The explosion was so powerful it could be felt three miles away. Workman were trying to transfer the propane from one tank car to trucks when it blew up and set off the blast in the ore tank car. Three blocks of the city of waverly were badly damaged by this afternoons explosions. Waverly has 6,000 people. They were evacuated today. The entire city of waverly, tennessee, all 6,000 residents, had to be evacuated because of that explosion. That rail car explosion ultimately killed 16 people, including waverlys police chief and waverlys fire chief. That was february 24th, 1978. And then two days later, it happened again. Good evening. In a little more than 48 hours, there have been three railroad tac Car Accidents in southeastern United States. Before dawn this morning, another derailment in youngstown, florida, punctured a tank car, sending chlorine gas into the air and killing at least eight people. More than 60 people are in the hospital, some of them in critical condition. Ken lee jones reports from florida. Reporter the train which derailed this time was a southbound freight of the atlanta and st. Andrews bay railroad. A small line which operates between dothan, alabama, and panama city, florida. A tank car carrying poisonous chlorine gas was ruptured in the wreck. A deadly mist of gas spread from the tank car. Motorists who were driving at night alongside the tracks were caught by surprise. Most of the victim who is died were found in their cars along u. S. Highway 231. People killed by poison gas, like they were on a battlefield in world war i or something instead of just driving their cars along a u. S. Highway. Amazing. After that, rail car accident in florida, and another one that same day in tennessee. And the other one that happened in waverly, tennessee, two days before that. Federal investigators starting to look into whether this was maybe more than a coincidence. Maybe there was some sort of systemic problem at hand. One after another, around the country, trains have been running off the tracks, turning over and often releasing from their ruptured tank cars chemicals of one kind or another, some of them dangerous. It seems to be an almost daily or weekly routine and there was a congressional hearing about this today. During that hearing in 1978, dozens of witnesses testified about these rail cars that seem to be blowing up, one after the other, all over the country. The hearing included local mayors, local Emergency Response personnel, executives from the railroad companies, as well as officials from the ntsb, the National Transportation safety board. Thats the federal agency thats called into investigate these sorts of accidents when they happen. And what they found, and what they testified about that day is that it was not just a coincidence that all of these tanker cars carrying toxic and hazardous chemicals were exploding all around the country. There was a problem, they said. And it was the tanker cars themselves. There are 20,000 socalled jumbo tank cars in use, but only a few carry the latest Safety Equipment intended to prevent tank cars from breaking open. The railroads claim it costs too much and takes too long to install. The safety board and the demonstration outside the hearing room installed the devices in a tank car mockup in less than 30 minutes. The cost of converting all 20,000 Railroad Tank Cars in the country with this new safety device could run as high as 30 million to 35 million. And according to the National Transportation safety board, the cost of not converting in terms of lives and property lost, could be much higher. The Railroad Cars that were in use at that time, the ones that were transporting things like propane and chlorine gas all over the country, these tanker cars that were exploding, they were exploding in part because their sells were too thin and they could be easily punctured when they were bumped or knocked or when they flipped over in a crash. After that string of disasters in the 1970s, those tanker cars got an upgrade, thanks to that public prodding and that public demonstration publicity stunt from the ntsb. Those tanker cars were upgraded with shields and insulation and safety things that kept them in tact so pieces wouldnt fly off and puncture other cars. But those were specifically done for tanker cars that were pressurized. Pressurized cars that were hauling Hazardous Materials around the country, and incidentally, had been blowing up like ford pintos. The pressurized cars got upgraded. As for the nonpressurized cars, they didnt get upgraded. And maybe that was fine when they were carrying around nonhazardous stuff like corn syrup or vegetable oil. But there was no rule in place saying that those lesssafe nonpressurized cars had no only carry benign, safe stuff. They were also allowed to carry hazardous stuff, like, say, nitric acid. Take it away, reporter chris wallace. A cloud of poisonous gas forces thousands of people in denver to evacuate their homes. The emergency started early this morning in a railroad yard, north of downtown denver. A tank car with 20,000 gallons of nitric acid was ruptured in a freak switching accident. When the acid hit the air, an orange cloud of nitric dioxide gas started forming. Air raid sirens were used to alert people. That was april, 1983, in denver, colorado. Very scary. After that accident, the ntsb concluded that had that specific kind of rail car been one of the upgraded one, the tank car probably would not have been punctured and the release of the material probably would not have occurred. A year after that disaster, the same kind of tank car derailed and exploded in marshvale, north carolina. That destroyed three buildings and led to the evacuation of more than 2,000 people. A year after that, another train derailment, this time in south carolina. A Freight Train derailed and one of the cars burst into flames, forcing the evacuation of more than a dozen homes in the area. Then it was helena, montana. Rail cars loaded with Hydrogen Peroxide exploded and burst into flames after an unattended train rolled into a hill and slammed into another locomotive at a rail yard nearby. 