East Palestine is a small town in Eastern, Ohio that became famous when a catastrophic train derailment led to toxic chemicals being spilled into the area. I asked Bing AI to write about the town and it replied: East Palestine is a village in northeastern Columbiana County, Ohio, United States, near the border with Pennsylvania². The population was 4,761 at the 2020 census⁷ and 4,718 in 2022⁹. East Palestine is about 20 miles south of Youngstown and 40 miles northwest of Pittsburgh⁷. East Palestine was recently affected by a train derailment that happened on Feb. 3, 2023, forcing hundreds of people to evacuate the town for several days as the company vented and burned carcinogenic chemicals from cars involved in the fiery crash¹. The environmental and community impacts of the incident are still being examined¹. Source: Conversation with Bing, 2/13/2023(1) East Palestine, Ohio - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine,_Ohio Accessed 2/13/2023. (2) East Palestine, Ohio - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine,_Ohio Accessed 2/13/2023. (3) East Palestine, Ohio Population History | 1990 - 2022. https://www.biggestuscities.com/city/east-palestine-ohio Accessed 2/13/2023. (4) . https://bing.com/search?q=east+palestine+ohio Accessed 2/13/2023. (5) East Palestine, OH Map & Directions - MapQuest. https://www.mapquest.com/us/ohio/east-palestine-oh-282034893 Accessed 2/13/2023. (6) Animals sick, dying near East Palestine, Ohio train crash. https://nypost.com/2023/02/10/animals-sick-dying-near-east-palestine-ohio-train-crash/ Accessed 2/13/2023. (7) What We Know About the Train Derailment in Ohio. https://www.nytimes.com/article/ohio-train-derailment.html Accessed 2/13/2023. (8) East Palestine, Ohio Population History | 1990 - 2022. https://www.biggestuscities.com/city/east-palestine-ohio Accessed 2/13/2023. (9) East Palestine, OH | Data USA. https://datausa.io/profile/geo/east-palestine-oh/ Accessed 2/13/2023. Human written stories and images of the catastrophe follow. Cleveland Plain Dealer - More chemicals have leaked from the East Palestine derailed train. What are they, and what can you do? COLUMBUS, Ohio—Last week’s East Palestine train derailment released three other hazardous chemicals into the environment besides the vinyl chloride that officials preemptively set afire, according to federal environmental regulators. Butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate, and ethylene glycol monobutyl either were or continue to be released in the air, soil, and/or surface waters as a result of the derailment, according to a letter sent Friday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to Norfolk Southern, the owner of the railroad operating the derailed train. More chemicals have leaked from the East Palestine derailed train. What are they, and what can you do? - cleveland.com NYTimes - What We Know About the Train Derailment in Ohio What happened? Around 9 p.m. on Feb. 3, a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, a village of about 4,700 residents about 50 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. About 50 of the train’s 150 cars ran off the tracks on its route from Madison, Ill., to Conway, Pa. The train, operated by Norfolk Southern, had been carrying chemicals and combustible materials, with vinyl chloride, a toxic flammable gas, being of most concern to investigators. A huge fire erupted from the derailment, sending thick billowing smoke into the sky and over the town. Residents on both sides of the Ohio-Pennsylvania border were ordered to evacuate, as Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio raised alarms about a possible explosion. Local and federal officials started an investigation that involved the National Transportation Safety Board and the Environmental Protection Agency. Has there been harm to the environment? The derailment has sparked concerns about air, soil and water pollution. On Feb. 10, the E.P.A. said that about 20 rail cars were reported to have been carrying hazardous materials. Chemicals including vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate and ethylene glycol monobutyl ether were “known to have been and continue to be” released to the air, surface soil and surface waters, the E.P.A. said. On Feb. 12, the E.P.A., after monitoring the air, said it had not detected contaminants at “levels of concern” in and around East Palestine, although residents may still smell odors. Working with Norfolk Southern and the Columbiana County Emergency Management Agency, the E.P.A. also screened the air inside about 210 homes and said it had not detected vinyl chloride or hydrogen chloride, which can cause life-threatening respiratory issues. An additional 200 homes were still awaiting screening, the agency said. Fearing an explosion, the authorities held a controlled release of the toxic materials from five train car tankers on Feb. 6, and the contents were diverted to a trench and burned off. What We Know About the Train Derailment in Ohio - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
This story has had a lot of media coverage over the last two weeks. It's just not as fun as UFOs and Spy Balloons.
