CINCINNATI — The cause of a multiple-car train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio has not officially been determined, but a mechanical issue with a rail car axle is suspected to be the cause of the derailment, and the National Transportation Safety Board said it has video appearing to show a wheel bearing overheating just beforehand.
The NTSB said it expects to have a preliminary report in two weeks.
Now, politicians and officials are calling for new amendments to state laws to "improve railway safety and instill public confidence in the state's commitment to preventing future railways," according to a letter from Ohio House Democrats to the Ohio House Finance Committee and the Ohio House Transportation Subcommittee of Finance.
The Ohio House Finance Committee is scheduled to meet on Feb. 21, with the biennial Transportation Budget expected to be passed by March 31.
In the letter, lawmakers ask that the budget be amended to include several new requirements:
- Require at least a two-person railroad crew on trains
- Require PUCO to ensure Railway Wayside (Defect) Detector Systems are operational, effective and up to date
- Changes to rail yard lighting and walkway safety requirements
- The creation of a Railway Safety Zone
- Increase funding for the Ohio Rail Development by $5 million each fiscal year
- Require PUCO to report when railroads block crossings
According to the letter, Ohio has the fifth-highest rail traffic in the country, spanning 5,000 miles of track, 5,685 public grade crossings and 36 freight railroads operating within the state.
Requiring railroads to operate trains with at least two crew members isn't a new idea: A rule requiring just that was sent to the White House for approval in Dec. 2016, but was sent back to the Federal Railroad Administration six days after Donald Trump's inauguration. It was later moved from the White House's list of active rulemakings to the long-term agenda and was never officially implemented.
That original proposal was sparked by a 2013 derailment in which a runaway train transporting oil was improperly secured by the engineer — the only human on board the train at the time. The train crashed in Lac Megantic, Canada, igniting into a blaze that killed 47 people. Although most trains do operate with two crew members, freight railroads opposed it as a requirement.
Another safety protocol struck down by the DOT during the Trump Administration related to trains' brakes.
In 2018, the U.S. Department of Transportation under former President Donald Trump repealed a 2015 mandate that would have required High Hazardous Flammable Unit Trains (HHFUT) to implement electronically controlled pneumatic braking systems. The repeal does not prevent train lines from choosing to install ECP brakes.
In 2018 the DOT determined, based on a Regulatory Impact Analysis the department performed, that the cost of requiring the brake updates "are significantly higher than the expected benefits," though union officials protested at the time.
John Risch, who was then the national legislative director for the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, told the Associated Press in 2018 the repeal meant the government abandoned “the greatest safety advancement I’ve witnessed in my 41 years in the industry.”
Most modern U.S. trains still rely on an air brake system based on a design from the 1800s, which stops train cars one after the other. The advanced electronic brakes would have meant each car had its own braking system and could brake simultaneously, reducing distance and time needed for a train to stop and keeping more cars on the track in the event of a derailment, the Associated Press reported in 2018.
State officials had no idea the train that derailed carried hazardous chemicals before it crashed, Governor Mike DeWine said during a press conference Tuesday afternoon. He said under current law, Norfolk Southern wasn't required to notify states when trains are transporting hazardous chemicals if the cars carrying such substances don't make up enough cars in the train.
"This is absurd and we need to look at this and Congress needs to take a look at how these things are handled," said DeWine.
Congressman Greg Landsman said Wednesday that he also believes local officials need to be notified every time hazardous materials are entering Ohio, especially flammable chemicals. He said the findings from the investigation will be key in figuring out what the state needs to do in order to prevent something like this from happening again.
"We need to know," said Landsman. "The governor is absolutely correct and the question now is can the administration do that rule change without Congress and if so they should pursue it because that would happen more quickly."
U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigeg, tweeted that the department was making "historic investments on rail safety through funding in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law."
In his tweet thread, Buttigeg also acknowledged that rail de-regulations imposed by earlier administrations posed a challenge.
"We're constrained by law on some areas of rail regulation (like the braking rule withdrawn by the Trump administration in 2018 because of a law passed by Congress in 2015), but we are using the powers we do have to keep people safe," he tweeted.
Buttigeg primarily pointed to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the funding it would provide as a solution to future safety issues regarding trains.
Cincinnati is home to one of the largest rail yards in the country,but local officials were confident that, if a derailment and crash similar to the one in East Palestine happened in the region, the Cincinnati Fire Department is equipped to handle it.
There are between 30 and 40 hazardous materials technicians on the Cincinnati Fire Department and they're evaluated every three years to make sure their training and equipment is up to date.
But CFD District 9 Chief Michael Cayse said it could be overwhelming if that team were notified every time a train with a car containing hazardous materials traveled through Cincinnati.
"Day to day shipments, there are thousands and thousands of cars of hazardous material that go through here all the time, so to notify us on every single one of them all the time it wouldn't change our operation because even if we knew it or didn't know it our response would be exactly be the same," said Cayse.
David Farwich, a 40-year veteran engineer who worked with Norfolk Southern said he still believes the rail industry is 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?”
The NTSB has pointed to security video that surfaced showing what appears to be sparks or fire on the bearing, wheel and axle area of one of the train cars as it passed a business around 20 miles before the derailment.
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 but the distances can range. Farwick said the detectors on the route he used to run out of Cincinnati were usually about 20 miles apart.
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. NTSB said the crew of the Palestine train did start emergency braking upon being notified.
Farwick said safety layers like that begin in the rail yard and are layered through 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.”
