Hydrochloric Acid Spill

[dave1905]

Authorities keep telling us that they don;t know how much acid was in the tanker, which I find not only odd, but deliberately misleading:

1. I was under the impression that the shipping of hazardous materials required specific documentation.

The waybill/paperwork may say "a carload'" or the commodity might be listed by the weight. The paperwork documentation requirements are set by the Federal Government.

2. The capacity of the tanker is known, and the experts have stated that the leak was approximately 75 gallons. If they can be that specific, they must have an expert estimate on the amount still in the tanker.

Only if they know how much was in the car to begin with. Probably only the shipper would know that.

3. The tanker was pumped out into another tanker. I'm no rocket scientist, but if I know the capacity of the pump in gallons/minute and how long it took the pump to empty the tanker, I'll bet I can figure out how much acid that car was carrying.

It depends on how accurate you want to be. You know how much was pumped out, but you don't know how much residue is left in the tank. Is it 50 gallons? Is it 500 gallons? After the BP disaster are you going to quote a figure so 20 or 30 experts can speculate on a different number?
The other question is what difference does it make? Would you or the responders have done anything different if there was 10,000 gallons in the tank versus 15,000 gallons?

Remember that railroads HAVE to handle hazardous shipments. They have NO choice. One railroad tried to refuse a cross country hazmat shipment saying that the commodity was readily available in the area near the destination so there was no need to ship the hazmat halfway across the country. They lost and had to take the shipment because they are a common carrier. Of any of the transportation modes, rail is definitely one of the safest.