http://www.nscorp.com/content/nscor...es-new--10-billion-stock-repurchase-prog.html The company in charge announced record profits last year while announcing record stock buybacks while refusing to give their workers sick pay and upgrade their equipment. Again workers have NO sick days and are forced to work long hours with limited breaks. Just another example of corporate America FLEECING the American people. Union pacific should absolutely NOT have a monopoly over our rail infrastructure. They know workers can't go on strike as it'll shut down the entire infrastructure and government would have to intervene. Another example of our politicians failing us by allowing corporate consolidation with no limits. Corporate america is screwing over Americans every day while forcing us to fight between one another. According to some libertarians small government is the solution so we can be ruled by billionaires and monopolies! Sweet!
in instances like this, I wouldn’t trust a damn word officials are saying “we haven’t detected contaminants at levels of concern”…yeah, sure…bullsh*t
I know people that were evacuated. They were questioning if they should test their well water. My answer was a resounding yes. The pictures are insane.
Oh hell yeah, some of the chemicals seeped into the Ohio River before and during the burning. I'd be skeptical about claims with water quality and would look at where water is bottled.
Ohio is not known for its water quality. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...ozen-times-no-one-cared-until-1969-180972444/ The Cuyahoga River Caught Fire at Least a Dozen Times, but No One Cared Until 1969 Despite being much smaller than previous fires, the river blaze in Cleveland 50 years ago became a symbol for the nascent environmental movement
Boomers get (deservedly in most cases) a bad rap but it's really their parents that set the tone for the '**** everything and everyone else, we're Americans, we're never wrong' culture.
Sure am glad the Biden Admin and Pete decided to side with the rail companies in that labor dispute. Seems that these massive companies have everything under control perfectly fine.
These folks are getting the short end of the stick. What a disaster. They shouldn't let the East Palestinians back in yet.
The company behind Ohio’s toxic train disaster: Deaths, silenced whistleblowers, and $10bn for shareholders Norfolk Southern faced repeated criticisms ahead of this month’s crash, Bevan Hurley and Louise Boyle write https://www.independent.co.uk/clima...ilment-chemicals-east-palestine-b2283132.html The rail company behind the toxic train disaster in Ohio was lambasted for safety failures last year after the company authorised $10bn stock buybacks for shareholders rather than maintenance, The Independent can reveal. The disaster was years in the making, according to a coalition of rail worker unions, driven by slashing the workforce, deregulation, corporate lobbying and shareholder payouts. The big rail operators eliminated at least one-fifth of jobs in just a couple of years, The Associated Press reported. “The wreck of Train 32N has been years in the making. What other such train wrecks await us remains to be seen,” Railroad Workers United (RWU) said in a press release. In April 2022 federal regulators were so concerned over the “deterioration of the freight rail industry” that they hauled executives from the four largest US rail companies, including Norfolk Southern, to Washington DC for urgent public hearings. The Surface Transportation Board (STB), which regulates the freight rail industry, told how it had heard compelling testimony from whistleblowers about reports of chronic employee shortages. Chairman Martin Oberman described the situation as a “rail service crisis”. The foursome - also made up of BNSF Railway Company, CSX Transportation and Union Pacific Railroad - were ordered to file detailed reports explaining how they would correct deficiencies the following month. When May came around, the SBT issued a highly critical statement accusing the companies of only filing “perfunctory” responses. Federal regulators singled out Norfolk Southern for “flatly (refusing) to provide the six-month targets for achieving their performance goals explicitly required by the Board’s order”. Yet just weeks before this public scrutiny, Norfolk Southern had announced a $10bn stock buyback. The company has a checkered past of deadly accidents and silencing whistleblowers, The Independent has also discovered. In February 2013, Norfolk Southern was ordered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the watchdog of the Department of Labor, to pay $1.1m to three whistleblowers who were wrongfully fired for reporting workplace injuries. "The Labor Department continues to find serious whistleblower violations at Norfolk Southern, and we will be steadfast in our defense of a worker’s right to a safe job – including his or her right to report injuries," said acting Secretary of Labor Seth D. Harris at the time. Several other orders were made against Norfolk Southern between 2011-2013, OSHA reported. The “investigations have found that the company continues to retaliate against employees for reporting work-related injuries, and these actions have effectively created a chilling effect in the railroad industry”, the agency said. Norfolk Southern said on Tuesday that it was sending $1m of “immediate charitable relief” to East Palestine residents. A few days after the derailment, the company had offered East Palestine a $25,000 donation to assist residents who were forced to evacuate their homes. The rail workers’ unions said that the immediate cause of the Ohio trainwreck “appears to have been a 19th century style mechanical failure of the axle on one of the cars—an overheated bearing—leading to derailment and then jackknifing tumbling cars”. “There is no way in the 21st century, save from a combination of incompetence and disregard to public safety, that such a defect should still be threatening our communities,” RWU said in a statement. An investigation into the East Palestine derailment is ongoing, according to the NTSB.