2,000 people were ordered out of their homes. The Hydrogen Peroxide explosion in helena blew out nearly all the windows at a nearby college. Each of these individual accidents involved human error or mechanical failure to some degree, in terms o of what caused the initial derailment. But the explosions that happened after the derailments and the spread of those toxic chemicals, in all of those cases, the culprit seemed to be this really simple thing, this outdated rail car. And the ntsb was screaming about it at the top of its lungs, screaming that this needed to be addressed. That these cars needed t eed to fixed, needed to be made more puncture resistant so this stopped happening. But the ntsb cannot force that to happen. They just make safety recommendations. Finally, in july 1981, the ntsb, which had been investigating all these accidents, finally they wrote the federal Railroad Administration in 1991 and said, we veil have a problem here. These tank cars that are now carrying all sorts of Hazardous Material around the country, these cars that never got upgrades like the pressurized cars did, they are providing, quote, inadequate protection, and that has been, quote, evident for many years now. That was july 1st, 1991. And this was two weeks later. A large stretch of the Sacramento River was closed to fishermen today and it may be years before its back to normal, all because of a devastating accident. On july 14th, seven cars from a southern pacific train went off the tracks into the river. One car spilled over 19,000 gallons of weed killer. By the next morning, a green, poisonous slime began a 45mile killing journey. As he watches trains pass by, roy hale thinks its time to put pressure on railroads, chemical companies, and the government. Maybe we ought to look at whats moving through our cities. And how that stuff is protected and how those tanks are made. Maybe we ought to start looking at how those tanks are made. Thats an excellent idea. And that is what the ntsb, for decades, had been asking, pleaded with the federal government to do. Because its clear that the industry apparently was not going to do it themselves. Couldnt somebody make them do it . This past january, the news Agency Mcclatchy rounded up all these kind of tank Car Accidents. There are a ton of these examples, including one that shut down the holland tunnel in new york city for nearly two days. And this one specific model of rail cars, essentially, the common denominator in all of these accidents. And there are tens of thousands of these rail cars out there right now. After that type of rail car kept exploding while transporting things like Hydrogen Peroxide and methanol, about ten years ago, these cars started to be used in really large numbers to move ethanol, the plantbased fuel thats often blended into gasoline. Ethanol got a big boost in the mid2000s, which meant a lot more was being moved around the country. These unsafe cars were the cars that did the lions share of that work. And ethanol is pretty explosive. Thats the whole point of why you can mix it into fuel. And filling tens of thousands of these pronetoexplode soda can rail cars, filling them full of ethanol, that did nothing to stop our nations explosion problem. After a 2006 derailment and an explosion outside of pittsburgh, the ntsb said, again, hey, these tanker cars are a problem. After a 2009 derailment and explosion in illinois, that one killed a driver, who was just waiting at a Railroad Crossing for the train to pass. The ntsb again cited the deficiencies of this one specific tanker car as a contributing factor in that accident. So these tanker cars, they blow up when hauling chlorine gas, they blow up when hauling nitric acid, they blow up when hauling Hydrogen Peroxide. They blow up when theyre hauling ethanol. Guess what theyre hauling these days . Its not hard to guess. Reporter the massive inferno sent flames into the night sky, fueled by crude oil from ruptured tank cars. The runaway, unmanned 73car train derailed about 1 00 a. M. , sparking a fire and explosion that shattered the quiet of this lake town 135 miles north of the maine border. Whats it look like . A war zone. A lot of buildings burned. Reporter by daybreak, the skies were still black with thick smoke, visible for miles. Last summer, it was a small lake town in quebec, just over the u. S. Border, which found out what happens when this specific type of rail car is allowed to transport crude oil. That derailment and inferno wiped out nearly all of the downtown area and killed 47 people on the ground. That disaster showed what can happen, not only when this outdated model of rail cars transporting crude oil, but specifically what can happen with this outdated rail car transporting crude oil from north dakota. Because by a cruel twist of fate, the crude oil we extract from north dakota turns out to be extra flammable, extra explosive. Just a few months after that derailment nearly wiped out that whole town in canada, something nor closely resembling armageddon was visited upon the residents of the town of castleton, north dakota, just outside of fargo, north dakota. That derailment and explosion forced the evacuation of two third of the town. And when the ntsb came to investigate, what they discovered on the scene was, yes, the charred wreckage of those same outdated rail cars, that had been failing, like clockwork, for decades now. And heres the amazing