With Oakland highway's collapse, a 'wake-up' call

Bay Area accident Sunday shows peril of routing hazardous cargos through cities, security experts say.

By Ben Arnoldy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the May 1, 2007 edition

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Oakland, Calif. - It's known as "the maze," a congested tangle of interstate highways that link San Francisco with the East Bay cities of Oakland, Berkeley, and beyond.

Residents here woke up Sunday morning to the news that parts of this crucial interchange, one of the busiest in America, had melted and collapsed after a gasoline tanker truck crashed and exploded.

No one was killed in the early morning accident. But residents are bracing for severe traffic disruptions in the weeks and months ahead, as parts of I-880 and I-580 are repaired.

The episode recalled vulnerabilities felt in the not too distant past. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused a similar collapse, also damaging a vital San Francisco-Oakland link, the Bay Bridge. And then, there was that image of a fireball melting steel to topple a piece of the urban landscape.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said the accident highlighted how fragile the region's transportation network is to an earthquake or terrorist attack. "It's another giant wake-up call," Mr. Newsom said.

City officials ought to be planning for far worse possibilities, warns Fred Millar, a homeland security consultant and hazardous materials expert. Release of chlorine, a gas that's still being shipped through major urban areas, could kill tens of thousands, he says. And propane and liquid natural gas explosions could dwarf Sunday's fireball in Oakland.

More than 800,000 hazmat shipments are trucked around the US every day, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Each year, roughly 200 trucks are involved in fatal crashes and 5,000 in nonfatal crashes.

Gasoline isn't in the top tier of explosives, flammables, or toxins. But, says Dr. Millar, since it is so ubiquitous and can – as the Oakland incident demonstrated – be quite destructive, cities should not be letting gas trucks go in tunnels, near bridges, or on major commuter highways if it can be helped. Gasoline tankers have been getting bigger over the last 30 years, and their metal skins remain thin for economic reasons, he says.

Dangerous cargoes, says Millar, ought to be expedited or rerouted around cities using existing beltway highways and tracks. New York City has been forcing hazmat trucks to avoid the metropolis for years after an incident with an LPG truck on the George Washington Bridge. The city won a court case brought by the trucking industry, he says, yet other cities have been slow to implement rerouting policies except at obvious chokepoints like bridges and tunnels.

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