On the evening of Feb. 3, an eastbound Norfolk Southern freight train passing through East Palestine, Ohio, derailed, igniting a fire and causing the release of vinyl chloride. East Palestine is some 50 miles from my home. Needless to say, there’s been a lot of coverage of the accident by the regional media.
Quite understandably, the residents of East Palestine are fearful of the long-term effects of exposure to the hazardous chemicals. Those living within two miles of the accident site were evacuated while a controlled burn was performed on the affected tank cars. These same residents remain distrustful of rail and government officials—and, of course, politics has now entered the picture.
Thankfully, we have a neutral government agency that looks only at the facts—the National Transportation Safety Board. Shortly after the accident, NTSB investigators arrived onsite to begin a painstaking review of what happened and how we can prevent another such event in the future.
As NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said at a press conference, “We call things ‘accidents.’ There are no accidents. Every single event we investigate is preventable.”
Nonetheless, she was careful not to assign fault. A thorough investigation must yet take place, including investigative hearings. Sadly, derailments occur more often than we’d like. Homendy cited 2021 figures that showed U.S. Class 1 freight railroads had been involved in 868 derailments and 68 collisions that year.
The NTSB’s preliminary report focuses on an overheated wheel bearing on the 23rd railcar that likely caused 38 of the train’s 149 cars to derail. Technology was in place to alert the crew of an overheating problem, but it didn’t alert the crew soon enough. The train passed “hot bearing detectors” some 30 and 20 miles before the accident, which showed increasingly elevated bearing temperatures. But it wasn’t until the train passed another detector that recorded a temperature 253 degrees above ambient that the system sent an alarm telling the crew to stop the train. The derailment occurred while the train was slowing. The crew acted according to current Norfolk Southern procedures.
While many railroads have been trying to reduce crew size to a single operator, having three crew members on this train provided immediate eyes on the ground to report the accident, and decouple and move the locomotives to safety. Thankfully, no one was injured on the train or on the ground.
The investigation will proceed. In the meantime, it’s important to remember that rail is still the safest way to transport chemicals, much safer than moving them on highways, where 100 trucks might be needed to transport the volume handled by a single train.
While new safety legislation has been proposed and may be needed, let’s learn from the NTSB findings and take the proper corrective actions. Let’s not allow politics to dictate safety. As Homendy put it, “We need action on what would prevent that from happening again.”
