In Estonia, fear is rising over risky oil trains
Thomas Fuller IHT Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Thousand of old rail cars pass by daily

TALLINN, Estonia Riina Kurg shakes herself back and forth to show what happens when the Siberian oil trains pass her house.
.
Her uncle, she says, once awoke from a nightmare thinking a train was running through the living room.
.
Residents of this picturesque medieval city, Estonia's capital, have lived with the trains for years. Today, as the global demand for Russian oil becomes acute, the oil transit business is booming.
.
But rescue workers, city officials and opposition politicians say they are increasingly concerned that the thousands of rail cars that pass through here daily on their way to Baltic seaports are accidents waiting to happen.
.
The aging Siberian trains, blackened by the fuel that spills over the sides, rumble night and day beside the city's main sports stadium, one of its largest shopping malls and hundreds of houses.
.
They carry products, many of them highly flammable, including gasoline, fertilizers and propane, to Estonia's ports, where the cargo is pumped into tanker ships and dispatched abroad.
.
The oil-transit business in Estonia is just a small node in the global network that keeps oil flowing to an oil-thirsty world. But in a country that is still too poor to afford modern firefighting equipment, the trains illustrate the risky path to the pump.
.
"We're not the only country that has dangerous cargo transiting through," said Raik Saart, the head of Tallinn's fire department. "But most wealthy countries have rerouted the trains to bypass urban areas."
.
The economic advantages of this business for Russia and Estonia are clear. It is only about 290 kilometers, or 180 miles, from the Russian border to Estonia's modern sea terminals, which are well-situated at the northeastern corner of the Baltic Sea. Estonia has already profited handsomely, with each train contributing $30,000 to the local economy, according to Eesti Raudtee, the railway company.
.
Yet Saart, the fire chief, displays a thick folder filled with disaster scenarios. He holds a computer printout with a section of the city near the tracks, the area that would be destroyed by an explosion.
.
If just one rail car were to explode, Saart said, there would be 20 to 30 deaths, 90 to 120 injuries and thousands of people needing to be evacuated.
.
Toomas-Henrik Ilves, the leader of Estonia's main opposition party, the Social Democrats, says the solution is to stop the transport.
.
"You don't bring these materials into high-density areas," he said. where no one lives.""No one lives in Bayonne, New Jersey," he added, referring to the area near New York City known for its chemical and oil industries. (Actually, about 62,000 people live in Bayonne, but far from the large oil-storage facilities.)
.
The government says talk of stopping the trains is unrealistic. The transit business provides the country with more than 10 percent of its annual economic activity and the main beneficiary is the government itself, which still owns a majority of the country's cargo ports. Stopping the oil trains would put a big hole in the government's budget.
.
Estonia, a former Soviet republic, joined the European Union in May, but incomes remain less than half the average in the rest of the Union.
.
"Of course we are very interested that the business proceeds the same way," said Taavi Veskimagi, Estonia's finance minister.
.
The government collected revenue of 220 million kroons, or $17 million, from the port last year, he said.
.
The government has proposed a route for the oil trains that would bypass Tallinn, Veskimagi said, but the project has not been approved, and the route would not be completed before 2010. Landowners near Tallinn have pledged to fight the plan.
.
The amount of oil shipped through Estonia has tripled since the country's independence in 1991, and the government is pursuing plans to increase the capacity of the ports.
.
In the meantime, Estonia's rescue workers are not shy about pointing out specific dangers. Saart says many homeless people seek shelter alongside the tracks in Tallinn and often light makeshift fires in the winter to keep warm. Sparks from the train itself could ignite the gasoline, which is more flammable than crude oil. The trains start in Siberia, where it is usually several degrees colder. When they arrive in Estonia, the difference in temperature sometimes causes leaks.
.
Another official mentioned terrorism. Sitting in the northeastern corner of Europe, Estonia seems off the target map, but the government has sent troops to both Afghanistan and Iraq.
.
There have been no major accidents involving Estonia's oil business, but last May there was a close call: Rail ties caught fire for an unknown reason in Tallinn and flames came close to an oil train stationed there.
.
The fire department, Saart said, is capable of putting out small house fires but does not have the equipment or the personnel to address a major explosion.
.
