Just a side note as a conductor for a US-based Railroad: At 8:57 you said, "The rules require the train to be immediately brought to a halt. However, the driver the driver (Engineer) didn't put on the emergency brakes, instead applying the dynamic brakes to slowly bring the train to a stop." That is normal as most railroad rulebooks say something along the lines of, "To bring the train to a stop using good train handling unless conditions require an emergency brake application." This is because emergency brake applications can sometimes cause derailments on their own when a train is moving at higher speeds because of basic physics, especially when its one of the 10,000 Feet+ long monsters most of these Class 1 railroads love to run these days. But I also want to note that NS's Hotbox detector "sensitivity" is disgustingly low, requiring a temperature so high that most of the time a bearing may have already failed completely before triggering an alarm over the radio. (I'm never gonna forgive NS for that mess, but I wanted to point out that little tidbit.)
Very interesting, I was working under the assumption like how in the UK railway rule book immediately bring your train to stand means emergency brake application. its interesting how its done in different countries!!
@PlainlyDifficult , setting air brakes while still on the detector can trigger more alarms too. Also if you're moving over crossings that need to be cleared, DB is the preferred method in a HB scenario. Sometimes both methods are used in tandem in everyday operations or sometimes independently. "Plugging it" can cause more harm than good as mentioned by the first reply above. Handling long and heavy mixed manifests like the culprit in the video have to be handled with extreme care by the engineer. I've been at it 22 years and I still sometimes get sweaty palms bringing the big ones (10k feet) to a stop coming into yards and signals. Thanks for all the great videos, just finished this after a 31 hour round trip on 2 similar trains, yay..
@@PlainlyDifficult UK trains are much shorter and lighter. I'm not in the industry so best to ask one who is. That said, an e-brake (air dump) on a freight train seems to be a potentially destructive thing with few uses. The train will still need thousands of yards to stop with e-brake but will also have damage and risk of a derailment.
I dont know anything about trains, but I was thinking same thing. If you pull handbrake on a car it can actually make you loose controll. I would expect the same thing with trains. Only little knowledge of physics I would expect exactly what you describe with emergency brake aka things could have been even worse..
Thank you for covering this story. I'm from Salem, Ohio, which is 18 miles away from East Palestine. The train was already on fire when it passed through Salem. My dad was an insurance agent who had many clients in E.P., and he started getting phone calls from people asking him for help or where they could stay. He knew everything before it hit the news. Speaking of the news, it was hushed up for several days and journalists were ran off until it finally hit national news.
Im in Mentor. Wife is from Rostraver PA (south of Pitt). We stop at the BP in Salem every trip (exactly half way point). I go to Colum and Salem for thrift stores as I'm a media reseller. Havent been that way since Memorial Day 2023
If small animals are dying, people are too, it will just take longer. Although one possible factor is if the dangerous gases are heavier than air, so the lower down animals are more effected. That still tends to mean contamination of plants and soil which is likely to affect humans to some extent.
Not from EP, but I've heard the smell lingered around for months. I've smelled burnt polyvinylchloride (PVC), and it's not great. I was around it one day for a couple hours, and I'm sure it wasn't great for me, but the long-term effects would be minimal. Monomer vinylchloride, I assume, would have similar combustable effects. I actually can't imagine spending my whole week in a town where a cloud of those combustion products were hanging around, breathed in every breath. I really hope they got a good settlement from the lawsuit...
@@nickdubil90I used to make a living having to burn PVC at least at the start and end of every shift... It sure smells like it's cancer incarnate. Now I work with cadmium! - edited to add - not just handling, but vaporizing cadmium! (both are in Ohio, and sought after jobs for the average Joe in my community!)
As someone who is from Norfolk, let me say that a few years ago Norfolk Southern moved their entire operation lock, stock and barrel to Atlanta and has absolutely nothing to do with our city anymore. We disavow any and all association.
@scottl.1568 Maybe that move was to consolidate operations. Nothing against the town at all. Ever class 1 railroad as done it and it was not against the towns they were based in all over.
I live about 35-40 mins south of E Palestine. I remember making my entire family not drink the water but drink bottled for months. My area really is rust belt exemplified, forgotten and not cared about. Great video.
13:31 I love how you swapped out the old phones that would typically be in your more historical disaster videos to a modern cell phone, but left the curly cord 😂
Excellent video as always! As a train driver from Europe i would just like to add that in case of a hot box, it is best to avoid an emergency braking as the induced mechanical stress is likely to cause immediate failure of the overheated axle. We are instructed to slow the train down as gently as possible, which is what the crew of that train did. Unfortunately it was too late, even for the gentle braking.
