Has anyone here read about the East Palestine Norfolk Southern Train crash or not? In foreign news like Germany DW they highlighted the risks of Rail freight cargo Hazmat load. Sadly the derailment has been politized thanks to trump visiting it Here's Secretary Buttiegeg talking about the crash Former President Trump on East Palestine
Been following it a bunch since it happened, you can't not see it when rail news is something you keep track of. This is unfortunately inevitably going to continue for as long as state power is used to shut down reasonable demands of rail workers for basic health and safety practices, instead of to force rail operators to operate to a reasonable minimum standard. It is a political issue, and Biden goofed in hoping it would blow over rather than going there weeks ago and maybe taking a bit of flak for his role, but at least owning that and taking control of the narrative. Instead you have the guy whose administration signed off on a bunch of this deregulation of the sector going down there and spewing a bunch of platitudes, brushing off his involvement, and getting a bunch of applause. It was an open goal for whoever chose to show up first. The more corners are cut at every step of the way, be it cutting trains together like this one without proper attention to where all the weight is being concentrated, reducing crew sizes (Thankfully this crew also had a trainee aboard, so there were enough people to separate the front of the train, respect to them for their handling of the situation), refusing to invest in better technology for detecting overheating bearings, etc. The more of this we'll continue to see.
You are correct and the current Transportation secretary has to blame the previous administration and the previous Transport Secretary Chao on this issue
Let me get this straight. The guy who isn't in government goes there to give exposure to a horrible situation and brings water and provides food while the federal government ignores it to run to the Ukraine to give billions and Trump's the bad guy? It was politicized before Trump showed up when the feds ignored a disaster in a republican stronghold. And btw, the previous administration's actions had zero imact on this, and even if you choose to argue this, the current administration had two years to amend this, so sorry, the buck stops there.
Nobody's hands are entirely clean in this, but yes, while many other derailments in the last years would have been lessened or prevented by regulations Trump's administration rolled back, this specific one is a consequence of multiple administrations' failure to address the corner-cutting in the industry, and none of the specific terrible changes made under Trump would have changed the outcome here. Had Biden's government actually acted on forcing the railroads to meet necessary standards, we'd still have seen this derailment happen, as there'd not have been time to implement the safety requirements, but they're definitely responsible for future incidents like this which are certainly going to continue happening after their mishandling of the imminent rail strikes recently.
I’ve been hearing on this incident, not sure what to make of how safe the area is, I’m not an expert for that so I wouldn’t comment on what’s best. Regarding the politics of it, it seems trump is their for political reasons not “good will”, I think that goes down about aswell as when news bombard victims with interviews type things… maybe the current administration isn’t handling things all that Great… if the cards were reversed I can’t imagine much better, especially if it was Trump etc in office and it occurred in California or somewhere like that. just some of my thoughts on the whole thing
I think what's bad is all the conspiracy theorists are coming out on social media and thinking that every derailment that happens now is an inside job. There was one a day or 2 ago in Florida where a few cars including a few Propane tankers derailed, people are already thinking it was planned, while some locals know that the shortline railroad that derailed that train has some pretty poor track conditions.
The only "conspiracy" is one that's not changed in a century, that of railroad execs to hoard as much money as is feasible at the expense of running the infrastructure into the ground. That's nothing new. Just look at Penn Central, which basically inspired some of the accounting practices at Enron. You don't need to "plan" derailments when you just expect a certain number and account for them in your financial projections, because your revenue will remain in the black thanks to things like the unsafe trains you're running with all the weight at the rear end because you didn't provide the time or people to ensure it was properly distributed. As it stands, neither major US party has shown itself through its actions to be on the correct side here, that of rail workers and those who live in all the places where preventable derailments continue to happen.
Please. This crash was down to one thing only: a failing journal bearing (hot box), not detected by the trackside sensors until it was too late. It had nothing to do with union demands for changed work rules, nor any of the other regulatory changes Buttigieg is trying to ram through on the "never let a crisis go to waste" principle. I believe that the main lines need more hotbox detectors at closer intervals, to prevent this sort of thing: presently FRA has no regulations in this area at all! But neither the proposed regs nor the union demands would have done a damn thing to prevent this. Special bonus point: the toxic risk was 100% caused by the Feds idiotically trying to burn off the vinyl chloride instead of leaving well enough alone and waiting for removal.
I mean, as I said, Buttigieg is full of LOVE because he's long been one of the villains of this and many other stories of cost-cutting across various industries, enriching execs at the expense of decent maintaining of infrastructure, employment standards, public health, etc. His sniveling opportunism here is a blatant attempt to whitewash that history with performative posturing that will amount to precisely nothing.
Now he must look at Norfolk Southern Derailment at Springfield, Ohio in addition to this one East Palestine
No-one will remember the cause of this disaster. What they will remember are all the " own goals " scored by the various agencies and other responsible parties, especially by those who hope to be re-elected next year. If this had happened in a wealthy community, you can bet your boots that the " suits " would have been swarming all over this town.
Spot on and if you are following the News about this one Bernie Sanders actually Grills Norfolk Southern CEO about this and also the Springfield Ohio Derailment.
Seems a specific run of rail cars has a loose wheel issue. About 700 are in service, with 200 owned by NS. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/10/us/springfield-derailment-norfolk-southern-safety-issue/index.html
And Sanders is just hobbyhorsing his obsession with Precision Scheduled Railroading, which had zero-point-nought to do with this accident. more politicians pointlessly posturing
You are perfect but things like this start to become politicized back then no one seems to talk about politics behind it but now there is some of them trying to blame the finger on former Transportation secretary Chao. From when I understand to prevent this looks like they should be putting more hot box detectors for the entire main line then have NTSB equivalents from Germany France and the United Kingdom look at them
But the railroads keep not doing that for the same reasons as they introduced stuff like PSR, because it keeps more profits in their pockets not to, and as long as nobody is forcing them to, they'll keep on riding that gravy train as long as it's cheaper to write off a certain expectancy of derailments.
I would observe that hot box detectors would not be present at all had the RR not voluntarily placed them; no regulation to date mandates them.
