15-year-old Forney High School Junior and Boy Scout Weston Hill thought outside the box for his Eagle Scout project to benefit his community. Weston and his fellow scouts tracked and provided a 24-hour sampling of hazardous material being hauled by train through Forney and Kaufman County.
The scouts spent 24 hours camped out at a small gravel parking lot in front of Smurfit Kappa, formerly Orange County Container, along the Union Pacific railroad that runs parallel with US Highway 80 through Forney. The railroad continues through Terrell, Texas, and Elmo, Texas, before exiting Kaufman County.
The scouts tracked each train and more specifically each train car's cargo by the identification placard on the outside of the train car. The number provided on the placard was then corresponded to a material list in a 2012 Emergency Response Guidebook.
The guidebook provides information about what material is being transported, potential dangers, combative measures for first responders, and even evacuation radiuses in case of an explosion.
Weston will provide the details of his sampling to Kaufman County Emergency Management Coordinator Steve Howie. The information will then be used in the county's hazardous analysis that will assist in the completion of Kaufman County's Disaster Mitigation Plan.
Kaufman County's Hazardous Mitigation Plan, which is expected to be completed between October 1, 2014, and February 1, 2015, will allow Kaufman County to receive federal grants before or after a hazardous event – such as the EF-3 tornado that touched down in Forney on April 3, 2012. The fact that the Hazardous Mitigation Plan is in its development stages has allowed Kaufman County residents to sign up for federal grants to assist in building storm shelters.
So what exactly did Weston and the scouts of Troop 1161 find? According to Weston, most hazardous material cars were hauling petro, or crude oil. Several cars were carrying various acids and other flammable materials. Some cars were even carrying ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive chemical compound often found in the agriculture industry used as a high-nitrogen fertilizer. Ammonium nitrate was at the center of the West, Texas, fertilizer plant explosions that killed 12 first responders earlier this year.
Weston tracked 28 trains in the 24-hour period. Howie says, “On average we get 22-24 trains a day.”
For the project, Weston coordinated with Kaufman County's Emergency Management Department, the Forney Police Department, Smurfit Kappa, and Union Pacific. “This will benefit the entire county, we will be better prepared to handle any accidents,” said Eagle Scout hopeful Weston Hill.