The issue over Ethanol deliveries by rail to Revere by coming through Everett and Chelsea has caused our three cities to come together to oppose it.
Meetings in all three places strongly opposing such a scenario have brought out hundreds of residents who are concerned as well as vocal leaders decrying the planned deliveries to a variety of meetings in an unusual show of solidarity.
It is rare, indeed, when Chelsea, Everett and Revere agree upon anything, let alone an issue of such major safety concern in all three communities.
All three communities face excessive danger if such deliveries are allowed to take place.
In Everett, the specter of 60 rail tank cars loaded with Ethanol destined for Revere but passing through Chelsea on their way, excites interest in just what would happen if the rail deliveries blew up?
What would happen, plainly, simply, absolutely is that a conflagration would occur.
We’re not trying to be business downers and we don’t classify ourselves as safety experts.
But if an Ethanol train exploded near to the LNG tanks in Everett, or near to population centers in Chelsea or in Revere by Global’s depot, it wouldn’t be the end of the world – but it would certainly come close to being just that.
Many, many people would burn to death. Fires would be ignited with no reasonable chance of putting them out and they would have to be left to burn themselves out.
In highly populated, congested, industrialized neighborhoods such as ours, an Ethanol explosion would be a life-threatening setback of the first order.
One explosion would be enough to setback economic interests and safety interests for all our residents for years to follow.
This is why those planned deliveries should not be allowed to happen.
We’ve already been told the LNG tanks can’t be blown up.
But what if they did?
What if all the oil, gasoline and jet fuel storage was ignited in any of our cities?
It would be a deadly disaster like nothing we’ve ever experienced and would put the two Chelsea Fires during the 20th Century into a proper perspective.
As cities working together, we can put a stop to the Ethanol deliveries.
We urge our leaders, City Manager Jay Ash, Everett Mayor Carlo DiMaria and Revere Mayor Dan Rizzo to take this case for sanity and safety a few steps further and to do whatever is necessary to gain a wider audience of public safety officials and leaders as soon as possible.
These recent meetings about the issue show how working together, almost anything can be achieved, including a public safety consensus.