Tankers In West Virginia Explosion Were Newer, Supposedly Safer Model

The railroad cars involved in the fiery derailment in West Virginia on Monday were a newer model that was supposed to be safer than older tankers blamed in other oil train explosions.

The ruptured cars were built to specifications adopted by the railroad industry in 2011 amid criticism that older tankers were dangerously susceptible to puncture and a risk of explosion. Called CPC 1232 cars, they were also involved in an April 2014 derailment and explosion in Lynchburg, Va.

The specifications for the newer cars were issued by the Association of American Railroads, whose members include major freight carriers in North America. They came amid concerns that older models called DOT-111s, which still carry a majority of the crude oil shipped by rail, were unsafe.

CSX spokeswoman Melanie Cost today confirmed that the ruptured tankers that caught fire were CPC 1232 models.

Read more:

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2015/02/17/Derailed-CSX-train-in-West-Virginia-hauled-newer-model-tank-cars-oil/stories/201502170171

A Record Worth Wilting For: Death Valley Is Hotter Than …

USA-CALIFORNIA/DEATH VALLEY STS073-E-5119 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, CALIFORNIA/DEATH VALLEY (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

FURNACE CREEK, CALIFORNIA — For Death Valley, a place that embraces its extremes, this has long been an affront: As furnace-hot as it gets here, it could not lay claim to being the hottest place on earth.  That honor, as it were, has gone since 1922 to a city on the northwestern tip of Libya.

Until now. After a yearlong investigation by a team of climate scientists, the World Meteorological Organization, the climate agency of the United Nations, announced this fall that it was throwing out a reading of 136.4 degrees claimed by the city of Al Aziziyah on Sept. 13, 1922.  It made official what anyone who has soldiered through a Death Valley summer afternoon here could attest to.  There is no place hotter in the world.  A 134-degree reading registered on July 10, 1913, at Greenland Ranch here is now the official world record.

And while people were not quite jumping up and down at the honor, the 134-degree reading has inspired the kind of civic pride that for most communities might come with having a winning Little League baseball team.

“For those of us who survive here in the summer, it was no surprise that it’s the hottest place on the world,” said Charlie Callaghan, a Death Valley National Park ranger who personally recorded a 129-degree day here a few years back.

Read more:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/science/earth/death-valley-temperature-record-is-restored.html?hp&_r=0