On the evening of February 3, 2023, a Norfolk Southern Railroad freight train carrying 141 loaded cars, 9 empty cars, and 3 locomotives was passing through Ohio when disaster struck.
Thirty-eight train cars, including eleven carriages loaded with hazardous materials such as vinyl chloride, benzene residue, hydrogen chloride, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate and isobutylene, derailed in an eastern Palestinian town.But the worst was yet to come.
Flames that first appeared beneath the train quickly engulfed part of the pile of derailed carriages in a raging fire.
“We basically nuked the town with chemicals.”
A few days after the fire started, emergency crews from Norfolk Southern Railway, under the supervision of so-called experts and emergency personnel, fought the fire themselves.
Citing the need to avoid “catastrophic tanker failure,” the railroad vented and burned five PVC tanks, darkening the skies over eastern Palestine. The National Transportation Safety Board said:
It is called A toxic “mushroom cloud”.
“We basically nuclear-bombed the town with chemicals in order to open up the railroad,” hazardous materials expert Silverio Caggiano told WKBN.
Local wildlife died by the thousands, nearby water bodies were polluted, and residents were forced to evacuate their homes.
Apparently it was all in vain.
The NTSB
Announced On Tuesday, the local incident commander said the decision to carry out a controlled burn on Feb. 6 was “based on incomplete and misleading information provided by Norfolk Southern Railway personnel and contractors. Venting and incineration were not necessary to prevent failure of the tank car.”
While the Federal Railroad Administration maintains that venting and incineration procedures should be a last resort, the NTSB noted that the railroad “rejected three other cleanup methods and initiated plans for venting and incineration immediately after the derailment.”
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Abstract The NTSB’s final report stated that “the temperature decline trend observed in tank car OCPX80370 indicates that, contrary to representations by Norfolk Southern Railway and its contractors, no polymerization was occurring within the tank car.”
Similarly, no polymerization occurred in the tank cars containing vinyl chloride monomer, which “remained in a stable environment until vented and combusted,” rendering their hyperbolic justification for blowing up the trains unfounded.
The safety board alleged that the railroad had concealed information from Oxyvinyl, which manufactured the polyvinyl chloride, and information that indicated the tank cars were being cooled after the derailment.
report The Associated Press.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said investigators had been told by Norfolk Southern’s contractor that the company had not kept records of temperature changes in the PVC tank cars.
“We learned through text messages from one of our employees who provided information in a later interview that they had kept those records,” the NTSB chairman said. “It took our team about two months to get those text messages and emails.”
Temperature measurements are very important when deciding whether to perform a controlled burn.
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statement Norfolk Southern again defended its decision Tuesday, saying it had carefully considered all options.
The lawsuit also alleged that the company and its contractors “received conflicting information from Oxyvinyls employees about whether polymerization was occurring or could occur, and that Oxyvinyls’ safety data sheets clearly stated that polymerization could occur under the conditions observed in the derailment.”
Contrary to the railroad’s claims, Oxy Vinyls’ experts reportedly testified at previous NTSB hearings that they were confident at the time that polymerization had not occurred.
NTSB
Hearing Homendy on Tuesday also accused Norfolk Southern Railroad, which has spent nearly $100 million in bribes to Washington, D.C. politicians since 1990, of obstructing the investigation and abusing its position as a party to it.
“Norfolk Southern’s abuse of party discipline is unprecedented and reprehensible,” Homendy said.
The railroads apparently delayed providing key information to investigators, and Homendy suggested that Norfolk Southern never even provided the information requested.
In its report, the NTSB also emphasized that Norfolk Southern’s delay in consistently informing emergency responders “caused emergency responders to spend an unnecessarily long time in the vicinity of the derailment and delayed the issuance of evacuations, thereby unnecessarily exposing emergency responders and the public to danger following the derailment.”
The committee’s findings were released by a federal judge.
approved Norfolk Southern Railroad entered into a $600 million class action settlement to address class action claims within a 20-mile radius of the derailment and personal injury claims within a 10-mile radius of the derailment.
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