LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — About 1,200 miles of train tracks run through Nevada – but the railroad company, the Federal Railroad Administration, nor any government agency could tell the 8 News Now Investigators what specific hazardous materials the trains, some traveling right through Las Vegas, are carrying.
In February, a Norfolk Southern Railway freight train derailed, igniting hazardous materials and forcing nearly 2,000 people in the area to evacuate. In March, a runaway Union Pacific train derailed across the Nevada state line near Baker, California. The train was not carrying a hazardous material, but was carrying iron ore, a steel-making component.
Union Pacific trains, some multi-miles long, move commodities, including hazardous materials and chemicals, across Nevada. Workers laid the tracks before the Las Vegas valley expanded, meaning they run right near the Las Vegas Strip and downtown Las Vegas before heading north toward Utah and south toward California.
“What would a train derailment mean for Las Vegas?” 8 News Now Investigator David Charns asked Democrat Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom.
“Within 100 yards of this building, if there were a train derailment, downtown Las Vegas would be basically off limits,” Segerblom said. “You can imagine what’s in those tankers.”
The tankers, often only staffed by a crew of two, run just feet from Segerblom’s office at the Clark County Government Center.
“Do you wonder what these trains were carrying in your own district?” Charns asked.
“I guess, in a sense I wonder, but probably assume the worst,” Segerblom said.
Segerblom assumes the worst, he said, because the exact contents of the massive chains of cargo are secret. While the contents of some trains are made public, often during and after an emergency, the multi-mile links transport many different materials.
The nearly two-mile-long train in East Palestine, Ohio, was transporting “20 placarded hazardous materials tank cars transporting combustible liquids, flammable liquids, and flammable gas, including vinyl chloride,” the NTSD said.
The CDC calls vinyl chloride a “colorless, highly flammable and potentially explosive gas,” which can affect a person’s eyes and lungs if released into the air.
“That’s one of the problems,” Segerblom said. “When you have this top-secret stuff and everybody’s operating under security. A lot of times, they think they don’t have to tell us and if we don’t discover it, we’ll never know.”
The 8 News Now Investigators asked several local, state and federal departments one question: “What on the trains?”
“What the trains are carrying is not shared with local jurisdictions,” a spokesperson for the City of Las Vegas said. Both he and a representative from Clark County advised the 8 News Now Investigators to ask Union Pacific for details.
“We are required by federal law to transport chemicals and other hazardous commodities that Americans use daily, including fertilizer, ethanol, crude oil and chlorine,” a Union Pacific spokesperson said. The details stopped there.
No public entity nor the railroad would say exactly what is on train cars. The American Association of Railroads, a trade group for freight carriers, notes on its website that there are “thousands of distinct products,” not all hazardous, on our nation’s tracks.
The trade group fact sheet about what commodities run through Nevada was “redacted to preserve confidentiality.”
“Should the public know what’s on these trains?” Charns asked Segerblom.
“They should,” he said, “I’m just not sure about each train, but I think it’s pretty clear that the more knowledge you have the better.”
Clark County, Las Vegas and Henderson have specific plans and specialized teams in place should a Hazmat rail emergency occur. The county’s emergency plans, published in January 2022, use data as old as 2005 with no specifics about what chemicals are on the trains.
Instead, the emergency plan includes a phone number for a railroad representative to call about specific shipments in the event of a Hazmat response.
Over the past 10 years, 43 trains have derailed in Nevada, according to the FRA. Just one derailment involved what the agency calls a Hazmat release. The report for that derailment, which occurred at a slow speed in a rail yard, only said it involved an “alcohol of unknown amount.”
“Unless we know specifically what we are protecting against we’re probably under-protected,” Segerblom said.
Representatives from Union Pacific add their trains are safe and there are measures in place to ensure safety on the tracks. The company has a 24/7/365 emergency response center, a spokesperson said.
“Union Pacific is using new technology and education to reduce variability and risks of derailment, and we are enhancing our training programs and re-emphasizing our safety culture through a joint effort with our union partners,” a spokesperson said. “Railroads are the safest mode of transportation, delivering more than 99.9 percent of the hazardous commodities reach their destination safely, without a release.”
Nevada Democrats are attempting to beef up that security and technology by ensuring detector systems are evenly placed on the rail network. The original version of Assembly Bill 456 attempted to restrict trail length to 7,500 feet, but that part was later removed.
A representative from Union Pacific who testified against the bill said it was unclear what power states have over interstate commerce.
“Neither FRA nor any government agency can provide information that lists specific rail lines that hazardous material shipments traverse, as railroads consider such information to be proprietary, and doing so raises safety and security issues,” an FRA spokesperson said. “In addition, as a federal safety regulator, FRA does not monitor train movements or types of cargo transported by private rail companies in real-time.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation is calling on railroads “to provide proactive advance notification to state emergency response teams when they are transporting hazardous gas tank cars through their states instead of expecting first responders to look up this information after an incident occurs,” the spokesperson said.
