MN Homeland Security: Raymond train derailment show improvements to hazmat response
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- There are more than two million shipments of hazardous materials every day in the United States, and almost all of them get to where they're going safely.
When they don't, that's the real hazard.
"When they become hazardous is if they aren't used properly, are misused, or they come out of their container - and then they pose a risk," said Kristi Rollwagon, Minnesota's director of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. "Everyday chemicals are used in the context of safe use and they stay in their containers."
According to Rollwagon, the hazardous materials being transported across the state include everything from the chemicals that make household cleaners, to chlorine for pools, to fertilizers for farming. Another major commodity is fuel, including sweet crude from the Bakken fields of North Dakota.
In February, a massive train crash and vinyl chloride spill in East Palestine, Ohio, underscored the inherent risks of such transportation across the country. Nearly two months later in western Minnesota, a train carrying ethanol and corn syrup derailed in Raymond, igniting a fire and also leading to evacuations.
According to Rollwagon, the swift response to the Raymond crash in particular showed how well-equipped and well-prepared Minnesota crews can be for these potential disasters.
"Instead of a fire department in Minnesota just training by themselves, they're training with their partners in their mutual aid area, they're training with our state team program," she said. "That team did yeoman's work to assist their public safety partners to make sure all those citizens were notified in a timely fashion, knew where to go, they had done their preplanning."
Rollwagon added that more intense and more frequent training, including by local fire departments at Camp Ripley, are a marked improvement from HazMat operations even 20 years ago.
"I would say the types of monitoring equipment, the types of protective clothing, the awareness of how to respond to an incident, how to keep yourself safe and the public safe - all of that has vastly improved in the last 20 years," she said.
That preparedness might be needed now more than ever, as CBS News Investigations found the likelihood of an accident involving hazardous and toxic chemicals is actually far greater on the roads, where you and your family drive every day.
CBS News analyzed 10 years of incident data from the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). It shows that for every hazardous materials incident involving a train, there are 33 hazmat incidents involving big rigs on our roadways.
PHMSA is an agency within the U.S. Department of Transportation established to protect people and the environment by advancing the safe transport of energy and other hazardous materials. To do this, the agency tracks the transportation of hazardous materials through various means such as air, highway, pipeline and rail. The agency also establishes national policy, sets and enforces standards, educates and conducts research to prevent incidents, and works to train first responders in the event of an accident.
Over the last 10 years, the number of big rig accidents involving hazardous materials has jumped two and a half times, an increase of 155%.
In Minnesota, data analyzed by CBS News counted 153 in-transit highway incidents between 2013-2022, causing more than $5.3 million in damages. On railroads, meanwhile, trains in Minnesota crashed or derailed 37 times in that time period, causing at least $1.5 million in damages.