Agreed. The amount of respect and care shown to each story sets these videos apart. Instead of fishing for clickbait we get a genuine telling of the story and a presentation of the facts as well as they're known at the time.
I live a few minutes away a bit downwind from East Palestine, you could SMELL that mess all the way over here, it had a flavor in the air that stuck with you and lingered all along the river valleys. all the way as far as pittsburgh and further had air warnings from the burn cloud. We had animals getting sick here, my cat, my beloved was 20 years old and had started getting thyroid problems the last few years and then the wreck happened. it destroyed her, she couldn't breathe, even with bottled water to drink and the windows kept shut she just got sicker and sicker until she didn't make it home from the vet the last time, it was so fast and so miserable for her. a lot of the neighborhood strays just went missing, or were found later passed away. a lot of people with asthma were in bad shape for a long while. Norfolk Southern still has an attitude about it all, and the ground is still tainted in places over there, people still get sick, and so do animals in the area and we all know what its from but everyone not a member of the peasantry just shrugs and says its not their fault and that there's nothing wrong. DuPont pulled some of the same shady talk back in the town i came up here from, back when they made the creek smell like bleach and turned it grayish blue in the 80s and 90s before they snuck their business out of town when people started getting after them about all the asthma and cancer and birth defects, and the game commission got mad about deer dying on the state lands, people they didn't care about but god forbid the deer start getting sick and tourism get impacted oh nooo. companies that treat people as obstacles to their profits instead of as people still make me furious.
My heart goes out to you all over this ! I work on the railways in the the Uk and I watched the aftermath on TH-cam and gathered information and couldn't believe what I was seeing ??? Just a nightmare situation 😔
In mild defense of the game commission... their whole job is to monitor and regulate game animals and how and when they may be hunted. Their job doesn't include humans except for in their actions regarding game animals. I honestly suspect that someone in the area who worked with the game commission deliberately checked on the health of deer and such, knowing the effects on people they know, and when they found what they were looking for, they sicced the only regulatory body they had available on the company - the game commission. Remember people who manage state lands directly live in the state and very local to the lands. They would have been directly or indirectly affected by the same DuPont situation. What I am concerned _didn't_ happen is that a rise in asthma, cancer, and birth defects in a locality either wasn't reported to or wasn't investigated by the CDC, though it is possible they were investigating quietly and spooked DuPont. Maternity wards in hospitals should have noticed the trend and contacted them, because it could have been any number of infectious causes as well. CDC would have potentially determined it wasn't technically a disease, and contacted the EPA to deal with it. Which makes me suspect that they weren't contacted or were contacted not long before DuPont moved (but I think they would have investigated regardless). So I honestly suspect someone dropped the ball, either it wasn't reported, was reported late, or state and federal agencies knew and dropped the ball (more likely for the state, less for federal who don't care what DuPont thinks of them and deal with this sort of thing more often). This is why "if you see something, say something" matters, because if everyone assumes someone else will, no one will, and because enough reports annoying an agency will get action just to make people stop asking.
Guessing you live out in Darlington? I live near BF. Couldn't smell it much (although you still could) but you could see the plume from near 10 miles away. Can't believe they still have security along Taggart rd trying to keep people out
Johns been a staple of my weekends since I stumbled across the SL1 disaster many many moons ago, work your way through the back catalogue, we can meet back here in 18 months
Check out his yearly omnibus videos and you won't miss a thing. I drive for a living. It took me a couple weeks, but I got through everything. Join the channel and you get bonus videos!!
As a retired chemist (25 years industry & laboratory), the phrase, "Eat My Ass!" generally sums up industry's attitude towards regulatory agencies (EPA, OSHA, & DOE) succinctly!
@@xcalibertrekker6693 Exactly! What so many people fail to realize is the reason we don't respect regulatory agencies is because they treat us like second class citizens. If these agencies took a better approach to regulation enforcement, you'd see a much better safety culture in tbe US. But as it stands, having a grumpy pencil pusher up your ass doesn't inspire cooperation...
Cant let pesky things like ethical and environmental concerns limit their potential profits. Its apparently more inhumane to let the shareholder or executive go without buying his or her 3rd mansion.