Mihhail Stalnuhhin, the chairman of the City Council in Narva, which straddles the border with Russia, said rescue workers around the country were dispirited at the lack of equipment. Most equipment either dates to Soviet times or was donated by Scandinavian countries.
.
The oil trains also pass through the middle of Narva, and more than 100 residents recently signed a petition protesting their presence, a rare example of civic activism in a country where democracy is just 13 years old.
.
The oil trains also run through the southeastern city of Tartu, where railyards are open to anyone curious enough to stroll inside.
.
Ott Laido, an official at the Estonian Rescue Board, says the government's draft budget for next year includes enough money to buy two new fire trucks for the whole country. Estonia is slightly larger than Switzerland and has a population of about 1.3 million.
.
The average age of fire trucks in Estonia is 20 to 25 years, Laido said. Most heavy equipment either dates to Soviet times or was donated second hand from Scandinavian countries after Estonia's independence in 1991.
.
Laido said finding firemen was also a problem because rescue personnel were paid the equivalent of E270, or $333, a month, compared with the nation's average monthly wage of E460.
.
International Herald Tribune



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< < Back to Start of Article Thousand of old rail cars pass by daily

TALLINN, Estonia Riina Kurg shakes herself back and forth to show what happens when the Siberian oil trains pass her house.
.
Her uncle, she says, once awoke from a nightmare thinking a train was running through the living room.
.
Residents of this picturesque medieval city, Estonia's capital, have lived with the trains for years. Today, as the global demand for Russian oil becomes acute, the oil transit business is booming.
.
But rescue workers, city officials and opposition politicians say they are increasingly concerned that the thousands of rail cars that pass through here daily on their way to Baltic seaports are accidents waiting to happen.
.
The aging Siberian trains, blackened by the fuel that spills over the sides, rumble night and day beside the city's main sports stadium, one of its largest shopping malls and hundreds of houses.
.
They carry products, many of them highly flammable, including gasoline, fertilizers and propane, to Estonia's ports, where the cargo is pumped into tanker ships and dispatched abroad.
.
The oil-transit business in Estonia is just a small node in the global network that keeps oil flowing to an oil-thirsty world. But in a country that is still too poor to afford modern firefighting equipment, the trains illustrate the risky path to the pump.
.
"We're not the only country that has dangerous cargo transiting through," said Raik Saart, the head of Tallinn's fire department. "But most wealthy countries have rerouted the trains to bypass urban areas."
.
The economic advantages of this business for Russia and Estonia are clear. It is only about 290 kilometers, or 180 miles, from the Russian border to Estonia's modern sea terminals, which are well-situated at the northeastern corner of the Baltic Sea. Estonia has already profited handsomely, with each train contributing $30,000 to the local economy, according to Eesti Raudtee, the railway company.
.
Yet Saart, the fire chief, displays a thick folder filled with disaster scenarios. He holds a computer printout with a section of the city near the tracks, the area that would be destroyed by an explosion.
.
If just one rail car were to explode, Saart said, there would be 20 to 30 deaths, 90 to 120 injuries and thousands of people needing to be evacuated.
.
Toomas-Henrik Ilves, the leader of Estonia's main opposition party, the Social Democrats, says the solution is to stop the transport.
.
"You don't bring these materials into high-density areas," he said. where no one lives.""No one lives in Bayonne, New Jersey," he added, referring to the area near New York City known for its chemical and oil industries. (Actually, about 62,000 people live in Bayonne, but far from the large oil-storage facilities.)
.
The government says talk of stopping the trains is unrealistic. The transit business provides the country with more than 10 percent of its annual economic activity and the main beneficiary is the government itself, which still owns a majority of the country's cargo ports. Stopping the oil trains would put a big hole in the government's budget.
.
Estonia, a former Soviet republic, joined the European Union in May, but incomes remain less than half the average in the rest of the Union.
.
"Of course we are very interested that the business proceeds the same way," said Taavi Veskimagi, Estonia's finance minister.
.
The government collected revenue of 220 million kroons, or $17 million, from the port last year, he said.
.
The government has proposed a route for the oil trains that would bypass Tallinn, Veskimagi said, but the project has not been approved, and the route would not be completed before 2010. Landowners near Tallinn have pledged to fight the plan.
