Natural Disasters, Railroads and Industries

[StorkNest]

From the thread on Japan, I started asking questions.
Might as well, the local news site is already doing stories on nearby nuclear plants and earthquakes in the NYC area from the Ramapo Fault Line and three others connected to it.

1 - How do railroads prepare their infrastructure for possible disasters such as earthquakes?

2 - How well protected are industries against such events?

3 - How do these businesses handle such events when they happen?

 

[cascaderailroad]

Railroads have always been a money making private business, that skimps on expences ... making no plans whatsoever, until the derailment happens (of course they have contractors all lined up to respond to derailment cleanup, but that is about all). They have always been a fly by the seat of the pants type operation, in it for the short run, not the long run.

They replace infrastucture, after it fails, or when the State or Federal Govt inspectors step in and demand they do maintenance.

 

[gfisher]

I might point out that after Katrina, Norfolk Southern who had all the track from their bridge across Lake Pontchartrain washed into the lake was up and running again in less than a week, while the damaged public highway bridge was only going out for construction bids two years later. Not too shabby for NS.
How would you disaster proof railway track anyway? There is no reasonable way to do it. Fixing it when it is damaged is actually a quite reasonable policy. And I will bet that the railroads have back-up systems and contingency plans for the really important stuff like their centralized train control centers.

 

[Euphod]

I tend to agree with Mr. Fisher. Short of mounting every piece of rail of some heavy duty springs I can't imagine how to earthquake proof a railroad. Bridges are inspected, I'm sure, but to what specifications they are built is beyond my knowledge. Every industry has disaster plans to follow, but railroad infrastructure is fairly unique.

 

[bendorsey]

Its always been a myth that the cat 5 hurrcane that hit the Florida Keys around 1927 totally destroyed the Florida East Coast railway to Key West. It was back up and up and running within 2 weeks. The automobile is what eventually killed the Key West extension.

Ben