Train Derailment and the Pointing of Fingers

Train Derailment and the Pointing of Fingers

Train Derailment and the Pointing of Fingers

Nearly two weeks have lapsed since a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed near the town of East Palestine, OH. Authorities feared an explosion, so they initiated a release of toxic fumes in order to neutralize burning cargo.

It did not go as planned. Animals are now dying, residents are terrified, while politicians and pundits spend their time pointing fingers at each others’ tribes.

On Wednesday night, the city held an open house which was designed to answer questions and allay fears. The crowd of people waiting to get in resembled lines you see outside of sporting events.

One blogger at the event reported that residents were determined to hold the government accountable. He tweeted the following:

First question: “why are the people outside of a one mile radius from East Palestine getting NO support?” Answer: “Because that’s what the Department of Transportation told us to do” Unbelievable.

U.S. Congressman Bill Johnson: We have found nothing in the air or water that will be harmful. East Palestine resident: “You all said the same thing about Ground Zero (9/11) too, and that was a lie!” The resident’s correct.

A little boy from East Palestine asks: “Why can’t I play in the creeks and outside because of that smell?” Ohio EPA answers: “It’s just a mixture of dead fish and chemicals!” The boy responds: “That’s not fair!

Other residents challenged the official health statements which said that “vinyl chloride in water or soil evaporates rapidly IF it is near the surface.”

But guess who didn’t show up? Norfolk Southern, the train operator responsible for the accident.

 

Train Company Pulls Out of Open House

A few hours before the East Palestine open house opened, Norfolk Southern released a statement indicating that they would not be attending. It read in part:

Unfortunately, after consulting with community leaders, we have become increasingly concerned about the growing physical threat to our employees and members of the community around this event stemming from the increasing likelihood of the participation of outside parties. With that in mind, Norfolk Southern will not be in attendance this evening.

But not to worry, good people living in fear of the toxins in the air! Norfolk Southern says it’s “committed to East Palestine and will continue to respond to community concerns …” By golly, they even have set up a “hotline for citizens to ask questions regarding return to home and health questions.”

Train derailment/Norfolk SouthernScreenshot/@MaxFilby.

Perhaps Norfolk Southern feared that they might have to answer concerns that some of their employees knew the train was dangerous. They feared that the company’s implementation of “Precision Scheduled Railroading,” or PSR, a management philosophy which uses technology to improve efficiency — and profits — would lead to accidents like the event in East Palestine.

Or maybe they feared having to answer why doorbell camera videos showed that the axle on one of the cars was on fire some 20 miles before the derailment. “Hot box detectors” which are placed at intervals are supposed to alert personnel. Yet the alert came too late, and the fiery axle led to the derailment.

 

Politicos and Pundits Point Fingers

Norfolk Southern might be trying to stay silent, but politicians and talking heads eagerly jump into the Blame Game.

Like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who faulted the Trump administration for the accident. He tweeted:

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.

In response, Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH) fired back in a statement:

If someone wants to play the blame game now, that’s their decision, but I’m going to stay focused on the residents of East Palestine and the tasks at hand.

Johnson also invited Buttigieg to Wednesday’s open house, but the secretary was a no-show.

Former Democrat Congresswoman, now Independent, Tulsi Gabbard blamed “people in power” for not caring.

And from the opposing tribe, Jon Stewart blamed Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Fox News’s Tucker Carlson for their “baloney” reaction to the train derailment:

He and and Tucker go on and they play act. They play act this concern for working people and populism. Meanwhile, everything that they put in place politically in their infrastructure is against regulatory improvements and help for working class people. It’s baloney.

And on and on it goes.

 

Meanwhile, the Train Derailment Destroys Lives

I don’t know if the people of East Palestine care as to which political party is responsible for the derailment. They worry about their health, and their futures. And they don’t believe what the authorities are telling them.

So while the governor is telling residents that it’s okay to drink the water, residents respond, “you first.” While the Ohio Departments of Natural Resources and Agriculture claimed they received no reports of dying animals, East Palestine residents report their animals are getting sick and dying. Approximately 3500 fish have died in four nearby waterways as well.

