Deadly rail accident spurs new hazmat safety bill

Deadly rail accident spurs new hazmat safety bill    Rep. Edward Markey said Monday he will re-introduce a bill designed to prevent accidents like the one that occurred last week in South Carolina, when chlorine gas leaked from a ruptured tank car after a Norfolk Southern train crashed into a parked locomotive.
   Nine people died, 58 were hospitalized and hundreds were evacuated in the accident.
   Markey, D-Mass., said his bill would require safety improvements in the transport of extremely hazardous materials such as chlorine gas and propane.
   “Whether it’s an accident or an al Qaeda attack, we need to make the shipments of the deadly chemicals more secure,” Markey said in a statement.
   Markey’s bill would require railroads to provide advance notification to emergency responders in each jurisdiction before hazmat shipments transit their jurisdictions and reroute highly toxic gases or flammable materials around densely populated or sensitive areas. The bill would also mandate the use of technologies to make tank cars more resistant to puncture and increase training for employees who work with hazmat shipments.
   Last year, the National Transportation Safety Board warned that more than half of the 60,000 tank cars in operation were brittle and susceptible to rupture because they were built before new industry standards for specially treated steel went into effect in 1989.