Federal officials issued a safety alert Thursday to the public and rescue teams about oil that's being shipped by trains across the United States and Canada, the Houston Chronicle reported.
The U.S. Department of Transportation said the crude oil being shipped from the Bakken oil shale patch in North Dakota and Montana is more flammable than regular types of oil. The warning was prompted by a series of gigantic explosions triggered when an oil train derailed close to Casselton, North Dakota on Monday, the Houston Chronicle reported. Several of the train's 10 cars were carrying crude oil.
The smoke from the flames was so toxic that residents in Cass County were told to evacuate their homes. There were no injuries.
Tests were conducted on the Bakken oil to determine how harmful it was, Jeannie Shiffer, from the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration, told the Houston Chronicle. The initial results prompted the safety alert.
Shiffer told the Chronicle that knowing how explosive the oil can be will help improve safety measures when the oil is transported.
"The material must be properly classified at the beginning of the process," she said. "That determines everything."
Safety officials will have to find a better way to transport crude oil soon. In recent years, the U.S. has relied less and less on foreign oil and more on oil from the Bakken, not to mention the jobs it also brought to the area, the Houston Chronicle reported.
The issue is that companies rely the most on unsafe trains to transport oil. A July 2013 train derailment in Quebec that involved crude oil killed 47 people.
Fred Miller, a rail safety consultant in Virginia, told the Houston Chronicle that knowledge of the dangers of crude oil is especially important for the first responders and firefighters who manage explosions like the one on Monday.
But even when safety alerts are issued, the message still doesn't reach the other counties and towns around the nation that have an increase in crude oil trains, Miller told the Houston Chronicle.
