All this talk about lazy Bertha getting her toenails clipped only distracts from the real issue: the 110-year-old railroad tunnel that runs under downtown Seattle. All this talk of tankers from the Bakken oil fields filled with flammable crude, no one mentions it any more. KOMO had this ominous report a year ago, and nothing has changed since.
How is the 1905 tunnel deficient? Separately, [former City Council member Mike] O'Brien and [Assistant Fire Chief Alan] Vickery said it lacks emergency fire suppression systems, full emergency communications, adequate train staffing, built-in ventilation, safe access for first responders, sufficient flame-fighting foam, plans for continuing training for firefighters, and sufficient knowledge of how a fire burning so much oil would affect the infrastructure on the downtown streets above. A fire could ignite just one tank car carrying 33,000 gallons of Bakken oil. In July 2013 in Quebec, many tankers exploded sending liquid flames in every direction, killing 47 people.But don't worry about it, the chance of anything going wrong is "extremely remote." That photo, two years old, was of a tanker explosion in North Dakota, where it was also described as "extremely remote."
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