NTTC Asks NTSB to Re-examine ’97 Accident Blamed on Wetlines

This story appears in the Dec. 13 print edition of Transport Topics.

The president of the National Tank Truck Carriers has asked the National Transportation Safety Board to reopen its investigation into a fatal 1997 tank truck accident in Yonkers, N.Y., that he said has become the “poster child” of the agency’s campaign to require purge retrofits for cargo tank wetlines.

“While the Yonkers accident has become the poster wetlines event, it most likely was not a wetlines accident,” NTTC President John Conley wrote in a Dec. 1 letter to NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman. “The continued use of this flawed report as the ‘poster child’ incident for advocating removal of product from loading lines on gasoline trailers does a disservice to the gasoline transportation industry and to those charged with regulating the industry.”

Conley said that subsequent investigations into accidents involving automobiles driving into loading lines have produced information that might not have been available in 1997 — and there is now evidence suggesting more than just the gasoline from the trailer’s piping had to fuel the fire in the Yonkers’ incident.

“I am asking that the report be reviewed based on that subsequent information,” Conley wrote.

An NTSB spokesman declined comment on the letter.

The crash occurred shortly after midnight on Oct. 9, 1997, when a passenger sedan hit the right side of a cargo tank in the area of the tank’s external loading/unloading lines. Both vehicles were engulfed in a massive fire that killed the driver of the sedan, but did not injure the truck driver.

The vehicles were destroyed and authorities assessed the damages to the vehicles and a thruway overpass at $7 million.

The driver of the car was blamed for the accident because he failed to stop at a red light or reduce his speed.

The NTSB investigation concluded the crash fractured one or more of the cargo tank’s loading lines, releasing up to 28 gallons of gasoline. Had the loading lines been empty, the fire would likely not have occurred and the driver would have survived the accident, the NTSB said.

As a result of its investigation, NTSB in 1998 issued a recommendation that all gasoline tankers be required to install equipment to empty the lines after they make deliveries. The agency has been lobbying Congress and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration for the requirement ever since.

PHMSA twice has introduced proposed rules to require such equipment. A 2006 rule was withdrawn after a cost-benefit analysis ultimately convinced the agency that the installation of purging equipment could not be justified since there were so few wetlines mishaps and because the installation was so expensive.

This past October, PHMSA sent a proposed wetlines purging retrofit regulation to the White House Office of Management and Budget for a yet-to be completed review (click here for previous story).

A trucking industry delegation, including Conley and American Trucking Associations Chairman Barbara Windsor last month cautioned White House officials in a meeting that the proposed regulation would be both costly and dangerous (click here for previous story).

PHMSA said last year it intended to reverse its 2006 decision because Congress was pressuring the agency to issue a rule following a new analysis of wetlines-incident data that revealed higher fatalities and injuries than previously thought (click here for previous story).

Conley said he did not question the competency or honesty of the NTSB’s investigation. But whenever the NTSB officials publicly discuss wetlines, “The first thing they point to is that particular accident,” Conley told Transport Topics. “And when our friends on [Capitol] Hill decided to get into the game, they also made a big deal of it.”

In his letter, Conley pointed to a study and testing by engineering firm CED Accident Analysis Inc. that concluded if a car hits a cargo tank broadside at 25 mph or faster, it is going to travel beyond the wetlines and under the trailer.

In that case it could either rip the tank’s internal self-closing stop valve or “belly valve,” or rupture the tank shell.

That study is relevant, Conley noted, because witnesses to the Yonkers accident told investigators the car was going about 45 mph when it broadsided the cargo tank.

Conley said he does not dispute that there are serious wetlines mishaps, but he estimated there has been on average fewer than one such incident each of the past 10 years.

“We’ve never said that they don’t happen,” he acknowledged. “They are certainly less than one a year, and to go to the extreme that they’re calling for, we truly believe would certainly expose greater dangers in the shop.”

One of the NTTC’s biggest concerns is the safety of actually installing retrofits. NTTC and ATA officials have said in past comments that there have been at least 11 deaths in cargo tank facilities as a result of workers performing welding or other services on tanks that released petroleum vapors.