.
The amount of oil shipped through Estonia has tripled since the country's independence in 1991, and the government is pursuing plans to increase the capacity of the ports.
.
In the meantime, Estonia's rescue workers are not shy about pointing out specific dangers. Saart says many homeless people seek shelter alongside the tracks in Tallinn and often light makeshift fires in the winter to keep warm. Sparks from the train itself could ignite the gasoline, which is more flammable than crude oil. The trains start in Siberia, where it is usually several degrees colder. When they arrive in Estonia, the difference in temperature sometimes causes leaks.
.
Another official mentioned terrorism. Sitting in the northeastern corner of Europe, Estonia seems off the target map, but the government has sent troops to both Afghanistan and Iraq.
.
There have been no major accidents involving Estonia's oil business, but last May there was a close call: Rail ties caught fire for an unknown reason in Tallinn and flames came close to an oil train stationed there.
.
The fire department, Saart said, is capable of putting out small house fires but does not have the equipment or the personnel to address a major explosion.
.
Mihhail Stalnuhhin, the chairman of the City Council in Narva, which straddles the border with Russia, said rescue workers around the country were dispirited at the lack of equipment. Most equipment either dates to Soviet times or was donated by Scandinavian countries.
.
The oil trains also pass through the middle of Narva, and more than 100 residents recently signed a petition protesting their presence, a rare example of civic activism in a country where democracy is just 13 years old.
.
The oil trains also run through the southeastern city of Tartu, where railyards are open to anyone curious enough to stroll inside.
.
Ott Laido, an official at the Estonian Rescue Board, says the government's draft budget for next year includes enough money to buy two new fire trucks for the whole country. Estonia is slightly larger than Switzerland and has a population of about 1.3 million.
.
The average age of fire trucks in Estonia is 20 to 25 years, Laido said. Most heavy equipment either dates to Soviet times or was donated second hand from Scandinavian countries after Estonia's independence in 1991.
.
Laido said finding firemen was also a problem because rescue personnel were paid the equivalent of E270, or $333, a month, compared with the nation's average monthly wage of E460.
.
International Herald Tribune Thousand of old rail cars pass by daily

TALLINN, Estonia Riina Kurg shakes herself back and forth to show what happens when the Siberian oil trains pass her house.
.
Her uncle, she says, once awoke from a nightmare thinking a train was running through the living room.
.
Residents of this picturesque medieval city, Estonia's capital, have lived with the trains for years. Today, as the global demand for Russian oil becomes acute, the oil transit business is booming.
.
But rescue workers, city officials and opposition politicians say they are increasingly concerned that the thousands of rail cars that pass through here daily on their way to Baltic seaports are accidents waiting to happen.
.
The aging Siberian trains, blackened by the fuel that spills over the sides, rumble night and day beside the city's main sports stadium, one of its largest shopping malls and hundreds of houses.
.
They carry products, many of them highly flammable, including gasoline, fertilizers and propane, to Estonia's ports, where the cargo is pumped into tanker ships and dispatched abroad.
.
The oil-transit business in Estonia is just a small node in the global network that keeps oil flowing to an oil-thirsty world. But in a country that is still too poor to afford modern firefighting equipment, the trains illustrate the risky path to the pump.
.
"We're not the only country that has dangerous cargo transiting through," said Raik Saart, the head of Tallinn's fire department. "But most wealthy countries have rerouted the trains to bypass urban areas."
.
The economic advantages of this business for Russia and Estonia are clear. It is only about 290 kilometers, or 180 miles, from the Russian border to Estonia's modern sea terminals, which are well-situated at the northeastern corner of the Baltic Sea. Estonia has already profited handsomely, with each train contributing $30,000 to the local economy, according to Eesti Raudtee, the railway company.
.
Yet Saart, the fire chief, displays a thick folder filled with disaster scenarios. He holds a computer printout with a section of the city near the tracks, the area that would be destroyed by an explosion.
.
If just one rail car were to explode, Saart said, there would be 20 to 30 deaths, 90 to 120 injuries and thousands of people needing to be evacuated.
.
Toomas-Henrik Ilves, the leader of Estonia's main opposition party, the Social Democrats, says the solution is to stop the transport.