@@candlestyx8517Those agencies screw over the little guy just as much. Want to build a shed in your backyard but there's a "wetland" (read as muddy puddle not an actual marsh) within 100 yards? EPA says no. Well it's actually CAMA but they're under the EPA's umbrella. We really need to break the illusion that more power to government regulatory agencies ONLY sticks it to billionaires. They'll pay their way around it. You won't.
The government response was a result of the senator and president these residents voted for. They wanted a guy who gutted the EPA and so they got what they wanted.
@@nickdubil90 I understand where you're coming from. However, I don't believe we could trust our government to competently manage all rail service in the US. Attempts to build high speed rail, for example, have only ended in a boondoggle where billions have been spent for a few dozen miles of track. The government should maintain it's regulatory nature over rail infrastructure. Allowing companies to do as they see fit as long as they're following safety standards and maintenance upkeep.
@@nickdubil90 Socialized transport would make a bigger mess of things. One particular socialist government nationalized the railroads and created a heating crisis -- despite the heating fuel of choice of the day, coal, sitting in heaps next to the coal mines, the railroad had been so mismanaged they couldn't move it to the cities where it was needed. While people froze, the government bragged about running the railroad "according to socialist principles". Another socialist country "made the trains run on time" by reducing the number of stops on a route and moving the stops to be ten minutes later. It wasn't that the trains operated any better, they just normalized the poor performance there was before.
@@E100Omega123 I totally agree with your "high-speed rail" assessment. I live in California, and we have been promised "high-speed rail" since the 90's with little to show for it. It's BS. I think it will eventually happen, but the budget overrun and everything will almost render it moot. To be clear: that project requires brand-new rail lines to be constructed from the ground-up, including purchasing territory from profitable farmers, from Gonzales to Paso Robles. It requires A LOT of new land purchases. Cali can claim "immenent domain", but they still have a lot of land to buy that is increasing in value and don't want to pay full price for. With Rail, the difference is that they already own the land. Norfolk Southern and a handful of other rail companies already own the rights-of-way. They make good money with the freight traffic on those rails. If the government just buys-out the existing rail system, I think it would be a net benefit. That's totally different from building a "new, high-speed rail" system that relies on buying-out existing properties. The use of which, I agree, should be done in a more democratic manner. I don't like winner-take-all politics. I think the House votes should be done in a proportional manner, with seats based on the proportion of party votes. But that is different from the American tradition. Not my choice, though.
If you haven't found it, Status Coup tubeyou channel has been at all of their town hall meetings, as well as meeting residents in their homes to cover this. (Since you're a fan of good journalism.)
I'm so sorry for what happened in your town. I was so angry and helpless to do anything to help. But I think of this tragedy often. I wish everyone well.
I remember when this happened. Apparently some people thought this happened in Palestine in the Levant. And immediately start saying that these people deserved what happened to them and Hamas was probably behind it... What a world we live in.
Those people are just stupid. Lets send those stupid people to visit a place like Pripyat. I'm sure they won't do something stupid like digging in the Red Forest, or grabbing the gear that is in the hospital.
Most people are just incredibly dumb. They never read the whole story, or wait for all the details before saying something absolutely ignorant. It's kinda a good thing though. You usually don't need to wonder too long if the person talking is an idiot, because they'll usually say something that tells you just what level of stupid you're dealing with.
Fun fact, Michigan and Ohio nearly went to war over the Toledo strip when they were drawing the state lines. Militia were called up and they shared hurled insults. Jackson intervened, and Michigan received the entire Upper Penninsula for the loss of Toledo. Michigan and Ohio still hurl insults at each other, but we use U of M and OSU football teams instead of militia. 😅
The UP, pronounced by its letter U P not the word up, was wilderness at the time. Later they discovered a huge Iron ore deposit, which is still being mined to this day. There are big iron ore freighters that run thru Lake Superior (the Edmund Fitzgerald was one😢). It's largely state forest, with a natural beauty that awes, and has a mostly rural population. This contrasts with Toledo that was an important port, including iron ore, which was used for steel production and the car industry. Jeep was based in Toledo, and was a large chunk of ww2 war machine production.
@@MarianneKat I know the Toledo area, and anything that is natural and beautiful contrasts strongly with Toledo! 😉 (Although they've got a great art gallery!)
Do you know how it is different from polyvinylchloride? I assume it's like Silicone, where the base pairs form "strings" in polymerization. I've only delt with PVC in construction settings. Working with semiconductors, it's not a normal chemical I'm totally familiar with.