Then there are respiratory ailments among the residents, along with sore throats, irritated eyes, headaches. But that’s just the start: many of the chemicals in the train cars are potentially carcinogenic. No wonder some science writers have deemed the train derailment as having much in common with the Chernobyl disaster.

Who are the people of East Palestine going to believe: their leaders or their lying eyes? Or their irritated lungs or their throbbing heads? Moreover, do they really care which political party is most responsible? At this point, they just want their lives to return to normal — if that’s ever going to be possible.

 

Featured image: Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash/cropped/free for use.

Written by

Kim is a pint-sized patriot who packs some big contradictions. She is a Baby Boomer who never became a hippie, an active Republican who first registered as a Democrat (okay, it was to help a sorority sister's father in his run for sheriff), and a devout Lutheran who practices yoga. Growing up in small-town Indiana, now living in the Kansas City metro, Kim is a conservative Midwestern gal whose heart is also in the Seattle area, where her eldest daughter, son-in-law, and grandson live. Kim is a working speech pathologist who left school system employment behind to subcontract to an agency, and has never looked back. She describes her conservatism as falling in the mold of Russell Kirk's Ten Conservative Principles. Don't know what they are? Google them!

4 Comments
  • GWB says:

    the growing physical threat to our employees
    Well, there should be a physical threat to your employees attending. After all, the residents are under a physical threat living there….

    (like the braking rule withdrawn by the Trump administration
    Oh yes, a rule about something that wouldn’t have affected the accident is a great place to put the blame.

    They play act this concern for working people and populism.
    The 80s cineplexes called and would like their projection back.

    One thing no one seems to be talking about, though, is the fact it took days to find out about all the other chemicals on the train. I have asked on a few blogs why there wasn’t a “List of everything on every car of my choo-choo.” Aircraft are required to have a cargo manifest. Trucks are required to have a cargo manifest. Evidently regulations on trains only require a “This train is filled with hazmat!” sticker if the hazmat exceeds a certain percentage of the cargo, and there’s NO requirement for a train operator to have an up-to-date manifest of everything on its train. I would think insurance companies would be SCREAMING about this – how are they going to pay out if they don’t know what’s really on a train? I would think FEMA and such would be screaming, too – how do they know what to be prepared for when they arrive at a scene?

    Mayor Pete, fix our cargo train system!

    • Scott says:

      ” Evidently regulations on trains only require a “This train is filled with hazmat!” sticker if the hazmat exceeds a certain percentage of the cargo, and there’s NO requirement for a train operator to have an up-to-date manifest of everything on its train.”..

      Not sure that’s accurate GWB, unless I’m reading this wrong..

      https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-I/subchapter-C/part-172/subpart-C

      But yeah, they’re a crap-ton of un-answered questions about this whole incident…

      • GWB says:

        Willing to be schooled, but that was the apparent information to come from the big press conference they had.

        Also, I don’t see anywhere in that referenced regulation the requirement to label the train as hazardous materials. Just that each shipper provide documents about their specific hazardous material. I’m not sure any of it requires the shipping documents to all be put together in one place that’s within reach of whomever they call when a train goes smash.
        (Oddly, the last part that seems to require a single manifest is only about hazardous waste.)

        I would love for someone to show me that gov’t regulation actually could have helped with this disaster. But I don’t have much confidence in that outcome.

        • Scott says:

          Not trying to school ya GWB, just help out. in all the classes I’ve had, you are correct that the whole train isn’t marked ( I think I misread that part in your original post), but each car that carries hazmat has to be placarded on all four sides (the 12x12in diamond we’ve all seen with numbers and sometimes symbols on it), and the shipping papers for everything carried has to be with the conductor in the locomotive. According to the regulations, anything that qualifies as haz-mat has to be on the top of the list, in a different color than the rest so it’s easily recognizable. I haven’t seen any of the press conferences, so not saying that all / any of these regs were followed, just that these are what’s required.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe
Become a Victory Girl!

Are you interested in writing for Victory Girls? If you’d like to blog about politics and current events from a conservative POV, send us a writing sample here.
Ava Gardner
gisonboat
rovin_readhead