There is a plan to help railway transport safety
The Clean East Palestine (OHio) Train: A State Environmental Order and EPA’s Comes Toll on Norfolk Southern, And It Is Yours
The train operator must pay to clean the mess caused by the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, because the nation’s top environmental official promised to support it.
The operator was ordered by the EPA to handle and pay all necessary cleanup, and the order will take effect Thursday.
The President called the EPA’s order “common sense.” This is their mess. The president said in a post that the Norfolk Southern should be cleaned.
“I know this order cannot undo the nightmare that families in this town have been living with. It will deliver justice to those who have been hurt by Norfolk Southern.
As part of the continued fallout, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said state environmental officials made a “criminal referral” against Norfolk Southern. The Ohio attorney general is also reviewing all actions the law “allows him to take,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/us/ohio-train-derailment-east-palestine-wednesday/index.html
Norfolk Southern Applied Air Quality Monitoring After the February 3 Train Wreck: A Statewide Analysis of Community Concerns in East Palestine, Ohio
The villagers of the small village have worries about the safety of their water and air in the aftermath of the February 3 train wreck thatcaused a fire and forced crews to release vinyl chloride in order to stop an explosion.
Skepticism further spread in the community as some residents have reported health problems, like rashes and headaches, and after thousands of fish died in Ohio waterways after the train derailed.
Residents have been told repeatedly that there are no dangers in the air or water. The EPA said crews have checked hundreds of homes and found nothing dangerous.
When they received tap water from a resident of East Palestine, Ohio, Regan and DeWine tried to quell concerns about the water’s safety.
The governor of Pennsylvania said that the train operator gave incorrect information and was unresponsive to alternative courses of action after the toxic wreck.
“In sum, Norfolk Southern injected unnecessary risk into this crisis,” Shapiro said, adding he plans to hold the company accountable for their actions.
Alan Shaw, President and CEO of Norfolk Southern said that his company was aligned with the EPA and local efforts in East Palestine after the train accident.
“From day one I’ve made the commitment that Norfolk Southern is going to remediate the site,” Shaw told CNN Tuesday. We are going to do it through long-term air and water monitoring. We’re going to help the residents of this community recover and we’re going to invest in the long-term health of this community and we’re going to make Norfolk Southern a safer railroad.”
Shaw said, “We conduct hundreds of tests with thousands of data points and all of them have come back clean.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/us/ohio-train-derailment-east-palestine-wednesday/index.html
EPA Administrator Paul DeWine Addresses East Palestine Residents’ Concerns about the Toxic Decay of the Norfolk Southern Railroad
The toxic derailment, which upended life in the community, has prompted calls for better rail safety and fueled questions about laws surrounding the movement of toxic substances.
DeWine said it is “absurd” that the law did not require Norfolk Southern to notify officials that a train with hazardous materials was coming through the state.
The Trump administration was accused of limiting the government’s ability to strengthen rail safety measures by President Biden.
“This is more than a train derailment or a toxic waste spill – it’s years of opposition to safety measures coming home to roost,” Biden wrote in an Instagram post.
“There’s been a concern by citizens, very understandably, that the railroad started, got the tracks back on and started running and the soil under the tracks had not been dealt with,” DeWine said. “So, under the administrator’s order, that soil will be removed. The tracks need to be taken up, as well as the soil.
As crews continue cleanup efforts and officials promise accountability, East Palestine residents are still dealing with fears surrounding potential impacts from the toxic wreck.
Still, as worries remain, the state opened a new health clinic for East Palestine residents to address the reports of rashes, headaches, nausea and other symptoms.
Asked about the reported symptoms, the EPA administrator said Tuesday that he’s “not discounting what people are experiencing” and asked anyone concerned to seek medical attention.
“I believe people when they say that they’re facing adverse impacts. And what we’re doing is we’re asking them to seek medical attention … then we can take that information and add that as part of our response,” Regan said. We are not diminishing what people are going through. We just ask that they seek medical help while we conduct all of our investigations.”
“We need our town cleaned up, we need our residents to feel safe in their homes,” Conaway said at Tuesday news conference. That is the number one thing. Your home is your sanctuary: if you don’t feel safe in your home, then you’re never going to feel safe anywhere.”
A Northeastern Firefighter at the Cleveland Works Property: The Vanishing Conductor Louis Shuster, 37, Died in 2021
Casualties, including injuries and deaths, involving railroad employees are not uncommon, according to data from the Federal Railroad Administration, which shows there were more than 13,500 incidents involving on-duty employees across the industry in 2022, including 1,060 involving Norfolk Southern employees.
A conductor died early Tuesday morning at Cleveland-Cliffs Cleveland Works property, the railroad said in a news release. The railroad has had three incidents in the state in less than a month.
The NTSB said in a statement later that its safety culture probe encompasses multiple incidents and three deaths since December 2021, including the toxic East Palestine derailment and the employee killed earlier Tuesday. It is already investigating a October 28 derailment in Sandusky, Ohio.
Shuster, a resident of Broadview Heights, Ohio, was president of BLET Division 607 in Cleveland. Shuster has a 16-year-old son and cared for his elderly parents, and was an Army veteran, the union said.
“Lou was a passionate and dedicated union brother,” said Pat Redmond, Local Chairman of BLET Division 607. He was always there for his coworkers. He was very active in helping veterans who worked on the railroad and veterans all across our community.”
“This was a tragic situation and it’s a devastating loss for the Shuster family as well as the members of this union,” said BLET National President Eddie Hall. Railroad accidents are preventable. This collision underscores the need for significant improvements in rail safety for both workers and the public.”
As the railroad works with the Environmental Protection Agency to remediate the site, it announced a new six-point safety plan Monday designed to help prevent similar derailments in the future.