.
"You don't bring these materials into high-density areas," he said. where no one lives.""No one lives in Bayonne, New Jersey," he added, referring to the area near New York City known for its chemical and oil industries. (Actually, about 62,000 people live in Bayonne, but far from the large oil-storage facilities.)
.
The government says talk of stopping the trains is unrealistic. The transit business provides the country with more than 10 percent of its annual economic activity and the main beneficiary is the government itself, which still owns a majority of the country's cargo ports. Stopping the oil trains would put a big hole in the government's budget.
.
Estonia, a former Soviet republic, joined the European Union in May, but incomes remain less than half the average in the rest of the Union.
.
"Of course we are very interested that the business proceeds the same way," said Taavi Veskimagi, Estonia's finance minister.
.
The government collected revenue of 220 million kroons, or $17 million, from the port last year, he said.
.
The government has proposed a route for the oil trains that would bypass Tallinn, Veskimagi said, but the project has not been approved, and the route would not be completed before 2010. Landowners near Tallinn have pledged to fight the plan.
.
The amount of oil shipped through Estonia has tripled since the country's independence in 1991, and the government is pursuing plans to increase the capacity of the ports.
.
In the meantime, Estonia's rescue workers are not shy about pointing out specific dangers. Saart says many homeless people seek shelter alongside the tracks in Tallinn and often light makeshift fires in the winter to keep warm. Sparks from the train itself could ignite the gasoline, which is more flammable than crude oil. The trains start in Siberia, where it is usually several degrees colder. When they arrive in Estonia, the difference in temperature sometimes causes leaks.
.
Another official mentioned terrorism. Sitting in the northeastern corner of Europe, Estonia seems off the target map, but the government has sent troops to both Afghanistan and Iraq.
.
There have been no major accidents involving Estonia's oil business, but last May there was a close call: Rail ties caught fire for an unknown reason in Tallinn and flames came close to an oil train stationed there.
.
The fire department, Saart said, is capable of putting out small house fires but does not have the equipment or the personnel to address a major explosion.
.
Mihhail Stalnuhhin, the chairman of the City Council in Narva, which straddles the border with Russia, said rescue workers around the country were dispirited at the lack of equipment. Most equipment either dates to Soviet times or was donated by Scandinavian countries.
.
The oil trains also pass through the middle of Narva, and more than 100 residents recently signed a petition protesting their presence, a rare example of civic activism in a country where democracy is just 13 years old.
.
The oil trains also run through the southeastern city of Tartu, where railyards are open to anyone curious enough to stroll inside.
.
Ott Laido, an official at the Estonian Rescue Board, says the government's draft budget for next year includes enough money to buy two new fire trucks for the whole country. Estonia is slightly larger than Switzerland and has a population of about 1.3 million.
.
The average age of fire trucks in Estonia is 20 to 25 years, Laido said. Most heavy equipment either dates to Soviet times or was donated second hand from Scandinavian countries after Estonia's independence in 1991.
.
Laido said finding firemen was also a problem because rescue personnel were paid the equivalent of E270, or $333, a month, compared with the nation's average monthly wage of E460.
.
International Herald Tribune Thousand of old rail cars pass by daily

TALLINN, Estonia Riina Kurg shakes herself back and forth to show what happens when the Siberian oil trains pass her house.
.
Her uncle, she says, once awoke from a nightmare thinking a train was running through the living room.
.
Residents of this picturesque medieval city, Estonia's capital, have lived with the trains for years. Today, as the global demand for Russian oil becomes acute, the oil transit business is booming.
.
But rescue workers, city officials and opposition politicians say they are increasingly concerned that the thousands of rail cars that pass through here daily on their way to Baltic seaports are accidents waiting to happen.
.
The aging Siberian trains, blackened by the fuel that spills over the sides, rumble night and day beside the city's main sports stadium, one of its largest shopping malls and hundreds of houses.
.
They carry products, many of them highly flammable, including gasoline, fertilizers and propane, to Estonia's ports, where the cargo is pumped into tanker ships and dispatched abroad.
.
The oil-transit business in Estonia is just a small node in the global network that keeps oil flowing to an oil-thirsty world. But in a country that is still too poor to afford modern firefighting equipment, the trains illustrate the risky path to the pump.
