The National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation of the February 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment at East Palestine, Ohio, near that state’s border with Pennsylvania, probably will not be complete until this summer.
But as an Associated Press article printed in the Feb. 2 Mirror showed, the scrutiny being accorded the after-derailment decision
-making process is destined to produce valuable information for guiding railroads’ handling of such dangerous, health- and life-threatening events, going forward.
If there is one shred of proverbial silver lining stemming from the Ohio derailment, it almost certainly will be beefed-up preparedness for responding more quickly to something amiss than what occurred at East Palestine.
It is reasonable to make such an assumption even though Norfolk Southern does not appear to have been grossly unprepared or grossly negligent in regard to the situation leading up to the accident or regarding what was done in its aftermath.
Still, how it responded must be subjected to thorough evaluation for the benefit of itself, other railroads and people and communities who someday might find themselves in the path of such potential tragedy.
That includes places like Altoona and Johnstown, where train traffic is an ever-present reality.
The big question that continues to swirl around the East Palestine derailment is whether officials overreacted in deciding to blow open five tank cars filled with toxic vinyl chloride — tank cars that those officials feared might explode.
That decision led to a huge plume of allegedly dangerous black smoke, effects from which residents still are rightly fearful, on behalf of their short- and long-term health.
As the Feb. 2 Mirror article reported, the officials who made the decision have continued to defend it, saying that they made the best call they could with the information they had available.
Perhaps.
But meanwhile, the company that made the chemical told investigators it believed the vinyl chloride remained stable and wouldn’t have exploded.
The problem was that company’s opinion apparently was not shared with key decision-makers.
Obviously, the best communication channels were not in place at the time of the derailment, and that needs to be further evaluated and rectified.
For some East Palestine residents, the pace of the derailment probe probably is being regarded as too slow, but it really isn’t. The accident in question was a complicated mess that has needed to be sorted out virtually fragment by fragment.
Although the NTSB is blaming an overheated bearing for causing the derailment, there has been a question about why trackside detectors that spotted a bearing heating up on one of the railcars did not trigger an alarm early enough for the crew to stop the train before the derailment.
The final NTSB report is going to be interesting reading when it is released, but the accident and its aftermath are going to remain on the front burner of discussion for long after that.
— Altoona Mirror via AP
