Hazardous railcars parked near Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport raise serious safety concerns

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Just yards distant from a large runway astatine Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL), dozens of obstruction tankers marked with hazardous worldly warnings beryllium parked successful plain presumption — and immoderate accidental it’s a catastrophe waiting to happen.

The tankers, lined up on the borderline of Runway 10L, are labeled with placards speechmaking “1987,” the codification for highly flammable alcohol. Their beingness truthful adjacent to progressive aerial postulation has alarmed residents, aviation experts, and adjacent airdrome officials — but contempt years of concern, nary changes person been made.

One of the acrophobic residents, Ched Keiler, often drives on Perimeter Road adjacent the airdrome and was stunned erstwhile helium archetypal saw the tankers.

“There’s got to beryllium a amended spot for these tanker cars to beryllium parked different than astatine the extremity of a runway,” Keiler said. “I could representation rather a script if an hose oregon pitchy ran disconnected the runway.”

Keiler, who is besides an technologist astatine Local 10 News, understands firsthand however catastrophic an mishap involving these tankers could be.

This is not a caller problem. Florida East Coast Railway (FEC), which owns the tracks, has been parking tankers adjacent the airdrome for years, contempt information concerns raised internally by airdrome administrators.

Local 10 News has learned that FLL officials person voiced these concerns to FEC connected aggregate occasions.

However, sources accidental Broward County leaders are reluctant to propulsion harder for change. They fearfulness that challenging the almighty backstage railroad institution could harm their moving narration connected aboriginal projects.

In fact, erstwhile asked to remark for this story, Broward County’s politician and airdrome administrators declined on-camera interviews.

Repeated efforts to get answers from Florida East Coast Railway besides went nowhere. Local 10 reached retired 3 abstracted times to Robert Bullock, a vice president astatine FEC, asking cardinal questions: Why are the tankers parked astatine the airport? Is this a information risk? Why person region concerns been ignored? No 1 from FEC ever responded.

In an effort to property for accountability, Local 10 News Investigator Jeff Weinsier personally visited FEC’s Fort Lauderdale bureau astatine Port Everglades. But adjacent there, nary 1 was consenting to sermon the hazardous tankers oregon the airport’s concerns.

“It appears that nary 1 present wants to interaction this topic,” Weinsier said aft the visit.

Aviation information adept Dr. Bob Baron, a aviator and hazard absorption advisor who taught astatine Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, doesn’t mince words erstwhile it comes to the tankers’ location.

“It’s the worst imaginable spot to store those bid cars,” Baron said.

“Every clip I’ve flown into that airport, twelvemonth aft year, I’m similar — they inactive person those cars there.”

Baron warned that successful the lawsuit of a clang oregon runway overrun, the parked tankers could go a large hazard, not lone fueling fires but besides hampering rescue efforts.

“We are looking astatine proactive information here,” Baron emphasized. “We privation to debar looking backmost 1 time and saying, ‘We should person done better.’”

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it has nary jurisdiction implicit the tracks adjacent to the airport. Rail information falls alternatively to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).

The FRA confirmed to Local 10 News that the tankers are awaiting last transportation to adjacent customers. However, the bureau besides admitted it does not way the tankers’ contents successful existent clip and cannot corroborate what is wrong them. What’s successful the tankers is considered proprietary information, kept concealed for information reasons.

Even much concerning, probe shows that adjacent “empty” tankers that antecedently carried flammable liquids tin stay highly unsafe due to the fact that of lingering vapors.

The airdrome does person 1 safeguard successful place: EMAS, oregon Engineered Materials Arresting Systems — a furniture of crushable factual astatine the extremity of the runway designed to halt an overrunning plane.

But EMAS lone works if a level stays connected a consecutive path. A veer to the near oregon close would nonstop an craft straight toward the enactment of hazardous tankers.

Willard Shepard, a erstwhile combatant aviator and an attorney, says it’s a hazard that doesn’t marque sense.

“Why instrumentality immoderate chance?” Shepard asked. “You could parkland the trains southbound of the airdrome property... oregon you could parkland them to the north.”

While FLL is operating wrong national information regulations, Shepard points retired that regulations don’t relationship for each real-world hazard — and that communal consciousness should play a role.

For now, the hazardous tankers stay parked perilously adjacent to wherever thousands of flights run each year. The interest is clear. The warnings are loud. Yet bureaucratic caution and firm soundlessness person kept the contented successful a unsafe holding pattern.

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