@@CanielDonradthere was a car that overheated and blew in alabama a couple months ago. Half the car was airborn for ~15 seconds if I remember correctly. I half ass did the math and it went ~4500 feet in the air if I remember correctly
@@jimsvideos7201 "as long as it isn't on fire". I guess it's similar to silicone then, as I thought. I have nothing against PDMS, PVC, H2O2, or any number of industrial chemicals, so long as they are correctly used and disposed of.
This one’s still a raw nerve for many Americans in light of later disaster response fails, calling into question as it does federal, media, and corporate handling of the disaster. Thanks for the technical coverage (and the train nerdery.)
What makes this even worse is class 1 railroads are virtual monopolies. Since they stick to their own rails, a competitor can't just show up in a town you have tracks through unless they have their own. So, not only can they set their own price, they also don't reinvest that profit into safety improvements. Making Norfolk Southern a legitimately evil company. And the rest (BNSF, UP, and CSX) aren't far behind.
Basically none of this is true. "Monopoly", Mono for "one", and "poly" for many. One where they would or should be many. There are multiple, not one, Class 1 railroads. None of them are monopolies. Smaller railroads constantly and frequently operate on track owned by CSX, Norfolk Southern, and BNSF. The rail network would not function if that's not the case. This is done via Trackage Rights, where the owners of the tracks lease the rights for other railroads to run trains in their track. It's a basic operational principle of railroading since the end of the 19th century. Not only this, but the idea that competition amongst railroads is good is just hilariously wrong and a great indicator that someone has absolutely no idea what they are talking about, and no knowledge about the history of the industry. Competition amongst railroads is universally destructive, not constructive, and results in rate wars and profit-hawking that prioritize financial gains for individual shareholders than efficient operations.
@@Volorai You're ignoring that monopolies don't have to be on the scale of the entire US to be a monopoly. You can have regional monopolies. Also, competition amongst railways is stupid, but only because infrastructure like railways are natural monopolies. Therefore the correct solution is to have the railways to be state owned and train services be competitive. In the same way roads are state owned and taxicabs and delivery services are competitive
@@Voloraiif I have a town that is only served by NS, NS has a monopoly over that town. IMO all tracks should be owned by the state DOT and leased out to railroads
@@gyvren It's always cute when people blame the presented scapegoat that could never be held fully accountable while the lobbyists and companies who bribe their way into getting it done don't even get a mention. It's why they put these insufferable clowns into office, so that people can get mad at them instead of the real villains.
Turn a train wreck worse by venting off an organohalogen and burning it? They cause caucer and this is not me spooking people. I did my 18 year old study at college and the organohalogen was carcinogenic
I'd like to see info on other rivers catching fire. Poor Cuyahoga gets painted like it's the only one. It's not, even if you only count in the US. This century, there's been one in Bangalore & another in Wenzhou too.
@@eliscanfield3913 I'm pretty sure that the Detroit River has caught fire before, and if it hasn't I'd be surprised. Same for the St. Clair River. I grew up in that area, and those were particularly notorious for their levels of pollution. There have been jokes about using water from the Detroit River for paint thinner for over a century!
Thankfully today the Cuyahoga River valley is not a bad place to hike in and explore. The “pinko commie EPA” was at it… probably, “affecting businesses”. Go to Cleveland and see how many metal plating and similar toxic material process shops are boarded up. For a good reason. Because nobody in the heyday of this Real American Industry gave a rat’s ass about environment. They operated on borrowed time, slowly making the community sicker.
I'll never understand a company's mentality to squeeze out the most basic of maintenance things just to save a few dollars, and ultimately it then blows up to become a multi million or billion issues. A $100 oil change in a work truck every few months sure is a lot cheaper than a new $15k engine every few years. This is the exact opposite of leadership effectively managing a business and it's capital. They extremely poor at it, thinking the 'risk' is low on scrimping out on things like this, then clutch their pearls and are flabbergasted when something like this happens, that could have been prevented had they had a handful of $100k/year yard mechanics who's entire job was to make sure those wheels stay in good shape. It's only getting worse as these clowns take control of companies, cause anyone at them who actually used to care to quit, and then we end up with another Boeing with doors blowing off in flight on their jets, and stranding astronauts in Space. I think if we all knew the depths of incompetence in major companies like these, we would be living in terror every day. Great video on this incident, always fascinating to watch your content! :)
@@ferretyluv The Holy Shareholders are the only company stakeholders that matter. Employees? Customers? The people who live near the tracks? Considering their welfare is heretical.
