Safety report finds crew tried to stop Ohio train after alert about wheel bearing

Nina Lakhani
The Guardian
Fri, 24 Feb 2023 22:16 UTC

© Tannen Maury/EPA

An aerial image of destroyed rail cars as cleanup continues in East Palestine, Ohio.

The crew of the freight train carrying dangerous chemicals that derailed in Ohio earlier this month received a warning about an overheating wheel bearing and tried to slow the train before it came off the tracks, according to an interim report released on Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

The wheel bearing was heating up for several miles before reaching 253 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the air temperature, investigators found, a dangerous level requiring a train to stop to prevent disaster.

The train engineer utilized the brakes and the automatic braking system also activated, the report said. But the train still derailed and was engulfed in a huge fireball, near the town of East Palestine, on 3 February.

Fifty of the train's 149 cars derailed, with 11 of the derailed cars carrying huge quantities of toxic chemicals, prompting an evacuation order and a declaration of a state of emergency in the Ohio town, which has been gripped by fears of toxic water and air despite assurances from state and federal officials that the area is largely safe.

Some residents have since returned amid fears about immediate and longer-term health risks.

Earlier this week, the Ohio health department opened a free clinic at a church in the middle of town as fear and frustration rises among residents who continue to suffer symptoms including headaches, nausea, coughing, burning sensations in the throat and nose, and panic attacks.

Retirees Ron Caratelli, 63, and his wife Peggy, 64, live less than a mile from the toxic spill site, and came in for a check-up as they have been unable to return home due to adverse health effects.

"Every time we try to come back to the house, I get burning eyes and throat, and a chemical taste in the back of my mouth. It's not good. Yesterday I had a weird sensation in my lungs," Ron Caratelli said on Thursday, under sunny skies as freight trains rumbled by.

"What is this doing to me and others long-term? Nobody really has answers. Is it even safe to plant a garden this year?

"We're older. By the time you see the attorney ads on TV for people who lived in East Palestine during the train derailment, we'll be dead. But what about the little kids around this town? What kind of effects will they have?"

© Michael Swensen/Getty Images

A crew works alongside a stream as cleanup efforts continue in East Palestine, Ohio.

In total, the train carried 115,580 gallons (438,000 liters) of vinyl chloride, a highly flammable carcinogen used to produce polyvinyl chloride (PVC) for packaging materials, piping and other products. During the controlled release, responders dug ditches to contain the liquid while it vaporized and burned. That effort was why the designated evacuation zone expanded to a 2 sq mile (5 sq km) area, the report said.

The report was issued as the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, visited the area on Thursday and the US Environmental Protection Agency earlier in the week took control of the cleanup and ordered the US railroad company, Norfolk Southern, to foot the bill. Buttigieg, who has come under criticism for not visiting the site of the crash sooner, said that Joe Biden's administration will "never forget the people of East Palestine" but acknowledged that he wanted to visit, and "could have expressed that sooner".

Comment: Yet Biden himself was jetting off to Ukraine to hand over billions in military aid.

The NTSB said the crew did not receive a critical warning about an overheated axle but an engineer stopped the train after receiving a "critical audible alarm message" and the crew then saw fire and smoke and alerted dispatch of a possible derailment, the report said.

The axle that investigators are focused on had been heating up as the train went down the tracks, but did not reach the threshold for stopping the train and inspecting it until just before the derailment, the report said. The train was traveling at about 47mph (75km/h) at the time, just under the speed limit of 50mph, according to safety investigators.

The US government is facing growing criticism over the federal response to the derailment. The Biden White House has defended its response, saying officials from the EPA, the NTSB and other agencies were at the rural site within hours of the derailment.

The White House says it has also offered federal assistance and the Federal Emergency Management Administration (Fema) has been coordinating with the state emergency operations center and other partners.

Buttigieg has faced criticism for not visiting the site earlier, including from former US president Donald Trump, who came to Ohio on Wednesday but has a record of rolling back environmental protections that was highlighted by critics.

Trump won nearly 72% of the vote in this heavily Republican region in the 2020 election.

The Department of Transportation said Buttigieg is visiting now that the EPA declared the emergency phase of the crash to be over and the start of long-term cleanup efforts is under way.

Heather Bable, who lives two blocks from the derailment site, said she's relieved the government's top brass is finally showing up.

"We need that attention because we weren't getting it. They should have been here all along," said Bable.

As remediation of the site continued, Norfolk Southern announced late on Wednesday that it had agreed to excavate the soil under two tracks. The Ohio governor, Mike DeWine, had called out the railroad company's failure to address the contaminated soil underneath its tracks before repairing them and running freight again.

Democratic congressman Chris Deluzio, whose Pennsylvania district borders the East Palestine disaster site, asked Norfolk Southern to expand the boundaries of the geographic zone in which it is providing financial assistance and testing. He asserted the current zone excludes many affected Pennsylvania residents and businesses, and said the company should commit to cleaning up soil and water up to 30 miles (48km) beyond it.

He has accused the company of "failing to show any commitment to rebuilding lost trust in our community".

The president of the Ohio senate, meanwhile, announced a public hearing on the derailment next week to hear testimony from state officials.

Comment: RT reports:

The devastating chemical spill caused by the derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio earlier this month was "100% preventable," National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters on Thursday. The press conference followed the agency's release of a preliminary report on the incident.

"We call things accidents. There is no accident," Homendy said. "Every single event we investigate is preventable." However, she added, there was no indication that the train crew had done anything wrong.

"Know that the NTSB has one goal, and that is safety, and ensuring this never happens again."

The NTSB's preliminary report on the disaster revealed that the temperature of one of the train's wheel bearings spiked 215 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 30 miles (48km) it traveled, confirmed by two sensors placed along the route used to detect hot bearings.

While Norfolk Southern confirmed on Thursday that the heat sensors were working properly, the train's own alarm was not set to go off until an even higher temperature was reached. By the time the alert sounded, the bearing was 253 degrees hotter than its surroundings, and while the engineer quickly acted to slow the train, the bearing reportedly failed, causing a derailment at the 23rd car, according to the report.

The plastic pellets inside the car caught fire when they were exposed to the overheated bearings, soon spreading to the 11 other cars containing hazardous materials, including five full of vinyl chloride that authorities ultimately decided to vent and burn onsite. The investigation determined this action was taken because the temperature inside one of the tanks full of vinyl chloride was continuing to rise, leading the operator to fear an explosion was imminent.

Acknowledging that it was "too early to tell" for certain how the disaster could have been avoided, Homendy told reporters that the NTSB will continue to investigate whether industry safety standards regarding the heat threshold for high-temperature alarms and other defect detectors, rail car and wheel design, and the spacing of sensors along the track need tweaking.

Norfolk Southern's inspection practices will also be scrutinized, and the agency will look at whether the rail operator properly disposed of the vinyl chloride, she said. Residents have blamed the fire for a growing number of bird, livestock and fish deaths as well as water contamination in the area, although state and federal officials insist the air and water are safe.