A Burling­ton North­ern San­ta Fe (BNSF) freight train trans­port­ing extreme­ly volatile Bakken crude oil derailed today near Custer, What­com Coun­ty, caus­ing a fire and prompt­ing author­i­ties to ask near­by res­i­dents to evac­u­ate as a precaution.

There were no fatal­i­ties and no injuries were report­ed, though the derail­ment did result in an oil spill. Sev­en tank cars went off the tracks, with two catch­ing fire, about twen­ty min­utes before noon. Fire­fight­ers respond­ed and had the con­fla­gra­tion most­ly con­tained by 3 PM in the after­noon, though evac­u­a­tion orders were not lift­ed until an hour and forty-five min­utes later.

Custer is locat­ed about halfway between Blaine and Fer­n­dale, which are both north of Belling­ham and the Lum­mi Reservation.

Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy employ­ees at the site of the BNSF oil train derail­ment (Pho­to cour­tesy of the Depart­ment of Ecology)

The derail­ment occurred not far from Inter­state 5’s Zell Road exit, and the high­way was tem­porar­i­ly closed by the Wash­ing­ton State Patrol while the blaze was being brought under con­trol. I‑5 was sub­se­quent­ly reopened.

My Fer­n­dale News, which was present at a press con­fer­ence called by the author­i­ties after the inci­dent occurred, report­ed that the fol­low­ing details were shared regard­ing the oil train and its derail­ment:

• the BNSF train was head­ing north­bound after hav­ing just passed through Ferndale
• it was trav­el­ing to the Phillips 66 Fer­n­dale Refinery
• 108 cars made up the train, many con­tain­ing Bakken crude oil
• there were two crew mem­bers onboard the train
• Sev­en cars derailed includ­ing two cars con­tain­ing oil that caught fire
• peo­ple with­in a half-mile radius were noti­fied to evac­u­ate by phone noti­fi­ca­tions and law enforce­ment going door-to-door
• I‑5 was closed in both direc­tions between the Grand­view Road and Birch Bay-Lyn­den Road inter­changes for almost 2 hours since it was with­in the half-mile perimeter
• the fire is still burn­ing but is being controlled
• inves­ti­ga­tors are not able to approach the site yet due to the fire
• the evac­u­a­tion order had not been lift­ed (it was announced short­ly after the press con­fer­ence that it had been lift­ed but with con­tin­gen­cies)
• the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion (FBI) and the Wash­ing­ton State Util­i­ties and Trans­porta­tion had peo­ple at the scene to aid in the investigation
• water was put on the fire ini­tial­ly to cool down the area and adja­cent rail­road cars
• no struc­tures were report­ed damaged
• no peo­ple were report­ed injured
• while the total impact is yet to be deter­mined, the spill was con­tained local­ly and did not appear to impact any water bodies
• addi­tion­al air qual­i­ty mon­i­tors were set up in case there was need to alert peo­ple nearby
• none of the offi­cials had infor­ma­tion regard­ing what caused the derail­ment and would not until the inves­ti­ga­tion pro­vides such
• fire crews along with refin­ery per­son­nel remain at the scene while the fire burns itself out

It is for­tu­nate that was no loss of life or sig­nif­i­cant prop­er­ty dam­age in this inci­dent. But there eas­i­ly could have been. The dan­gers of oil trains are well known, yet they con­tin­ue to pass through com­mu­ni­ties all over the Pacif­ic North­west and beyond. The grave risk to peo­ple, ani­mals, and prop­er­ty from the trans­port of dirty fos­sil fuels can only be elim­i­nat­ed by phas­ing out coal, oil, and gas. Cli­mate action is thus not only social­ly and moral­ly respon­si­ble, it is nec­es­sary to get rid of a threat to the safe­ty of our neighborhoods.