Maintenance and inspection cost money. Eliminating them immediately reduces that cost. Some companies have decided that when the equipment fails you’ll just just fix it then and that save money and increased bonuses. This exact same thing happened with BP and the Deepwater Horizon.
You think they do it for the sake of the company? They are doing it for themselves, shareholders want to retire before 50s, they don't want to lead a company until they die
I love your illustration. It is my favorite part of your channel. The audacity of these preventable disasters are easy to explain, and your graphical storytelling can explain these failures to a 5 year old. Well done, as always!
"Rail Services" are not suitable for our modern conception of a Corporation. THEY DON'T GROW. At one point, they did, and made Robber Barons and Ayn Rand books. That is FINE. But now, they are INFRASTRUCTURE. These rail networks and companies need to be nationalized to avoid a race-to-the-bottom. Noone wants to invest in a company that isn't growing anymore. Rail is a thing where even larger throughput doesn't increase operating cost or revenue (usually to keep bulk goods economical with road transportation).
@@TrickiVicBB71here is a question if the Haitians themselves say they have problems with some of their population being cannibals why is it so hard to believe that they'd eat somebody's pets.
I lived close enough to see the smoke coming up from this crash and I can't overstate just how scary it was at the time especially with my then gfs son and my son being around. It was a truly awful time.
Hey John I have been watching for about a year now and I love watching your videos. I also enjoy putting you’re videos on while I fall asleep, tidy or on long car trips just wanted to say I love your content ❤
Across the pond infrastructure is by law separated from operation. We are using failure state detectors coupled with train control. Typical "hot box" part consist of eight discrete infrared thermometers. If anything is above threshold next signal block would impose speed restriction and train must stop at nearest station for inspection. Yes, we have learned.
Correct, we have hot wheel detectors here as well. Three detectors up the line it was too hot. We know this because of the security camera video. We have the same rules about stopping and walking the train. Retired rail here. None of those things will do a bit of good if the company running the train doesn't care. With that attitude you can throw all the money and technology you want at this problem and it will keep happening.
@@piquat1there is a difference tho. Today no manual intervention is required if a failure detector sees any anomaly. Anomaly means automatic signalling block change to a safe speed and next station route dispatch can only stop such train. The driver is either informed by the digital train control about the speed restriction reason or by the dispatcher via radio. But braking is essentially obligatory. It is utterly important on mixed corridors
How it should be, automated detection and execution of protocols to avoid the human apathy element. If you override that system, you're personally making yourself responsible for whatever comes after, and the last thing people want to do is take the blame!
This accident is brought to you by the billionaires who have bought and still pay for politicians,who then allow lax oversight by the government agencies they oversee and self regulation,still cutting cost and safety in maintenance and staffing with the costs of accidents like this payed by the customer and taxpayer/citizen and the guilt remain free of any consequences.
Yep, and it's why our vote doesn't count, it's the corporations vote. Ya know, when the Founding Fathers were talking about fighting against tyranny, I'm certain they'd consider these corporations to be tyrants... Just sayin'.
Jews make up a fractional minority of the global population and are disproportionately over represented in the billionaires bracket, for a group of minorities who are so opressed, this doesnt add up does it? Isnt systemic oppression characterized by poverty? Cant really be oppressed and the most powerful at the same time.
@@sebforce1165 its just honesty, i see their faith being used as a shield while they work together for eachothers benefits. In a society, this is not a good thing to have a group who values themselves above the actual group(society) so they are a destabilizing element. Wether intentional or not is irrelevant.
I hope they do. Their disaster breakdowns are so well made and informative even for a complete layman. I just wish they existed as hypotheticals instead of tragic realities.
Hey, that's me! I lived within a mile of the accident and was thus evacuated. Fun fact, we don't say our name like Palestine in the middle east, but Pales-teen. As of the 2010 census, our population was below 5,000 and are categorized as a "village". It's really weird seeing my hometown on youtube channels. You said the vent and burn was completely pointless. I disagree. It got the rails up and running faster than if they hadn't blown the tanks and that's what's important after all. On the bright side, they're completely redoing our park and building a new swimming pool. Really that makes it all worth it /s
The "vent" was with plastic explosives to do a controlled burn on several tank cars that were burning, with their internal temps rising which could cause a massive explosion, thus they were vented to make a small hole to allow pressure to release without going boom. I agree with you.
@@chessiecat96 When we got told to evacuate the second time it was because they worried large pieces of the tank cars would go flying. They dug a trench alongside where the explosives were placed so the vinyl chloride would collect there before burning instead of running off everywhere. Watched the explosion on tv and recognizing the street I drive over all the time was surreal.
