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Without any public knowledge or advance planning, railroad companies began moving hundreds of millions of gallons of highly explosive oil in unsafe tank cars through some of the Pacific Northwest's most scenic places. The sudden rise caught first responders, public officials, local residents and regulators by surprise. A rolling investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive found extensive flaws in state readiness and an opaque state rail safety system that acted beholden to the railroads it was supposed to be regulating.