It’s interesting to read the letters and articles written by the anti-oil terminal “Chicken Littles” who either won’t tell both sides of the story or don’t know both sides of the story. They go on and on about the derailments and fires and explosions and the catastrophic end of life as we know it if Vancouver is allowed to have an oil terminal. But let’s look at information from both sides.
According to an article from the New York Times (http://nyti.ms/1aYemEc), the bastion of political centrality, there were 400,000 cars carrying oil by rail in 2013 (that’s in the U.S. and Canada combined, so our total would obviously be less, but we’ll go with that number to be optimistic). During that same time frame, 137 of those cars released their oil in the U.S. and some of them resulted in fires and a very few deaths.
Now here’s the part you won’t hear from the gloom and doom crowd. Using basic math we can figure out that less than .035 percent of the cars carrying oil derailed and/or caught on fire in the United States. For the anti-oil terminal crowd I’m sure any number of cars derailing is disastrous and not worth the risk, but for rational thinking people, this minuscule percentage would be considered an appropriate risk.
Harold A. Lay
Vancouver
