EASTERN PALESTINE, Ohio (AP) —
Residents of an eastern Ohio village are learning more about the fiery Norfolk Southern freight train crash that claimed their lives last year. Now another hearing is beginning. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will discuss the ongoing investigation and make recommendations to prevent future disasters.
“On behalf of the entire agency, I want to acknowledge the significant impact of this derailment,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said at the start of Tuesday’s hearing. She said some people have tried to downplay the far-reaching impact of last year’s derailment because there were no fatalities, but “the absence of deaths or injuries does not mean that safety is assured.”
Michael Graham, a board member who was on the scene after the derailment, said the NTSB’s work does not end with making recommendations to prevent future derailments.
“We will continue to pursue and advocate these safety recommendations until each one is implemented,” he said.
On February 3, 2023, dozens of freight cars, including 11 carrying hazardous materials, derailed on the edge of East Palestine near the Pennsylvania border. Residents were evacuated as fears of a possible explosion grew. Despite potential health effects, officials then intentionally released toxic vinyl chloride from five of the cars and burned them, sending flames and clouds of black smoke into the air.
The NTSB had initially stated that the accident was probably caused by an overheated bearing on one of the cars that was not detected in time by sensors on the tracks. Investigations have since uncovered other possible causes, including widespread layoffs at the railroad and hasty inspections. Investigators also looked into why officials intentionally blew open the cars and burned vinyl chloride, an vital component of PVC pipes.
On Tuesday, NTSB board members confirmed that a detector on the track in Salem, Ohio, failed to properly detect the overheated bearing on the rail car that was ablaze about 20 miles (32.19 kilometers) before the fiery train derailment in East Palestine last year. They said firefighters did not learn what was on the train until more than an hour after the derailment.
NTSB board members also said Norfolk Southern and its contractors compromised the integrity of the decision to vent and burn by withholding precise information from OxyVinyls, the manufacturer of the vinyl chloride. They added that Norfolk Southern contractors who had recommended blowing open the vinyl tank cars and burning the contents continued to push for venting and burning despite evidence that the tank cars were cooling after the accident.
Committee members said there are no standards for how railroads should respond to bearing failure alarms. NTSB staff said they would recommend that the Federal Railroad Administration establish rules for how railroads should respond to the alarms. Although the NTSB’s recommendations are not binding, Congress may be willing to enforce some of them because the accident has focused attention on railroad safety.
Over a year ago, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Ohio’s two senators proposed a package of reforms that would have included requiring two-person crews and setting standards for inspections and detectors to prevent derailments. But that bill stalled in the U.S. Senate due to opposition from Republicans and railroads. Republican leaders in the House have said they will not consider modern rail safety regulations until the NTSB’s final report is released.
With restricted success, federal regulators also pushed railroads to make changes, such as signing up for an anonymous government hotline to report safety concerns. The industry responded to the accident by promising to install more detectors on the tracks, review their operate and support emergency responders better deal with derailments through more training and better access to information about the load.
For his part, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw pledged to “make things right” in East Palestine by providing more than $100 million in relief funds to residents and the community. Shaw also hired a consultant from the nuclear industry to recommend changes and tried to work with workers. But critics accused Norfolk Southern of too often settling for only the minimum necessary for safety in the past, and workers reported no major changes in day-to-day operations.
After the derailment, all of the major freight railroads pledged to work on improving safety by installing hundreds more sensors on the tracks to detect problems such as overheated bearings and revamping the way they analyze data from those detectors. The Association of American Railroads, an industry trade group, said the industry will review the NTSB’s report and look for other ways to improve safety. But so far, the industry’s efforts have not resulted in a significant improvement in its safety record in the FRA’s statistics.
Earlier this year, Homendy told Congress that the agency’s investigation had found that the controversial “vent-and-burn” action that led to the evacuations was not necessary. Experts from vinyl chloride manufacturer OxyVinyls had testified at previous hearings before the NTSB that they were certain that a feared chemical reaction that could have caused the tank cars to explode had not occurred.
But Ohio’s governor, emergency responders and the hazardous materials experts who made the decision said that based on the information available to them that day, they believed an explosion was likely imminent, so burning was the best option, despite the risk of releasing cancer-causing dioxin into the region.
The chemical manufacturer declined to comment publicly beyond the statements made by its experts last spring.
Norfolk Southern announced last week that it would conduct an industry-wide investigation into how to improve decision-making in future derailments, part of its settlement with the federal government.
The NTSB also looked into the problems faced by first responders who did not immediately know what was on the train after 38 cars jumped off the tracks and many of the cars spilled their contents and caught fire.
Federal regulators on Monday approved a modern rule requiring railroads to notify first responders about what’s on a train immediately after a derailment. The industry says more than two million first responders now have instant access to that information through an AskRail app that lets them look up the load on any train.
____
Funk contributed to this story from Omaha, Nebraska, and Krisher from Detroit.
