipments to jurisdictions that the train will go through. This could be printed on the printout the responding fire engine/truck companies get. The problem would be what if a car goes out on the wrong train. I was given a train consist list a few years ago by a conductor. Some of the cars listed were not on the train.

Alas, I don't have a mobile data terminal in my personal pickup (which suddenly becomes a fire response vehicle when we are dispatched to a call). With something like 90% of the country (land area, not population) receiving their fire protection from volunteers, many of whom are holding pancake breakfasts to buy a "new" used fire engine, the information they need will be a long time coming. Central fire/EMS/police dispatch centers, already understaffed and overworked, don't want or need another teletype to watch.

If someone wants to fund the data network that will be needed to get that information to the people who need it (and there are plenty), then let's have it. I think such a network will fail a cost/benefit/risk analysis. And we might as well throw out the ERG "Orange Book." It's only good for the first 10-15 minutes, and we'll be that long just getting the information.

[jeaton]

Yesterday I had the privelege of watching an entire "loose" car train on the west end of the CSX/NS Chicago Line. Actually twice. Once when I overtook and passed the train, and then again while I was stopped in a traffic jam and the train passed me.

I realized then that placards aren't really needed!! Most of the tanks on the train had something in bold letters saying "liquidfied petroleum gas" or "corn oil" or words like that. Obviously, any HIGHLY TRAINED emergency responder would know that a leaking corn oil car would be extremly dangerous with the potential for arterial blockage, heart attack and stroke.

I took a quick look at the rule proposal, and appearantly the printing could be replace by transponder chips, with readers for the chips placed in the hands of only the quarter of a million people with an ABSOLUTE need to know the contents of the car. No doubt the final rule will specify precise security measures for the readers, with penalties for leaving the readers in the back seat of an unlocked car, and all that.

That part of the proposed rule seems to be designed to frustrate the proffesional terrorist. To deal with the "amateur" who might take his soon to be legal again AK-45, and go tank car hunting, it is proposed to strengthing the cars. I don't know for sure, but I think there are no current orders for new tanks or battleships, so the supply of armour plate must be pretty good. Or at least, it will provide a nice new market for armour plate manufacturers.

Any more good ideas out there?

Jay

[Overmod]

I understand that the OREIS initiative is planning exactly this sort of local-level detail, including subsidized 'network' funding. There ought to be plenty of funding to accompli***his, particularly when judicious use of the "T-word" is involved (terror). Homeland Security probably wastes more in a week, fribbling around, than would be required to deploy OREIS information effectively to every small group in the nation.

The logical 'point of contact' in areas with cell coverage is via something like 3G wireless (with subsidy for groups, such as firefighters, with need), with the alternative being data pagers in those vast areas where there is no effective cell service yet. Neither of these would be particularly difficult to run, although devices with larger screens and better 'navigation' would be particularly valuable.

"Cheap" alternative is telephone modems to computer equipment, which leaves open the question of how the information gets to volunteers before they 'roll'. Seems to me that once the information is printed at an operations center, anybody on the radio who can read would be able to give people the information... ASSuming it's in the right kind of formats to do this. (It remains to be seen how quickly the OREIS system develops the initial formats, and the 'local' computer formats that can translate this information into USEFUL printed reports -- to me, this is the most critical part of an effective alert system after assuring the integrity and completeness of the information)

Either the ERG handbook or the larger UN Orange Book to which it refers don't factor into this discussion at all; you either have them on hand to consult or you don't, and you've already been trained about how to use them effectively. They're about as useful in emergency situations as the operating manuals for nuclear power plants. (Or for turbojet aircraft...) Any emergency alert system that purports to replace placarding would have to provide correct lading information either (1) well ahead of your arrival at the site, or (2) within a few seconds after you make an interactive response. It's up to the actual emergency response community to determine what's meaningful and what isn't, and keep the whiz kids doing the OREIS implementation on track. (I don't mean that as an excuse -- the only people who really know how an emergency response system SHOULD run are the people who know about meaningful response to emergencies. And an early, if not first, step in agile systems development is to ASK PEOPLE IN THE KNOW WHAT THEY WANT, not just what someone thinks they need.)

I concur that there's little reason why 911 call centers should be given copies of the Orange Book and a new fancy teletype, and 5 minutes of training via e-mails telling them how to look up the codes. Unfortunately, that WOULD be a low-cost implementation strategy with reasonable 'default' coverage. It would be nice to get 'funded mandates' to put additional personnel in these centers with the explicit understanding they're for emergency hazmat response... wouldn't it?

