The more the public learns about the April 30 train derailment in Downtown Lynchburg, the more we are disturbed by the incident.

April 30, 2014, will go down in local history as the day downtown was not obliterated. A CSX oil train with 105 tanker cars was on its way to Yorktown, when 17 of the cars derailed in Lynchburg, plunging three into the James River. One ruptured, leaked oil into the river and caught fire. Thankfully, there were no fatalities or injuries.

Two meetings were held in the capital last week, the first a meeting of state, local and industry officials convened by U.S. Sen. Mark Warner and the second, on Wednesday, the first meeting of Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s select commission to investigate the derailment and its aftermath.

Both were eye-opening for the information the public learned.

In Warner’s meeting, the public learned the car that ruptured, leaked and caught fire was one of the newest models of tankers, a fact that ought to send shudders down the spines of every rail industry and government official. This newest model was only developed in last three years and was touted by the rail industry as much less prone to ruptures.

The rail industry moves thousands of tanker cars carrying the highly flammable Bakken shale crude oil every day. That number has been increasing over the last several years as new drilling techniques such as hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a., fracking) have increased the output of U.S. oilfields.

Many of those tankers are models that are four decades old, relatively thin skinned and easily punctured. But the rail industry has been moving to a newer design, purportedly safer and much less likely to rupture in a derailment.

Or so they thought.

The federal transportation department has been studying new regulations for oil transportation for several years. As Warner and representatives of local governments and first responders said to federal and industry officials, it’s time to move from the talking and studying phase into the implementation phase of new safety regulations.

That’s even more important if the investigation reveals the newer, supposedly safer tanker design isn’t safer and needs to be reworked.

In Wednesday’s meeting of McAuliffe’s rail safety panel, we learned equally disturbing information about the derailment, information that government and industry officials must move quickly on.

First, Massoud Tahamtani, the director of the State Corporation Commission’s Division of Utility and Railroad Safety, informed the panel that CSX inspectors had discovered a track “defect” the day before the derailment. Unfortunately, he had no further details for the panel, as the company has 30 days to analyze the information; neither CSX nor the National Transportation Safety Board had any comment on the report.

Second, came unsettling details about the safety inspection regime itself.

In Virginia, the SCC and the Federal Railroad Administration share track inspection duties. And between them, there are four — four — inspectors for the entire state. Since the derailment, inspectors have increased their examination of the line used by CSX to transport Bakken crude to a storage facility in Yorktown to every 30 days and are considering strengthening the ranks of inspectors. Tahamatani also announced state inspectors had assumed responsibility for the entire Lynchburg line, not just the Richmond-to-Yorktown portion.

All of this information and the many reports to come will be useless unless it results in positive safety actions on the part of government and the oil and rail industries.

Safety standards for rail cars must be examined and, if needed, severely tightened. The rail industry needs to do a much better job of informing states and localities of dangerous cargoes traveling through their jurisdictions, and that includes all dangerous cargoes, not just crude oil. Routes these trains take through highly populated areas should be reconsidered. Track inspection programs should be strengthened immediately, and the industry ought to consider upgrading those tracks to modern, 21st-century standards of concrete ties, rather than the wooden crossties and spikes of the 19th century.