Since oil started moving by rail in unprecedented volumes in the Pacific Northwest in 2012, everyone involved has scrambled to catch up.

Oregon hired more rail safety inspectors. State firefighters and environmental officials trained for accidents and spills. Federal regulators adopted new safety standards.

And yet another oil train went off the rails a week ago in Mosier, a small Columbia River Gorge town, sparking evacuations and a fire that burned for 14 hours.

Oil trains are still not as safe as they could be. Despite nationwide attention, hundreds of millions of gallons of crude oil continues moving by rail through small towns and big cities in the Pacific Northwest, posing risks on both sides of the Columbia River, along the Deschutes River and the Interstate 5 corridor.

Here are five ways the oil trains moved by companies like Union Pacific and BNSF Railway Co. could be safer than they are today.

1. Oil could move in safer tank cars.

The shortcomings of the tank cars carrying volatile crude oil across the country have been obvious for years.

When oil trains began hauling mile-long loads of crude a few years ago, they used an outdated rail car called the DOT-111. The car punctured easily and tore open in derailments. Now oil increasingly moves in a second-generation car called the CPC-1232. It's stronger, with a reinforced steel shield on each end. All the cars in the Mosier derailment were CPC-1232s.

But as that fiery wreck and several others have made clear, oil moving in those tank cars is still dangerous.

Under federal rules issued last year, DOT-111s and CPC-1232s are due to be phased out or retrofitted in favor of a newer car called the DOT-117. That process will target the most unsafe cars first.

But that will take years. Tank cars like those in the Mosier derailment can still ply the rails until May 1, 2025.

Even their replacements will derail, a daily occurrence on rail lines across the country. They are just less likely to release oil when that happens. The new DOT-117 will be thicker, with stronger brakes.

The rules "should result in fewer punctures and pile-ups like we saw in Oregon," said Namrata Kolachalam, a federal Department of Transportation spokeswoman. "The deadlines for retrofit of tank cars have been locked in by Congress and are the absolute last moment for railroads to meet these standards. Industry should work to beat those deadlines."

Michael Eyer, a former state rail safety inspector, said the safest tank car would be one called the DOT-105. It's used to move far more dangerous substances such as propane and anhydrous ammonia. But because it's pressurized, it can hold about a third less, Eyer said, cutting into profits.

"We can make it safer, we can do better," Eyer said. "It takes a degree of commitment that we don't have."

2. Tank cars could be required to better withstand fires.

When the oil train derailed in Mosier, it started a fire that burned beneath loaded tank cars each holding as much as 30,000 gallons of crude.

In other oil train derailments, that pool of flame created so much pressure inside tank cars that they exploded, sending massive fireballs into the sky. That didn't happen in Mosier. Despite the fire and smoke, no tank cars exploded.

But as a Chicago Tribune report found, federal rail regulators didn't address the risks of pool fires in new tank car standards unveiled last year. The Department of Transportation kept a 20-year-old rule that requires tank cars to survive a fire for 100 minutes without exploding.

Safety advocates and rail industry officials urged the federal agency to increase that requirement to 800 minutes, the Tribune found, or 13 hours. That's about how long the Mosier fire burned.

The federal government didn't listen and has no current plans to require that.

3. The oil itself could be made safer.

Crude oil was never supposed to explode.

The oil moving from North Dakota's Bakken formation is extracted by hydraulic fracturing. When it comes out of the ground, it's saturated with unusually high concentrations of flammable gases such as propane and butane - the same gases as in backyard grills and cigarette lighters. A 2014 investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive found the oil moving through the state was unusually volatile.

Producers can strip out those highly flammable gases before the oil is loaded for shipment. The process is called stabilization. North Dakota oil regulators estimate it would add $2 to the production cost of every barrel.

Less volatile oil could still burn in a derailment. But nearby residents and firefighters responding to train accidents would be safer from reducing the size of any fireball.

State regulators in North Dakota last year set the first ever limit to tame the most volatile crude. It requires a less-intense treatment process estimated to cost 10 cents per barrel.

But safety officials and experts on crude oil say the limit, 13.7 psi, is too high to have widespread impact. The oil that exploded in Lac Megantic, Quebec, in 2013, killing 47 people, wouldn't have been affected.

The oil that caught fire in Mosier was also within the North Dakota standards.

It was still as volatile as gasoline.

4. States could minimize oil train traffic until they're safer.

Oregon and Washington can't ban oil trains. Because railroads enable interstate commerce, they're primarily regulated by the federal government -- not states.

But states can control whether those trains have more destinations.

In Washington, Gov. Jay Inslee has the final say over a Vancouver oil train terminal proposed by Tesoro Corp. and Savage Services. The terminal would be the West Coast's largest, bringing up to four oil trains through Washington's side of the Columbia Gorge daily, loading the oil on barges to send to refineries.

Environmental groups have fought the terminal since it was unveiled. They say the Mosier crash will reinvigorate their opposition.

Eric de Place, policy director at the Sightline Institute, a progressive Seattle think tank, said it's up to elected officials such as Inslee to call a timeout on oil trains "until they can prove it's not going to kill us."

"I have to believe this incident is going to register with him," de Place said. "This incident will weigh heavily on the scale."

The Port of Portland said no to an oil train terminal in 2014 after developers contacted the public agency about building a terminal. The port studied the proposal, then publicly rejected it, citing oil train safety risks.

Port leaders haven't changed their minds. Though the agency hasn't received any proposals since then, Bill Wyatt, the port's executive director, said he still doesn't think oil trains are safe enough because of the oil's volatility.

"It's a toxic brew," Wyatt said. "I've personally come to the conclusion that regulators need to step up and deal with this at the source. This substance has proven itself to my satisfaction to be too dangerous."

5. Lawmakers could ensure that railroads, not taxpayers, are on the hook for the costs of a worst-case wreck.

This wouldn't make an oil train safer, but it would reduce risks to the taxpaying public.

When an out-of-control oil train derailed in Lac Megantic, Quebec, and killed 47 people in July 2013, its operator, the Maine, Montreal & Atlantic Railway Ltd., quickly went belly up. The company carried $25 million in insurance. The cleanup and rebuilding was estimated to cost more than $2 billion.

Taxpayers have been picking up the tab.

Starting June 18, Canadian transportation regulators are requiring railroads hauling large volumes of crude to carry $1 billion in liability insurance.

U.S. regulators haven't done the same, despite urging from the National Transportation Safety Board. Washington lawmakers passed a law requiring railroads to prove they had enough insurance for catastrophic accidents. It had little effect.

Railroads including Union Pacific and BNSF Railway Co. filed reports with Washington state regulators estimating a "reasonable" worst-case oil train wreck would cost more than $700 million.

That price tag is less than half the actual worst-case scenario that already happened in Quebec.

Railroads told the state they had enough insurance, but refused to disclose how much, claiming the information was a proprietary trade secret.

-- Rob Davis

rdavis@oregonian.com

503.294.7657