NTSB On Why They Didn't Respond to Mosier: Been There, Done That

Been there. Done that.

That's the basic summary of a nearly 50-page response from the National Transportation Safety Board to questions from Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkely who wanted to know why didn't the agency send an investigative team to probe the oil train derailment and inferno outside of Mosier.

More than a dozen of a more than 90-car train carrying Bakkan crude oil from New Town, North Dakota to Spokane, Washington derailed.

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Several of the cars burned - sending flames and smoke into the air that could be seen for miles.

The disaster wreaked havoc on the town of Mosier, forcing evacuations for some and forcing others to forego showers and flushing toilets for days.

While many agencies sent representatives to investigate the disaster and oversee the clean-up, one agency was conspicuously absent - the NTSB.

So, Oregon's senators - Wyden and Merkley - wrote to the NTSB wanting to know why.

"This information indicated that the circumstances of this accident did not pose any new significant safety issues," the agency wrote back.

"The tank cars were breached in a manner similar to those
that we have seen in other accident investigations."

In other words, the agency had seen enough oil train crashes that they felt they were not going to learn anything new from this one.

And, the agency said, it's not like they weren't paying attention. They told the senators that they are keeping in touch with the Federal Railroad Administration in case there are "any new significant safety issues."

The agency says that they have already seen similar issues in several previous investigations including ones in New Brighton, Pennsylvania and Columbus Ohio.

On top of that, the agency's response pointed to a bigger problem: even if they wanted to send someone, it would have been hard.

A major factor in deciding not to send a crew to Mosier was the "limited resources and the current investigative workload in the Office Of Railroad, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Investigations (RPH)," the NTSB wrote.

The NTSB has 13 railroad investigators on staff," the agency says. That includes three each "for the specialties of track, signal and train control, and motive power and equipment. In addition, there are four specialists in railroad operations.

"A typical launch team is composed of an investigator-in-charge (IIC) and an investigator from each of the specialty areas. Therefore, a launch requires the resources of 5 to 7 investigators (plus many other staff during the course of the investigation)."

The NTSB says that there are 23 open investigations in the Railroad Division and 4 open investigations in the Hazardous Materials Division.

Given those numbers, the NTSB points out that, to put it mildly, they are stretched thin.

Wyden tells Patch this is not acceptable.

"I find it very disturbing that the NTSB did not appear to have enough resources to send an investigative team to Oregon to more closely examine the Mosier accident," he said. "I will be scrutinizing whether the size of NTSB’s investigative staff should be increased."