Thoughts On The East Palestine Crash
From gross & willful negligence to baffling refusals to declare emergencies, all the way to inexplicable delays in communication, the East Palestine, Ohio crash is a horror we must never repeat.
Hello, friends,
Last week, we talked about how Florida is creating a political catastrophe out of a combination of Transphobia and Anti-Choice ideologies. This week, we’re going to talk about a physical catastrophe in the form of a devastating train derailment caused by…Well, we’re still figuring out exactly what caused it, but we have a general idea.
Background On The East Palestine, Ohio Crash
While the situation is still fast-moving and discovery is still being performed, it never hurts to get some basic facts from a Wikipedia article before moving forward. On February 3rd, 2023, a train operated by Norfolk Southern containing numerous railway cars full of toxic chemicals such as Vinyl Chloride derailed near the town of East Palestine, Ohio. Mayor Trent Conaway issued a state of emergency on the same day.
According to AP News, state officials implemented a controlled burn of these substances on or around February 6th, which is coincidentally-enough when the first evacuation order was issued. Of course, since the train was already on fire as of at least February 4th, that meant that people and animals had already been exposed for two days - days they will never get a chance to do differently. On February 9th, the EPA said it was fine for people to return.
If this video of how the water in the area looks is authentic, I somehow doubt that’s the truth.
The specific cause is still being explored, but there are a number of factors that are cited, and none of them are good. One explanation provided is that it had something to do with the brakes on the train, and how they were not upgraded as a cost-saving measure. After all, in 2018 under the Trump Administration the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) rescinded a rule that, paraphrased, ‘the costs outweighed the benefits.’ I’m certainly no railroad expert, but is it plausible that better brakes may have prevented or mitigated the disaster? I’d certainly hope so!
Victoria Moorwood of The Cincinnati Enquirer cites an AP-originated article which provides another explanation; that an axel went bad. Now, how did a train with a bad axel get thrown on the tracks? Twitter user “OldSchoolRailroader,” who claims to be a 27-year veteran of the industry, argues convincingly that the fault stems from the Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) system of logistics.
Again, I’m no expert, but the theory is simple: Railroad schedules are highly time-sensitive. Google is surprisingly scant on information about how long this takes, so confirming OldSchoolRailroader’s claim that each car only receives about 90 seconds of inspection is hard. I can find a Federal study on how Track inspections function, but nothing (so far - I’m open to feedback/comments!) on how long train inspections themselves take.
To finish up our background, right now it appear we only recently passed what I’d like to call an “Idiot Standoff:” Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, has refused to confirm a state of emergency. This essentially, if loosely, ties the Biden Administration’s hands from what help they can provide. Of course, it’s also reported that FEMA will now begin helping.
Keep that in mind as we dive deeper: The full weight of the Federal Government, no matter how inattentive it has been thusfar (and it has been inattentive), has not been brought to bear towards recovery efforts.
The Train Of Blame
Where do we begin?
I think we have to begin with Norfolk Southern. In March of 2022 it announced ten billion dollars in stock buybacks. Clearly - clearly - the issue at hand wasn’t financial resources. They had enough to make shareholders fabulously wealthy, so they had enough to hire more inspectors to inspect the train better. Aaron Gordon of Vice reports that Norfolk Southern’s workers actively knew that the train was, let’s just say, of questionable condition. Nah, let’s call it what they called it: “32 Nasty.”
It stands to reason that if 32 Nasty had been given real maintenance, instead of that budget going to line someone’s pockets, there’s a chance this disaster wouldn’t have happened. At least, it may not have been this bad.
In my opinion, if we aren’t willing to go so far as to nationalize the rail industry entirely, we at least need to arrest Norfolk Southern’s CEOs, and/or institute a “Corporate death penalty” and dissolve the entire thing.
Second: I mentioned earlier how the Trump Administration rescinded rules requiring upgraded brakes on trains. Just like the first point, the Trump Administration has the crux of the blame for the disaster, given that they’re the ones who made a change.