I don't believe you have ever got too geeky on anything let alone trains. Well done, it was so politicized when it happened, you didn't know what was true and it wore me down, this was concise and I believe you. Usually, you are the 1st click Sat morn, I put this one off for a bit but glad I watched, thanks.
I went and read through the NTSB report after watching this and was somewhat surprised that nobody called CHEMTREC until the next morning (their phone number is printed inside the Emergency Response Guidebook for a reason!). Then I read on and saw that the State of Ohio sets a *MAXIMUM* of 36 hours of training for volunteer firefighters, which effectively precludes them from taking Hazmat courses...that is genuinely shocking.
@@sprolyborn2554 That's...not how labor laws work, or how volunteer fire departments work. Ohio may have some dumb stupid rule, but volunteer firefighters in other states receive far more training than 40 hours and are still volunteers.
@@sprolyborn2554 It's relevant because Ohio is doing something wrong by requiring their volunteer firefighters to be ignorant of Hazmat response and god only knows what else. They're screwing over their own first responders. They're lucky none of them were killed. Get your shit together, Ohio!
I don't think we'll ever see that kind of change until it's no longer possible to funnel unlimited funds into political campaigns, making obedience to only the wealthiest donors a prerequisite for even attempting to run for office. And we'll never see _that_ change for the same reason. Almost like our electoral system that was created to serve only the wealthiest of landowners is still doing the thing it was designed to do and is incapable of being reformed to do anything else. I seem to recall reading this book from this old guy that said something like "the working class must break up, smash the 'ready-made state machinery', and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it." It made sense to me and also the guy had a really cool goatee.
Companies buying their own shares back is fine, some companies allow workers to buy shares at a discount rate which is a good thing for both workers and the company. CEOs buying lots of shares smacks of insider trading and needs to be strictly limited.
@@meatharbor The Supreme Court said that billionaires can pump as much money into politics as they feel like just like our founding fathers intended. Because they’re originalist’s.
@@nlwilson4892 Who told you the CEOs were buying those shares. They are given those shares as part of their pay package. See it turns out if they get paid in shares, they pay less taxes
@@neilkurzman4907 Odd. That was never a complaint when it was unions doing the same thing. Only when it's a private individual who earned their money, not when it's a government-enforced monopoly that extorts the money from workers.
Thank you for covering this, I live near here and couldn't believe what I was seeing, they kept telling people it was safe to go home! safe to drink the water!!
I was a Norfolk Southern Employee until just before this derailment in Conway Yard where the 32N terminated. The cost cutting is a symptom of Precision Scheduled Railroading or PSR. As someone who was in Management as a Trainmaster the only thing the company cared about was running trains on time. That meant rushing car inspectors to turn the trains over to the crews so the train could depart. As you can imagine this negatively impacts inspections. Additionally when I was there I think car inspectors had about 2 minutes per car based on their union contract
You may have covered this but maybe do the 2005 Praxair gas plant explosions in St. Louis. A friend of mine had just relocated there, one of the gas cylinders came down in her yard. I forget how many people were evacuated.
This case is a very strong argument introducing a corporate death penalty: if in cases of clearly profit oriented falsification or suppression of proof, and even intimidation of NTSB e.g. the complete company with all its assets could be confiscated and sold for compensation of the victims, I suppose this would constitute a very strong reason for shareholders to insist on good corporate conduct and governance!
Or you could just enforce the laws already in place... What is it with you people, lmao. "The current law isn't being followed, what do we do?" "Enforce them?" "No, make more laws that nobody is going to follow!"
@xenn4985 this Also laws need periodic refreshing and evaluation. Because to be entirely truthful with you there is about equal amount laws that are being ignored while they are undoubtedly needed, and laws that are being ignored basically because they are so outdated or out of tune that just paying the fine is a better option. Adding more laws consistently makes the problem worse and just creates more justification for companies to ignore them wholesale. And by piling more and more consequences rather than being effective and consistent just leads to companies just leaving which is the opposite of what you want. Adding laws is nice, but removing laws and regulations or at least tubing them to remain in touch with what they regulate is just as important. It also helps drain the natural accumulation of politically or financially motivated decisions made by regulators which otherwise go on to harm entire countries for decades after the perpetrator already got their kickback and retired to some fiscal parasite or cushy executive position.
@@xenn4985 and what is with “you people” (imagine I exaggerated it to get my point across that you have no business talking like that) who keep saying we need to uphold stagnant laws and nothing more. Do you get off on lip service or do you want improvements made? “You people” sicken me, milk toast.