Fiery Ohio train wreck the result of “PSR” https://mronline.org/2023/02/09/fiery-ohio-train-wreck-the-result-of-psr/ Railroad Workers United (RWU) condemns the dangerous and historically unsafe practices by Class 1 rail carriers that resulted in this catastrophe that will impact the community of East Palestine Ohio for many years, if not forever. The root causes of this wreck are the same ones that have been singled out repeatedly, associated with the hedge fund initiated operating model known as “Precision Scheduled Railroading” (PSR). But risky practices, such as ever longer and heavier trains even precede PSR. The train that wrecked is a case in point, 9300 feet long, 18,000 tons. Other hallmarks of modern day railroading include deep cuts both maintenance and operating employees, poor customer service, deferred maintenance to rolling stock and infrastructure, long working hours and chronic fatigue, limited on-the-job training and high employee turnover. Norfolk Southern train NS 32N with 150 cars on the manifest, derailed on Feb. 3 at 8:55pm. It consisted of 3 locomotives 141 loads and 9 empties. The train had a crew of 3 at the time of the wreck, consisting of an Engineer, a Conductor and a Conductor Trainee. 20 of its loaded cars were considered Hazmat by the railroad. 10 of those hazmat cars were involved in the 50-car pileup. Of those 10, 5 cars contained Vinyl Chloride, all of which were damaged and/or burned, with one of those leaking by design to relieve explosive pressure. At this time, the immediate cause of the wreck appears to have been a 19th century style mechanical failure of the axle on one of the cars—an overheated bearing—leading to derailment and then jackknifing tumbling cars. There is no way in the 21st century, save from a combination of incompetence and disregard to public safety, that such a defect should still be threatening our communities. 40% of the weight of NS 32N was grouped at the rear third of the train, which has always been bad practice and made more dangerous with longer heavier trains. This fact almost certainly made the wreck dynamically worse. But increasingly the PSR driven Carriers, driven to cut costs and crew time by any means necessary, cut corners and leave crews and the public at risk. The crew was able to uncouple the locomotives and move them to safety, preventing an even bigger tragedy. This would not have been possible under the various management schemes now being proposed to operate such trains with single person crews. Further, because Train 32N carried the standard crew of two or more workers, they were able to immediately take the necessary emergency measures to ensure a safe and effective response. The short-term profit imperative, the so-called “cult of the Operating Ratio”—of NS and the other Class 1 railroads—has made cutting costs, employees, procedures, and resources the top priority. In this case, NS and the other carriers have eliminated many of the critical mechanical positions and locations necessary to guarantee protection against these kinds of failures. Simultaneously, they regularly petition the regulators at the Federal Railway Administration for relief from historically required maintenance and inspections. The wreck of Train 32N has been years in the making. What other such train wrecks await us remains to be seen. But given the modus operandi of the Class One rail carriers, we can no doubt expect future disasters of this nature.