[Overmod]

Oh yeah, while I'm at it, I might as well shill for the Government a bit:

ALL YOU EMERGENCY RESPONDERS OUT THERE: Is this:

http://www.tc.gc.ca/canutec/erg_gmu/erg2000_menu.htm

a useful interface, and resource, for you to have or be able to access? It would not be too difficult to have the govt. work up a WAP (wireless access protocol) version of this that could work over handheld devices... or develop a 'spoken' version that would respond to simple clicks or voice prompting. But they won't know to do anything unless you tell them.

I believe there's an e-mail response link in that page; if not, I can give you the direct naepa link for comments on ERG2000.

jeaton, the problem with RFID or other 'smart tags' is that if for any reason you don't have the reader or it doesn't work right, the information might as well be on the dark side of the moon. One reason this is *particularly* bad is that, if you've amended your emergency response procedures to be dependent on some of this information -- and then you suddenly can't get it -- you can be in far more trouble than if you had to use common sense. Not knocking emergency responders... this is basic knowledge of complex "user-interface" situations from over 100 years' worth of scientific investigation.

That isn't to say that RFID tags and information shouldn't be used -- just that they are NOT a replacement for an independently-accessible (and preferably IP-based, e.g. Web-compatible) information system that provides 'human-comprehensible' output on relatively simple devices. Like telephones and cheap alphanumeric pagers.

As Larry said -- are you gonna legislate that all emergency responders MUST carry their RFID readers at all times, keep them charged up, and test to ensure they work properly? (and even then, can you guarantee the thing will actually work as advertised even when the RFID tag has been bashed in a rollover and is under 10 feet of coal?...)

[dekemd]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jeaton

That part of the proposed rule seems to be designed to frustrate the proffesional terrorist. To deal with the "amateur" who might take his soon to be legal again AK-45, and go tank car hunting, it is proposed to strengthing the cars. I don't know for sure, but I think there are no current orders for new tanks or battleships, so the supply of armour plate must be pretty good. Or at least, it will provide a nice new market for armour plate manufacturers.

Any more good ideas out there?

Jay

Jay,
That would be an AK47 not 45. It is not illegal to own a AK47, except in a few states like California. You can't have one with a flash suppressor, collapsible stock, or a bayonet lug, but the basic rifle is not illegal. As for using them to shoot train cars, a standard 30-06 deer rifle has twice the power of an AK47 round and would be much better at punching holes in rail cars. Unless you get into the big calibre guns you would have to be within a couple of hundred yards to put a bullet through a tank car. That's pretty close considering the explosion or hazmat release that might occur.

Being in law enforcement, I have been in on assessing risks locally. There are much more tempting targets for terrorists than the rail system. A hazmat release from a few rail cars, even somewhere like Chicago isn't likely to kill that many people. There are some places in the US that can be struck fairly easily that would kill 10000 to 20000 or more in a single attack. I won't give specifics, but the potential is there. The problem is that the Feds and people in charge of these facilities don't seem to care.

Most of the stupid ideas on Homeland Security, like removing placards, come from bureaucrats and politicians. They are most concened with getting re-elected and making themselves look good. They come up with some idea that sounds good initially, but they don't think through the consequences. Or they come up with something to try and further their pet cause that is not related with the problem at hand and pass it off as a homeland security problem. For example: The 9/11 hi-jackers used box cutters to take over the planes. Two days after the attacks, certain members of congress called for tougher GUN laws saying they were necessary to prevent future attacks. Names have been withheld to protect the stupid.

Most of this stuff is not just from the White House. It's coming from the Republicans and the Democrats. There are some provisions in the Patriot Act, that are downright scary, and most people have no clue that these provisions are there. There is no way you are going to stop a determined terrorist. Even if we went to an Orson Wells's type society, I don't think you could completely eliminate the threat.

Derrick

[Overmod]

I think you don't mean Orson Welles, or even H.G. Wells ... you mean George Orwell, right?

[tree68]

On the topic of RFID and readers. I'm assuming that the equipment would be COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf), which means a terrorist would probably have one up and working before I was issued mine....

[dekemd]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Overmod

I think you don't mean Orson Welles, or even H.G. Wells ... you mean George Orwell, right?

Overmod, thanks for the correction. Orson, Orwell, I was getting my Or's confused.

Derrick

[ericsp]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jeaton
[brI realized then that placards aren't really needed!! Most of the tanks on the train had something in bold letters saying "liquidfied petroleum gas" or "corn oil" or words like that. Obviously, any HIGHLY TRAINED emergency responder would know that a leaking corn oil car would be extremly dangerous with the potential for arterial blockage, heart attack and stroke.

Not all haz-mat tankcars are stencilled.

[rich747us]

I would say that the greater risk in removing the placards from HAZMAT shipments is to the lives of firefighters and rescue workers. These al-Qaeda idiots are so brainwashed, insane, posessed, etc. that they will reak havoc regardless if they can find a HAZMAT car or not. This latest (extravagant) ploy to reduced the risk of a terrorist act seems rather desparate if you ask me.