Patty Murray

Mr. Secretary, thank you very much, and we will continue to follow this very closely with you.

This has to be a top priority.

As you know, the disaster in my State has re-taught me what I know, and our first responders on that scene, those firefighters.

I know that class one railroads have committed to spending $5 million to develop a specialized crude by rail training program for our local emergency responders at the Transportation Technology Center that is actually in Pueblo, Colorado.

So you need the Department of Transportation to get that information as well.

Thank you, Senator Murray, Senator Cantwell, Representative DelBene and staff for your response to the mud slide north of us in Snohomish County.

I am really floored and appalled by these results.

The railroad industry and DOT are talking about going beyond the 1232

Thank you so much for your service to our country as well.

I do not want to wait for a year for another report to come out and things are still happening.

We agree that the DOT-111 either needs to be improved or phased out.

I think we can all agree the standard needs to be updated.

It makes absolutely no sense that we do not have similar requirements when we have, in essence, a moving pipeline with unit trains of crude oil or ethanol.

So far the industry has not been cooperative in providing you that information?

Thank you to your entire team and to all of our first responders once again.

We got to, therefore, through planning, preparation, and preparedness, long before a response, do whatever it takes in America to prevent this from ever happening anywhere in our communities.

You responded exactly like that, and I just really commend you and your entire department.

If all of our other means of prevention fail, we need to make sure that cities, like Seattle or anywhere, have the resources they need.

Is that slowing down your ability to get us good information?

We need to make sure people are safe, whether on the train and near the tracks.

We need regulatory certainty on this issue for both new builds and the existing fleet.

I want to just thank you personally for the quick release of emergency relief funds for the Oso mud slide in my State.

We need to make sure that people are safe, whether on the train or near the tracks.

We will be working with you on that.

My constituents are actually very interested in this because Bakken crude is being shipped to the refineries in my home State of Washington.