Tag Archives: East Palestine Ohio

Misplaced Blame From The Mainstream Media

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The Democrats have reached the point where if President Biden trips going up the stairs on Air Force One, it’s President Trump’s fault. He obviously made the steps too high. We are seeing this dynamic at work in the aftermath of the train disaster in Ohio. Not only has the Biden administration been slow to respond, some Democrats and media are blaming President Trump for the crash. The fact that up until January, the Democrats for two years controlled Congress and the Presidency does not seem to play into their thought process. Anyway, The Washington Examiner posted an article on Saturday that provides clarification on what is being said.

The article reports:

Facts are stubborn things. So, the best way for Democrats to push a good partisan narrative is to ignore them entirely.

That’s what many on the Left are doing right now in the aftermath of a disastrous train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. They’re attempting to pin the blame for the ensuing chemical disaster on former President Donald Trump and “deregulation” more broadly, arguing that the Trump administration repealed an Obama-era safety rule that could’ve prevented this tragic accident.

…Progressive voices ranging from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the White House to the popular “Pod Save America” hosts and huge liberal social media pages such as Occupy Democrats have made this accusation or insinuation.

…There’s just one problem: It’s complete nonsense. We can debate the pros and cons of that regulation, but it has nothing to do with the current controversy. As a simple matter of fact, it would not have applied to the train that derailed in East Palestine.

You don’t have to take my word for it; take it from the New York Times, hardly a pro-Trump or anti-regulation source.

This is the major quote from the article:

“Since the Feb. 3 derailment in Ohio, some lawmakers and activists have pointed to a 2015 safety regulation adopted by the Obama administration as an example of the changes that they say are needed to make railroads safer. … But after lobbying by the railroad industry, the Trump administration repealed the rule in 2018,” the New York Times reports . Yet it goes on to admit that: “Had the rule remained in effect, it would not have applied to the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine.”

The New York Times’s source for this is Jennifer Homendy, a Democrat and head of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Please follow the link above to read the rest of the article. It is quite possible that some regulations need to be looked at in an effort to prevent another ecological disaster like the one that occurred in Ohio, but no regulations impacting the train involved have been changed.

How It Happened

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On Thursday, The Daily Wire posted an article detailing the actual cause of the train wreck that has created the ecological disaster in Ohio. After reading the article, I am not sure what could have been done to prevent the accident or what needs to be done in the future to prevent another accident like this.

This article reports:

The catastrophic February 3 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, was caused by an overheated wheel bearing on the 23rd of 149 rail cars, according to a preliminary report issued Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The Norfolk Southern Railway train derailment led to a decision to burn more than a hundred thousand gallons of highly toxic chemicals, leading to concerns the air and water in and around the town of 4,700 could be badly contaminated. While it was already believed the wreck was caused by a malfunctioning wheel, the NTSB report revealed new details.

…The tracks are equipped with “hot bearing detectors” that assess the temperature conditions of wheel bearings on passing trains, alerting crews if wheel bearings exceed 200 degrees Fahrenheit. The train that derailed passed three sensors before it derailed, with the doomed wheel bearing first registering 38 degrees above ambient temperatures, then 103 degrees, and finally 253 degrees above ambient temperatures, the report stated.

The sensor system transmitted a critical audible alarm message directing the crew to slow and stop the train. The engineer did so, but ​once the train stopped the crew saw fire and smoke from derailed cars and notified the Cleveland East dispatcher of a possible derailment.

By February 5, chemical fires sparked by the tanker cars colliding during the derailment were under control, according to the report. But with five cars carrying 115,580 gallons of highly volatile vinyl chloride on the derailed train, and the temperature rising in at least one of them, the decision was made to execute a “controlled burn” of the chemicals, sending a black, toxic plume into the skies above East Palestine.

The people in East Palestine need our prayers. I can’t imagine living in a place where breathing the air hurts.

What An Incredible Coincidence.

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Somehow President Biden and the Environmental Protection Agency don’t seem too interested in the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. At least they were not all that interested until President Trump said that he would visit the area.

On Friday, The Conservative Treehouse reported the following:

The announcement by President Trump with his intent to visit East Palestine next Wednesday, followed moments later by a reversal announcement from FEMA stating they will now offer support to East Palestine, do not seem coincidental.

