This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
So obviously it’s Biden fault
Kind of amusing how all the RWNJs are all in a lather because government didn’t get involved enough in this case, innit?
Socializing the Costs, 2.0
And of course if the government had intervened, they’d be screaming about overreach.
I’d love to see all of this hashed out in public hearings (or a public trial), including the details of every override that’s been issued, and the performance reviews of employees who did or didn’t issue those overrides. Need to get management skin in the game.
In the initial hours of this train wreck the company would not tell first responders what chemicals they were dealing with beyond the load of vinyl chloride.
It could be the “controlled burn” was begun before they knew what it was they were dealing with.
Precision Scheduled Railroading - well, just like :“just in time” mfg inventory management, it works until there is an emergency or unforeseen market disruptions, and then it doesn’t, in a catastrophic way
The company must be annoyed that Republicans that were paid perfectly good money to deregulate hazardous shipments are making a BFD of East Palestine now, in an attempt to make President Biden look bad for going to Kiev.
In 1973 a similar accident happened in Southern Arizona that involved a train car carrying 500lb bombs that caught fire due to poor maintenance. The initial explosion created a 115’ wide crater, and 500lb bombs continued to explode for hours. This happened in open desert a few miles east of Benson AZ, so there were fortunately no fatalities. But if it had occurred a few minutes later, it could have destroyed most of the Benson business district.
By chance, I was riding in the bed of a pickup truck on I-10, several miles away, and looking directly in that direction when the first explosion went off. The fireball was so large that, for a second, I thought it must have been a nuke. Then I realized I was still alive.
Yeah, I’ll bet N-S “declined to comment”. Who’s working that so-called help desk, anyway…Seymour Skinner?
“Smoke and flame? Overheating wheels? Why, nooo, that’s just the steamed hams they’re preparing in the dining car!”
“We made a criminal referral to the office of attorney general. They’ll determine whether or not there was criminal activity,” Shapiro said. “What I know is that Norfolk Southern is governed every day, not by caring about the communities that they send their trains through, but by corporate greed.”
No execs from Boeing went to prison for the 737 Max.
Worse. It’s a dressed up program of working around safety practices, practices that had been written in blood.
Donnie is the head of the party that is anti-regulation and caters to the likes of the railroads and chemical companies. Then, he has the audacity to criticize the Biden administration and seek political advantage by taking a trip to Palestine, OH??? Such hypocritical, crass, self-serving BS! Yet another stunt!!
Modern management in action. It’s all about squeezing “redundancy” and “inefficiency” out of the process.
Let me put that a different way: It’s all about squeezing safety margins out of the system.
I’d like to see this too.
I was astounded to hear that the RR was ordering crews to take trains past an initial hot box detector warning.
I’d like to know where the failure occured in the train as the length of delay to check for hot journals is tied to how far back they need to go for the inspection.
I suspect the RR is rolling the dice on initial detector warnings on cars deep in the train consist in order to weed out longer stops.
There is no excuse for this.
The conductor has a primary duty to know what is in his train and where that car is located. He would have had all the information needed to give to first responders. The RR would have the same information.
The good thing here is that the heads of Norfolk Southern, and its entire board of directors, have all tendered their resignations.
They need to spend more quality time with their lawyers.
I think that Norfolk Southern should have to purchase the property of the affected landowners at 25% over last month’s market value. Yes, the whole damn town! They spent billions on stock buybacks; they can afford it. Then they should clean up their newly acquired property.