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June 28, 2023

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) just wrapped up its two-day, four panel “Investigative Hearing: Norfolk Southern Railway Train Derailment with Subsequent Hazardous Material Release and Fires” in the East Palestine High School gymnasium in Ohio.

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I watched it so you don’t have to.

The overarching message is to not expect much from the government entities involved in preventing future derailments. One would think that preventing roller wheel-bearing failures, which would prevent the derailment of the hopper car that caused this accident, would be a top priority.

After two long days of this government dog-and-pony show, one would expect that the name of the owner of the hopper car that derailed would be prominently displayed in the record. The closest the board came to identifying this car was by its number, 23, in the list of cars, the “Consist,” that made up train Norfolk Southern Train 32N.

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The Consist is Group F, Exhibit 1 on the docket and describes the car as “023 GPLX 075465 L READING PA RBMN 105 MITSUBIS 2821142 C214.” 

From the Railserve.com website we can determine that the owner of that car is General American Marks (GATX) serial number 075465. It was bound for Reading, Pennsylvania. It seems likely that MITSUBIS would most likely mean Mitsubishi Chemical Advanced Materials, Inc. was the intended end user. Neither GATX nor Mitsubishi were made parties to the hearing.

Despite previously complaining about how political the matter had become, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy’s background as a former lobbyist for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters shone through.

A neutral person might despair of ever preventing a similar derailment given the hidden agendas and axes to grind displayed by the questioners. It was interesting to see Karl Alexy,  Associate Administrator for Railroad Safety & Chief Safety Officer of the Federal Railroad Administration in person. However, he got to ask questions but was not asked, in turn, why, as the “Chief Safety Officer,” government regulations failed to prevent this accident? It seems a fair and relevant question.

Trying to make sense of this matter would require a very long dissertation. Here are some bullet points to consider.

  1. Norfolk Southern (NS) is a regulated “common carrier” and as such is obligated to move freight on its rail network for the general public. None of the railcars that derailed were owned by NS. With specific regard to hazardous tank cars, the representative from the American Association of Railroads (AAR), noted that over 99.9% of all tank cars are owned by parties other than the Class 1 freight railroads.
  2. It was finally established that the responsibility for the proper preparation, inspection and documentation of each shipment belongs to the shipper. This made for some uncomfortable moments for Karenanne Stegmann of Oxy Vinyls LP and her colleagues. Oxy Vinyls manufactured and shipped the Vinyl Chloride Monomer in five DOT-105 Class 2 flammable gas, tank cars which survived the initial derailment and fire, but were subsequently subjected to a “vent and burn” procedure that made the news on Feb. 6, long after the Feb. 3 derailment. The original fire consumed combustible materials including the plastic pellets in the GPLX hopper car plus spilled liquids from several Class 3 flammable liquid DOT-111 tank cars. By existing statute, the DOT-111 cars are fated to be fully retired and replaced by DOT-117 improved design tank cars, but the change-over is ongoing. This already codified program would also help alleviate the dangers of future derailments by substantially reducing the number of resulting hazmat spills and fires. No hazardous materials spilled would greatly reduce the threat to public safety. 
  3. There was a panel discussing hot bearing detectors (HBD) as a means of proactively trying to identify wheel bearings likely to fail before they fail and cause a derailment. The key observation one could make is that NS had a whole series of HBDs along the track of train 32N. Many of you will have seen the videos of the flaming bearing as the train approached East Palestine. NS had installed them at an average spacing of 13.9 miles in line with a general corporate policy of 15 mile spacing when the government regulations call for 40 mile spacing based on a previous NTSB accident investigation involving two BNSF freight trains near Casselton, ND. You can see the re-creation video on their YouTube channel here. It was a missed opportunity to invite the Casselton Fire Chief to add his experience to the investigation. It seems that even with the advice of the NTSB, not all accidents are “100% preventable”, even when the railroads exceed government regulations.

I expect many residents of East Palestine, Ohio, have questions about the vent and burn decision that caused the towering column of smoke from burning vinyl chloride monomer.