The Biden administration, including the EPA, FEMA and Transporation Secretary, was likely very worried about the optics of getting blasted by President Trump very visibly next week for their lack of urgency and concern. Moments after Trump announces his visit, FEMA reverses their prior denial of aid. lol

On Friday, wkyc reported:

Just hours after saying he “[did] not expect” members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be in East Palestine, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine now confirms the government entity will, in fact, be sending a crew to assist with the aftermath of the train derailment in the village.

In a joint statement released Friday night, DeWine and FEMA Regional Administrator Thomas C. Sivak said the agency would deploy a Regional Incident Management Assistance Team (IMAT) to Columbiana County starting Saturday, along with a senior response official. The workers will “support ongoing operations, including incident coordination and ongoing assessments of potential long-term recovery needs.”

The article at wkyc concludes:

It is unknown what changed in the time since those remarks, but the governor did confirm he would “preemptively file a document with FEMA to preserve our rights in case we need their assistance in the future.” DeWine has not declared the crash aftermath to be a federal disaster, perhaps because of concerns doing that could shield the Norfolk Southern Railway from liability.

“Let’s say, for example, the railroad stops paying, for whatever reason,” DeWine said Friday of filing the paper. “We’re still going to go after the railroad, but we want to make sure that there will be support for people if that support does, in fact, stop from the railroad.”

The wreckage from the freight train led to the release of multiple potentially toxic materials both into the air and into waterways. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has continued to say both the air and municipal drinking water are safe, with DeWine adding that a chemical plume in the Ohio River has since completely dissipated.

Some of us don’t think that the reason for the change is unknown.

Was This Part Of The Problem?

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On Feb. 3, a Norfolk Southern train derailed near East Palestine, Ohio The train was carrying toxic chemicals. The officials in charge chose to burn off some of those chemicals to keep the train cars involved from exploding. No people were killed in the accident. There are reports of fish dying from the pollution and other animals dying. So what happened?

In October 2021, Freight Waves posted an article titled, “The perils of precision scheduled railroading.” Precision Scheduled Railroading is a practice put in place to increase the efficiency of the railroad (and increase their profits).

The article reports:

But the unions representing craft employees and train and engine crews — the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, SMART-TD, Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes, among others — generally have been skeptical of PSR, in large part because the operational model also seeks to cut costs, and one way to cut costs is to reduce employee headcount. Since 2016, the yearly average of those employed by the U.S. operations of the Class I railroads has fallen roughly 25%, according to data submitted to the Surface Transportation Board.

Many of the employees that were cut were involved in various types of safety inspections. The remaining employees have had to deal with increased work loads that may have ultimately contributed to safety issues.

The article includes the following anecdote:

As a signal maintainer, Randy conducts monthly and quarterly inspections of the signals at railroad crossings and at other areas within his assigned territory. The inspections involve adhering to standards developed by the FRA.

When Randy first started, the railroad treated him and his colleagues well.

“Everything was great. I really can’t say enough good things about how they treated us in the beginning,” Randy said.

Things started to change when his railroad implemented PSR, according to Randy. One of the biggest changes has been the declining number of employees working for the railroad, coupled with greater responsibilities for each remaining worker. The territory that each signal maintainer was responsible for grew, while the managers overseeing the work of the signal maintainers are also responsible for ensuring that a greater amount of territory is being properly inspected, according to Randy.

Another change is PSR’s impact on the timing of the inspections, according to Randy. Because the trains run on a fixed schedule, the dispatchers are reluctant to give the signal maintainers the time they need to conduct a thorough inspection because they don’t want to delay the trains. Meanwhile, the signal maintainers feel pressure to get all their inspections completed, Randy said.

“When you stretch them thin, in my eyes … a lot of those maintainers are going up to those gates and saying, ‘It was working fine the last time. Let me just write the paperwork up.’ Because you just ain’t got time to get it all done,” Randy said. “We all know that things aren’t getting done.”

Randy believes that the railroads will start to hire more employees again because they need more crews to ensure that tracks and the network are functioning well.

“I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt, railroads that are running PSR — it’s just a matter of time before the track is in such disrepair that they just don’t have a choice but to hire more people and start going back. … Me personally, I just see PSR as a temporary thing because it just can’t work,” Randy said. When a train that weighs 20,000 tons is running across the rail, “it’s going to break stuff eventually.”

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. I realize that some of this may simply be union gripes because the union members did not feel that they got a big enough cut of the increased profits, but it does sound as if there are some serious safety issues that are not being adequately addressed.