The crash knocked out power and the area and resulted in a temporary shelter-in-place order for homes within 1,000 feet of the scene. There was no environmental harm because nothing had spilled from the derailed cars.
Are Railroad Safety Issues an Issue for Private Businesses? An Electoral Analyst’s Report on Decays of a Trajectory
Two legislators are taking action to address concerns that railway workers have had for years since two train wrecks in a span of about a month.
Who are they? Legislation surrounding rail safety is being considered by the elected officials of Ohio and Nebraska, with the hope that it can be passed into federal law.
This isn’t a partisan issue. There is an issue of doing the right thing. I’ve been a banker for 43 years. As a bank teller, I don’t like regulation.
I have no idea what the industry would look like without regulation. A lot of people think Mike is a Republican. Why do you want to impose a mandate on private business? And my answer to that is that I think many of these businesses — in this case, the railroads — would probably welcome universal rules that everyone would have to abide by, that would allow them to be on a level playing field and provide public safety. Safety is the top priority for the railroad companies. Then, I would like to prove it to you.
Each train would have only a single engineer. Instead of being in the cab of the locomotive, the second crew member, the conductor, would be driving trucks along railroad tracks between trains to check on potential problems.
The other one is making sure that railways have wayside defect detectors so that they can be alerted right away when there is an issue. This is the first time that wayside defect detectors have been mandated in the country.
Norfolk Southern Rail Safety Legislation Hearing in the Light of the East Palestine, Ohio, Train-Wreck, and Other Measures
Shaw, the CEO of Norfolk Southern, has been under pressure to support rail safety legislation proposed in the wake of the East Palestine, Ohio, train wreck.
Shaw said in his testimony that he will take steps to improve rail safety but he does not endorse the legislation in its entirety. Two person crews on locomotives, as well as strict requirement for more frequent trackside monitoring devices, are included in the bill.
“We support legislative efforts to enhance the safety of the freight rail industry,” was the only discussion of the legislation in his prepared remarks.
Shaw said that the railroad supports increasing fines for people found tampering with railroad facilities and safety equipment, but would not back proposals to fine railroads if they are found guilty of safety violations.
Shaw supports more industry-funded training for first responders. He said the company supports the principle that first responders need accurate real-time information on the contents of trains. He wanted to make the information available through an app.
The level of support isn’t enough to satisfy the supporters of the Senate version of the bill, including Sen. J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican They said residents who live near freight rail tracks can’t depend on the railroad’s voluntary measures to improve safety.
According to his prepared remarks, the notification requirements for trains carrying large quantities of flammable gases under pressure are absurd. They say they have an app. The app is there! In their telling, there is no need for a federal requirement, because the railroads have an app, another voluntary standard.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/22/business/norfolk-southern-rail-safety-legislation-hearing/index.html
Reply to Virginia Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar on the Vance Browning Measure for the Safety of the Interfering Electric Power in East Palestine
When asked during by Sen. Amy Klobuchar during questioning if he supported the bill, Shaw responded, “There are many provisions within the Vance-Brown bill for which we give our full throated endorsement.” But when Klobuchar tried to pin him down on which provisions Norfolk Southern opposed, he dodged the question.
Vance moved away from his prepared remarks to attack the railroads’ lobbying against the bill. He was particularly angry that the railroads’ attacks on the bill come just months after they went to Congress to get it block a potential strike by their unionized employees.
He said that you could’t beg the government to bail out your labor dispute three months ago, and then demand that the government set safety standards for railroads. “It’s a ridiculous argument. It isn’t good enough for the smell test. The people of East Palestine feel insulted by their paid activism and Op-Eds in which they advanced that argument.
The committee also heard from an East Palestine resident, Misti Allison, who gave a human face to the damage done to the town by the accident, saying that Norfolk Southern is offering “breadcrumbs” to residents affected the accident.
I was asked by my seven-year-old if he would die from living in his home. What do I tell him?” She asked if it was possible. “This preventable accident has put a scarlet letter on our town. People do not want to come here. Home values are falling, businesses are struggling. If we wanted to leave, we couldn’t sell our homes.
Shaw announced plans Wednesday for the railroad to compensate homeowners who lose value in their homes, although did not give details of those payments in his opening remarks. Still, it was further than the railroad had gone previously to compensate homeowners who may see their home values permanently affected. Allison’s comments, which came before Shaw’s testimony, showed there are concerns in East Palestine about its ability to recover from the effects of the derailment.
The legislative director of the Ohio chapter of SMART-TD said the railroads want people to believe that technology is able to replace the role of the conductor. “Nothing can be further from the truth.”
DeWine and Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted sent a letter to Shaw Tuesday that called out the railroad for not supporting measures like the two-person crew requirement and a requirement to have track side detection equipment no more than 15 miles apart from one another.
“We… expect you will deliver for the people of East Palestine by fully supporting these legislative efforts until they are enacted,” said DeWine’s and Husted’s letter.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/22/business/norfolk-southern-rail-safety-legislation-hearing/index.html
SMART/TD’s Whitaker: “Sorry about the East Palestine fire,” not “Comment on the Norfolk Southern response to the complaints”
SMART-TD’s Whitaker also said that the union has filed complaints that Norfolk Southern was giving instructions to crews to disregard when trackside detectors reported problems and to keep their trains moving to improve profitability.
The Norfolk train’s detectors were able to detect an increase in temperature in one of the rail cars that was involved in the East Palestine fire, but it wasn’t enough to prompt a warning to the crew. By the time a subsequent detector found a more than 200-degree rise in temperature that triggered the alarm, it was too late to stop the train in time to prevent the derailment.
In his prepared remarks, he said that the voluntary guidelines are too relaxed and need to be figured out.