Those goats in the beginning has a larger destructive potential than ANYTHING you made a vedeo about. I know from experience of taking care of two of those monsters when their owners were on holidays. I am convinced they can phase thorugh objects, teleport and fly, because they were EVERYWHERE and tryed to eat everything. And combined it with being so cute and loveable that you could not stay mad at them. Diabolical creatures indeed. Will have them again this november. no, i never learn....
My wife always wanted goats because, after all, they're funny and adorable, the does give tasty milk, and wethers are good to eat. We had some blackberries that were taking over a portion of our property so we borrowed a couple goats from our neighbor. They managed to browse an insignificant dent into the blackberries and, after taking care of those monsters for a few weeks, my wife decided she never wanted to see another goat for as long as she lived. (And thank you so effing much, Luther C. Burbank, for introducing the Himalayan blackberry to the United States. Although, I must admit that, as noxious invasive weeds go, it's darned tasty.)
@@johnopalko5223I live in Oregon, and the Himalayan blackberries are such a nuisance! And so many seeds! I think the only thing worse is English Ivy, the kudzu of the PNW.
@@CatMom-uw9jl I grew up in Chicago and, when I first moved to the PNW, I thought it was just so cool that there were wild blackberries everywhere. Food growing right by the side of the road, imagine that! It didn't take me long to change my mind. I moved to Seattle in 1987 and Portland in 1991. I've been fighting with blackberries and ivy for over 35 years now but I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
I drive through the current chlorine cloud in Georgia almost daily right now and everybody has been comparing it to the negligence that caused this disaster.
Chlorine is nasty. I was at a resort in Mexico when their chlorine pool tank failed, you can "taste" it in your sinuses even at low levels. Much more and it starts the burn your eyes and lungs.
I'd love to know more on that as Chlorine gas as is not something that really hangs around much in nature it will just react. Where and how/ was it created. I'm genuinely curious
The cause of the accident is very similar to one with a connection to my family. On Labor Day 1943 a crowded passenger train derailed at Frankford Junction in Philadelphia. 79 people died, and my grandfather was gone for two days clearing up after it.
1:58 There's a possibility that Minneapolis and Saint Paul's names were originally, "Long-Sleeve Green Shirt" and "Orange Vest," however, a certain Safety Director sued for copyright infringement.
Did the fire department not use gas tubes on approach to the fire? I supply the stuff they use for gas detection and that's scary that they set up 400 feet away from a fire they didn't know the chemical makeup of at the time. Their bunker gear off-gases dangerous chemicals when exposed to heat so they're almost always using individual gas detectors with man-down alarm systems, but those can't really pick up any exotic chemicals, but they do have a massive suitcase full of tubes of reactants they typically employ before approaching a suspected chem leak or fire - I guess given the rapidity of the emergency combined with the size of the derailment, regular precautions fell by the wayside. I believe the crew in the engine should have had full access to the DG declarations and manifests as well, removing the need to play phone tag with whoever took so long to call them back as well, would also explain them detaching their engines and moving further away, not just to distance themselves from the fire but possibly because they knew full well what they were hauling. Man my mind is going overtime, in Canada any significant DG shipment like this requires an emergency response action plan (ERAP) that informs the responders how to deal with the chemicals involved to minimize injury or damage to the environment, was the ERAP also in the locomotive as the DG paperwork should have been? We almost always steal our shipping regulations from the US so I'd be surprised if they weren't required down south as well
NS refused to tell people what was even on the train for a long time, and then finally they were like "well none of it it hazardous chemicals, so its fine" except that was a lie because all the hazmat tankers were classed as nonhazmat so they could pass them through populated urban areas because that's just what they do, NS has been doing that crap for a long time juggling classifications on things they carry and making trains longer and longer til they're unmanageable just inviting disaster, and when problems happen its never their fault. what they're required to do and what they actually do are two different things, this is why the rail workers in the US tried going on strike so many times recently because of the dangers on the job and got forced back to work as "essential" because bs and money.
Thank you so much for this video, I will show my family this. I live close to the disaster and this video brought me so many answers to so many questions I had. Thank you ❤
The city is pronounced East Pal ess teen. It's 20 miles from me. The train wheel was caught on camera failing in Salem next to the plant i grew up in. Many of my friends snd coworkers were affected by this.