Third up, I’m gonna place major blame on Mike DeWine. I mean, it’s cute that he demanded that Congress look into why it happened, apparently, Norfolk Southern’s trains were not marked hazardous. But that doesn’t begin to excuse his inaction. By not calling for a state of emergency he is not just endangering his state, but every state along the Ohio river. How much danger are they in? We don’t really know! Although, as I was writing this, it appears FEMA will be coming to help. It took way too long.
So far, everything I’ve said has probably gone over easily for those of you on the liberal/left spectrum. Now we’re going to dive into some hotter waters.
The Biden Administration has had a little over two years to go through Trump’s abhorrent policies and fix them. I understand not being able to get to all of them, but Biden does have the advantage of being in charge of the best-funded bureaucracy on Earth. This was a major rule change that needed to be corrected. Is it possible that, as it deals with interstate commerce, Congress was required to get that done? Maybe! But, then, Democrats controlled Congress for those two years. So why wasn’t anything done?
Particularly, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg took somewhere in the neighborhood of ten days (Feb 3rd to Feb 13th) to post about the disaster on his official Twitter. That’s simply not acceptable. Twitter certainly has its share of problems with journalistic integrity, these days! But it’s still probably the number one source for getting official word and concerns out to the nation at large. An earlier injection of national attention might have convinced DeWine that he couldn’t hide and pretend nothing was wrong.
Worse, today Buttigieg equivocated on national TV by reminding everyone that there are a thousand train derailments per year. This is an indictment of the entire rail system (which, again, mayyyybeee we oughta nationalize?), and not just Buttigieg. This is clearly a national problem that has long been slept on. Sure, some of those are probably just tiny little nuisances that take a little time to fix but are otherwise harmless. Others definitely can involve hazardous materials. None of that information is reassuring - if anything, it means his department isn’t doing its job in reducing that number, and has instead accepted it as a cost of doing business.
It’s 2023. Should we really have outdated brakes on our trains when we know what can happen if they go wrong? Because we did have outdated brakes on our trains. And, tallying another in the ‘man-made ecological disasters’ column, we’ve just witnessed it again!
So how do we help?
In terms of most immediate fixes that need to be made, the Twitter media account for the More Perfect Union organization provides a number of crowd-sourced suggestions, a list which includes requiring Electronically Controlled Brakes along with ideas like guaranteeing crews are not reduced in staff count and shortening overall train lengths by lowering the maximum number of train cars.
I’ve already mentioned that consequences absolutely must be meted out to Norfolk Southern. Their accident rate has long been on the rise, and they slashed their workforce while raking in cash through their aforementioned buyback bonanza. It’s vaguely possible that the company’s incorporated status might shield their executives from the consequences of their gross negligence, but if that’s the case then the entire company must be dealt with that much more harshly. Criminal charges should be thoroughly considered and investigated; if not, then Norfolk Southern must be disbanded.
The Biden Administration needs to immediately issue updated regulations regarding train safety. If that means demanding that companies take some profits and transform them back into investments into the company, well, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. ECB’s should be made mandatory, and if Congress is able to stop that then they need to be named-and-shamed, too. Governor DeWine should probably resign, considering how many lives his behavior has probably devastated, let alone the number who face unknown health risks.
Pete Buttigieg might even consider that path, as well, given how long it took him to react. No, “he was busy with other things” doesn’t explain why an intern at the department couldn’t have put out a tweet on day one saying, “We’re aware there’s a derailment and fire, and we’re active.” I looked for one, and I looked for early releases elsewhere of information from the DoT because I wanted to be wrong about that, but here we are - few, far between, and far too late. Oh, and I also checked DOT’s official Twitter, and the February 13th tweet by Buttigieg is the first mention of it.
And there’s probably more, but that’s all we’ll focus on, for now. I think next week I’m going to try to aim for something a little more uplifting. Lately, I’ve been diving into the deep end of some nasty stuff.
Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe. If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list. This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.