19 Railroad Cars of Oil Blew Up … and Left Still Burnin’ in West Virginia

In 2015.  This isn’t some Depression Era cautionary singalong. Happened the day before yesterday.

Seriously.

Neon mushroom clouds that the locals had, prior to this oil-rail debacle, only seen in movies were West Virginians first clue that more snow than usual was not their worst problem this February.

Their worst problem was this: a regular-route, thought to have ‘modern’ tank-car-hauling train, moving more than 100 tankers of crude oil from North Dakota to the Eastern seaboard, derailed, spilled oil into the nearby river … then exploded into the aforementioned super-balls of flame near the ironically named Mount Carbon, W.V..

Which in turn went on to contaminate the water supplies and force the evacuation of two towns.

And, by the way, some of those things were still burning as I type this at 5:25 a.m. EST.

Whoa, what?!? Why isn’t that train crawling with news crews?

Because only Hayes, Rachel Maddow and Nicole Sandler and @GottaLaff and a few other alternative media voices were OUTRAGED enough to give it some precious air and Twitter feed time. Until it became unavoidable.

From Maddow last night. Factual truthiness and expert opinion.

If you’re just learning about the West Virginia CSX railroad disaster/fire and oil spill, catch the Maddow reporting from Monday.

Alternately from Reuters. And yes, North Dakota Crude is the same sort of stuff that we’d see pumping through pipelines. Laffy has been saying that for ever. In harmony with Nicole, even.

(Reuters) – An oil train was still on fire and leaking in West Virginia on Tuesday, a day after it derailed and erupted in flames, according to CSX Corp, which said the train was hauling newer model tank cars, not the older versions widely criticized as prone to puncture.

 

The train, which was carrying North Dakota crude to an oil depot in Yorktown, Virginia, derailed in a small town 33 miles southeast of Charleston, causing 20 tank cars to catch fire.

The Governor of West Virginia neatly punted to the federal government when the question of safety and better regulation … and he’s a Democrat. Who will likely have ties to things in that poverty-plagued state that most progressives will find distasteful.

In a former life a RINO who became so disenchanted with where the GOP was headed (as far back as the early eighties, exclamation point exclamation point) swept into fellow Vermont delegate Pat Leahy’s office and declared “I represent dairy farmers not oil barons, so who else is supposed to get them a fair price for milk?” And like it was an Abbott and Costello routine, Jim Jeffords waited for his colleague to see and fill the need for the Reagan era schtick reply, “Milk and oil don’t trickle down!” As we know, supply-side was an EpicFail as the national debt tripled from one to three trillion dollars during the fabled REAGAN YEARS.

Trickle down facts is the newest thing we are supposed to embrace, apparently, particularly when it comes to the newest news standards in the U.S.

Isn’t that just gossip?

Exciting note:  Nicole will be hosting Bob Kincaid this morning on her show, 10a.m. – noon daily Monday through Friday;  but he is on today/Wednesday. Bob was on All In with Chris Hayes last night, video at the link here.