.
"We're not the only country that has dangerous cargo transiting through," said Raik Saart, the head of Tallinn's fire department. "But most wealthy countries have rerouted the trains to bypass urban areas."
.
The economic advantages of this business for Russia and Estonia are clear. It is only about 290 kilometers, or 180 miles, from the Russian border to Estonia's modern sea terminals, which are well-situated at the northeastern corner of the Baltic Sea. Estonia has already profited handsomely, with each train contributing $30,000 to the local economy, according to Eesti Raudtee, the railway company.
.
Yet Saart, the fire chief, displays a thick folder filled with disaster scenarios. He holds a computer printout with a section of the city near the tracks, the area that would be destroyed by an explosion.
.
If just one rail car were to explode, Saart said, there would be 20 to 30 deaths, 90 to 120 injuries and thousands of people needing to be evacuated.
.
Toomas-Henrik Ilves, the leader of Estonia's main opposition party, the Social Democrats, says the solution is to stop the transport.
.
"You don't bring these materials into high-density areas," he said. where no one lives.""No one lives in Bayonne, New Jersey," he added, referring to the area near New York City known for its chemical and oil industries. (Actually, about 62,000 people live in Bayonne, but far from the large oil-storage facilities.)
.
The government says talk of stopping the trains is unrealistic. The transit business provides the country with more than 10 percent of its annual economic activity and the main beneficiary is the government itself, which still owns a majority of the country's cargo ports. Stopping the oil trains would put a big hole in the government's budget.
.
Estonia, a former Soviet republic, joined the European Union in May, but incomes remain less than half the average in the rest of the Union.
.
"Of course we are very interested that the business proceeds the same way," said Taavi Veskimagi, Estonia's finance minister.
.
The government collected revenue of 220 million kroons, or $17 million, from the port last year, he said.
.
The government has proposed a route for the oil trains that would bypass Tallinn, Veskimagi said, but the project has not been approved, and the route would not be completed before 2010. Landowners near Tallinn have pledged to fight the plan.
.
The amount of oil shipped through Estonia has tripled since the country's independence in 1991, and the government is pursuing plans to increase the capacity of the ports.
.
In the meantime, Estonia's rescue workers are not shy about pointing out specific dangers. Saart says many homeless people seek shelter alongside the tracks in Tallinn and often light makeshift fires in the winter to keep warm. Sparks from the train itself could ignite the gasoline, which is more flammable than crude oil. The trains start in Siberia, where it is usually several degrees colder. When they arrive in Estonia, the difference in temperature sometimes causes leaks.
.
Another official mentioned terrorism. Sitting in the northeastern corner of Europe, Estonia seems off the target map, but the government has sent troops to both Afghanistan and Iraq.
.
There have been no major accidents involving Estonia's oil business, but last May there was a close call: Rail ties caught fire for an unknown reason in Tallinn and flames came close to an oil train stationed there.
.
The fire department, Saart said, is capable of putting out small house fires but does not have the equipment or the personnel to address a major explosion.
.
Mihhail Stalnuhhin, the chairman of the City Council in Narva, which straddles the border with Russia, said rescue workers around the country were dispirited at the lack of equipment. Most equipment either dates to Soviet times or was donated by Scandinavian countries.
.
The oil trains also pass through the middle of Narva, and more than 100 residents recently signed a petition protesting their presence, a rare example of civic activism in a country where democracy is just 13 years old.
.
The oil trains also run through the southeastern city of Tartu, where railyards are open to anyone curious enough to stroll inside.
.
Ott Laido, an official at the Estonian Rescue Board, says the government's draft budget for next year includes enough money to buy two new fire trucks for the whole country. Estonia is slightly larger than Switzerland and has a population of about 1.3 million.
.
The average age of fire trucks in Estonia is 20 to 25 years, Laido said. Most heavy equipment either dates to Soviet times or was donated second hand from Scandinavian countries after Estonia's independence in 1991.
.
Laido said finding firemen was also a problem because rescue personnel were paid the equivalent of E270, or $333, a month, compared with the nation's average monthly wage of E460.
.
International Herald Tribune

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