EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — The Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio has raised concerns for many people watching the disaster and investigation unfold. David Farwick, a 40-year veteran engineer of Norfolk Southern Railroad, had the same question in the initial hours of the accident.
“How did this happen?” Farwick asked.
Farwick said despite recent events, the rail industry is still the safest way to transport hazardous chemicals.
“It would take 300 trucks to move exactly what we did,” he said. “Do you want 300 more trucks out there or do you want this to go through one time?”
Farwick said he sympathizes with the residents in East Palestine and admits he wouldn’t want it to happen in his hometown. That said, he said there are so many layers of safety in place when things like this happen that it brings up questions.
The National Transportation Safety Board has pointed to the security video that surfaced showing what appears to be sparks or fire on the bearing, wheel and axil area of one of the train cars as it passed some 20 miles before the derailment.
“That was a tell-tell sign 'cause there’s so much pressure, so much on that bearing, it won’t last long sparking that hot that much,” Farwick thought after seeing the video himself.
Wayside defect detectors referenced as hot box detectors take the temperature of each railcar wheel as it passes. These detectors are spaced out along rail tracks, however, the distances can range. Farwick said the detectors were usually about twenty miles apart on the route he used to run out of Cincinnati.
The NTSB said the crew did get alerted “shortly” before the derailment, despite the video showing the apparent overheated bearing some 20 miles prior to the disaster. Farwick explains what happens the moment a wheel in crisis mode passes one of these detectors.
“It’s immediate. It will say hot box alert and then it will tell you automatically it’s axle 131 west side,” he explained.” I mean it’s immediate and we have to take action.”
NTSB said the crew of the East Palestine train did start emergency braking upon being notified.
As for other safety layers, Farwick said they start in the rail yard itself and are layered throughout the entire route.
“The maintenance people, they work that track. They walk it, they inspect the brakes, they inspect anything hanging, they inspect the journals, they inspect the bearings, they do a pre-brake test on it,” he said. “You’ll leave the terminal and within 15 miles you will be going by something that is a hot box detector, a dragging equipment detector, another train. It’s constant when we leave the yard there’s someone there watching us go by.”
Along the route, he said the eyes on the train range from the crew on board looking back at the cars as they go around bends to other train crews they pass and the average driver sitting at a crossing waiting for the train to pass.
“Sometimes you get a plume of dark smoke or a fire from some oil that goes through the exhaust and people at the crossings are calling 911,” he said.
Unfortunately, he says no safety system is 100% and things can happen.
“It’s a silent safe industry,” he said.
The NTSB said it will focus its investigation on several different aspects and that the wayside defect detectors were part of it. Investigators say they’ve isolated the wheelset deemed responsible for the derailment and it’s undergoing further evaluation and analysis.
The preliminary investigation report could be released the first week of March. The full report could take several months to complete.
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