My name is Matt Landon and I am a volunteer with Vancouver Action Network in Vancouver, Washington, though I am from Georgia and Tennessee originally. Anyways I was sorry to learn about the recent oil train explosion in WV. While this explosion didn’t happen in the majority of your watersheds it will impact many folks downstream.

If you are curious about the route that these exploding oil trains are taking through WV then you can check out these maps from Forest Ethics Oil Train Blast Zone map: http://explosive-crude-by-rail.org/

When you look at this map you will see that these oil trains DO potentially impact a large part of WV. Just to let you know there is a budding international movement that is working to deal with this oil train issue which you or your group are more than welcome to participate in.

We will be conducting the following projects in our area here and would encourage you to engage in them as well if you feel concerned:

1) Listening Projects in Railside neighborhoods– VAN is partnering with Portland Rising Tide (and other groups?) to help increase the number of most directely impacted railside residents participating in this growing movement. This spring we plan to go door to door to conduct a Listening Project (based on the Mountain Justice model) to learn about the concerns of railside residents, provide some technical education about oil by rail projects, and recruit volunteers for Train Watch and other direct actions. A mandatory training will be provided prior to listening.

2) Twitter Train Watch volunteers needed– This is one of the most vital tools which VAN can help provide, REAL TIME oil train monitoring data. This is information that isn’t being provided by any other group, federal or state agency (that I know of). If you see a 100% oil train please Tweet the time, direction of train travel if known, location such as city, state and major landmark, and the hash tag #waoiltrainwatch for Washington state, #oroiltrainwatch for Oregon and so on. This can be done from where ever you are as long as you can see oil trains and use Twitter. Do you live near exploding oil train railroad routes? Check this Forest Ethics map
Forest Ethics Blast Zone Map: http://explosive-crude-by-rail.org/

We also have the option of monitoring oil trains in Vancouver, WA via live webcam if anyone is interested. I can’t stress how important this real time data is to our budding movement. This is one way to provide real time data to first responders, government officials, local citizens, and those planning direct actions against oil trains. Contact VAN if you start monitoring so we can promote your work.

3) Railroad Infrastructure monitoring via drone– Yep VAN has entered the drone age. We’ll be using a drone with Go Pro video to monitor railroad bridges for safety violations. We will be doing visual inspections of railroad crossings which is a common place for accidents to happen. We plan to use TweetedTrips.com to help provide easy to use access to our monitoring data. TweetedTrips.com will map your geosynced tweets and display photos from your trip so that railroad experts and the Utilities Transportation Commission which regulates crossings in Washington state can bust the railroads.

We will not be trespassing on railroad property or breaking current drone regulatory laws. Ok, thanks for all that you do to help protect the water and communities.

<<<<< Be well, matt landon