part. After decades of accidents like that happening in every corner of our country and across the border in canada as well, the railroad and chemical and tanker industry, they did, finally, voluntarily commit to making these rail cars safer. They said they would upgrade them with thicker shells and shields on the ends to try to prevent punctures. So even the industry itself now recognizes that there is a problem here. But because nobodys making them change and they are setting their own terms, look at this, they only committed the to the upgrades for rail cars that were built after october 2011. The ones that were built before that, eh, well take our chances and leave them on the rails. When the industry proposed that, the ntsb, which probably at this point feels like its living in the twilight zone, the ntsb said, no. No, no, no. The higher Safety Standards have to apply to all of these tanker cars. The ones built before october 2011, their going to have to be either retrofitted or phased out. You have to stop rolling these bombs through every city and town in america. To that suggestion, the industry representative said the ntsb was overreacting. They said it would cost way too much money and, besides, they said, the threat of a serious accident was way overstated. Quote, its more likely youre going to be hit by are lightning. Thats what they said. Well, lightning is not just striking in quebec and castleton north dakota, lightning also struck in alabama last november where these outdated rail cars caused an explosion that led to the release of 748,000 gallons of crude oil. Lightning then struck in New Brunswick in canada in january, where a number of the cars that derailed and exploded were those older model tanker cars that were not built to the newer standards. And then lightning struck again last month in lynchburg, virginia, when a train carrying crude oil derailed and its tanker cars exploded and they leaked their flaming, toxic contents into the james river. The investigation into that crash is still ongoing. But just a week before that crash, literally a week before, the outgoing chair of the ntsb was trying desperately to sound the alarm on this issue. She said the Obama Administration feneeded to take immediate steps to protect the public from potentially Catastrophic Oil chain accidents. Even if it meant using emergency authority, she said federal regulators have the power to issue emergency orders to protect the public, rather than run the risk of another accident happening before new regulations can be put in place. She said, quote, the rules are not moving fast enough. We dont need a higher body count before they move forward. And then a week to the day after she said that, the city of lynchburg, virginia, became the latest symbol of this slowmotion, Public Policy disaster. There were roughly 10,000 rail cars full of oil moved through the United States the year before president obama was sworn in. Last year, it wasnt 10,000 cars, it was over 400,000 cars full of oil. And the industry says they expect that to go up by another 50 this year. We are in the middle of a huge oil boom in this country, and bully for us but one big Public Policy consequence of that for the rest of us who arent in the oil industry is that oil trains turn out to be bombs that roll right through our population centers, all day, every day, not very far away from us humans at all. And the cars they put the oil in are not safe to put the oil in. And we know that because they keep blowing up. And they have been for decades. The federal agency that can do something here, the agency that could mandate, for instance, that the industry zbrapd its cars, not just the new ones, but the old ones too, the agency that can do that is the Transportation Department. The night of that derailment and explosion in lynchburg, virginia, that same night, the Transportation Department finally submitted to the white house a longawaited package of rules aimed at improving the safety of Oil Transport by rail. Those rules have not been made public yet. The white house says its in the process of reviewing them right now. But in the meantime, these tanker cars are still out there, still crisscrossing the country. This type of rail car is the workhorse of the industry and it apparently cannot safely transport all of this oil that were now producing hand over fist in this country and transporting using those cars. Were doing it anyway. Were just trying anyway, even though we know the risks. Even though we see the risks. Last week, as the Transportation Department is waiting to find out whats going to happen with its new rules, the transportation secretary, anthony fox, announced that these rail cars are essentially not fit for service. He issued a safety alert, advising the industry to no longer use that type of rail car for transporting oil. But that is a piece of advice that is completely voluntary for the industry. That advice doesnt require the industry to do anything. Its just an alert. Hey, we know what youre doing isnt safe. If the oil industry does not stop using these rail cars, which apparently are unfit for service, what will the federal government do then . Joining us next is the transportation secretary himself, anthony fox. Please stay with us. Care what age you are. Take it on the way you always have. Live healthy and take one a day womens 50 . A complete multivitamin with 7 antioxidants to support cell health. Age . Who cares. I dont have to leave my desk and get up and go to the post office anymore. [ male announcer ] with stamps. Com you can print real u. S. Postage for all your letters and packages. I have exactly the amount of postage i need, the instant i need it. Can you print only stamps . 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