Harry Reid: “if you picked up a paper yesterday, you would have seen stories about a transportation wreck again. It was all over the…”

“if you picked up a paper yesterday, you would have seen stories about a transportation wreck again. It was all over the television. It was all over the newspapers. There was a train wreck on Sunday in Gainsville, VA, not far from Washington. Five cars on the train derailed, including two carrying propane, which is very explosive. Route 29--I have traveled that road many times going to Virginia to watch my boy play soccer--was closed for several miles. This is one of the main arteries bringing people to Washington from Virginia. The train derailment not only closed Route 29, but two nearby elementary schools were closed as workers tried to get the cars back on the track and also put the propane back on the railcars or remove them completely. An emergency worker said if the train cars had rolled in the opposite direction, they would have hit an aboveground gas line, and there would have been a catastrophe. This is the third train wreck on that stretch of tracks since 1997. Over the past few weeks, several tragic accidents on highways around the country have raised the question: What if? Just this weekend, a dust storm reduced visibility to zero on a highway in rural southern Arizona. The result was a 26-car pileup. Another dust storm in Colorado caused a 30-car pileup on Interstate 70. What if a truck carrying hazardous waste had been involved in one of these accidents?”