I came to say the same. I'm from Salem (although I left right after graduation in 1997), and the train was already on fire when it went through. My dad was an insurance agent who traveled to East Palestine and started getting calls from former clients asking him for help. He heard about everything before it hit the news.
Thanks for your neutral and informative coverage on this. I live about an hour away from East Palestine and there was so much misinformation and conspiracy nonsense flying around with this story that I had trouble following what actually happened.
I was/is a logistics company manager and the company had us delivering to the area. We were excluded for 1 mile around the site but my drivers could smell it 5+ miles away. This is before the burn
For the controlled burn, the pertinent question is whether the available information *at the time* showed that there was no polymerization. If the information available was consistent with polymerization happening, it's a question of causing some guaranteed damage, or risking the chance of massive damage. What I find most damning is that after (and maybe while) the wheel was spewing sparks and fire, the detector only registered a temperature of 103 F. It was obviously faulty, but they didn't know, and had no redundancy set up in their detection systems. How many other defective detectors are on the tracks? It should be easy enough to test - attach a container at axle height, kept at a known temperature.
I think that gets lost in the "the controlled burn was unnecessary" headlines. If they gambled by leaving it alone and it BLEVE'd (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion), contamination would be the least of that town's problems.
I appreciate your talent for succinctly relating pertinent facts. Status Coup chan is continuing their "boots on the ground" coverage to this day. The railroad is fine, business as usual. Didn't pay out a cent of their profit, just handed over their ins settlement as a pittance of an offer to the devastated town's people. Tragic.
Thanks for covering this. I used to live about 20 miles away from this on the PA side of the border. I got pretty sick immediately following the burn off. Mainly puking, coughing, etc. My 2 golden retrievers were also under the weather for a few days. In the first few days immediately after, the air had an odd taste to it. Oddly, when I was at work in Pittsburgh I felt significantly better. But coming home after work I immediately felt like shit again. I have since moved to Pittsburgh proper (not because of the disaster). Ironically I can actually hear one of the Norfolk Southern trains that passes by my house as I type this. In my time living in Western PA, there have been countless derailments of trains in our area. Quite a happening within Pittsburgh city limits. Hell, the part of town I'm living in has had at least 3 derailments I can remember. Fun times...
Finally I’ve been waiting for this! I haven’t looked into the whole thing because I was waiting for you to tell me the whole story. Also, the town is pronounced East Pales-TEEN.
This is around 10 miles from my house, I delivered coke regularly to a business directly across the road from the crash and also hauled some of the contaminated dirt out of the area
I used to work for a division of NS. Our division was relocated, but we didn't get severance. So, when I saw Alan Shaw was fired for cause, I was elated. You see, I think NS owes me $30,000. And having seen their cost cutting at work on maintenance, this video does not surprise me at all.
I would add "company blames victim" to that board, they kept trying to downplay and make them feel they were overthinking. If thats not blame, then things have gone awry. (they still are GREATLY downplaying the effects from what I been finding, cover up on top of cover up.)
Yep, he sure did. And then the knuckleheads on the right blame the Biden administration for not reinstalling those regulations. Like it's Bidens Job to clean up after Trump.
I’ve been waiting patiently for you to make this video, I’m from Youngstown which is about 15 miles or so from this, and my father works for a company located directly next to the derailment location. Its insane to think about and hear all of the crazy stuff that’s come out about this derailment all over negligence.
You forgot the part where norfolk souther went around to every house in the city to offer free air and soil samples of their homes with a contract to authorize the work. however, they sneakily added some fine print that the homeowners, by signing the contract, omit the right to sue norfolk southerns for any reason.
Cost, reliability and complexity of operation. While the detectors themselves are pretty simple (essentially a piece of wire) you'd have to create a standardized interface to run along the whole train - capturing the data and allowing the crew to pinpoint which box is going dry. Interfaces would have to be weatherproof because of all the shunting work, fitting each possible type of cargo car (hopper, platform, tanker, schnabel etc). It also can fail by itself. Having multiple reliable hot box detectors may be more reliable, than multiple detectors in many challenging setups.
@@brylozketrzyn I’m sure there’s other possible systems. They could simply be wireless. And report the temperature of their serial number. They could be powered by batteries or wheel generators. They could easily network themselves from the last car to the front with existing technology
@@brylozketrzyn I think it was mentioned in the video about machine learning things, one of the possible ideas is to have cameras that can detect sparks or other abnormalities and report it appropriately. If the flaming car was caught near the first hot box detector, this accident never would have happened.
There is a very simple solution which is used on some UK freight cars. There is a fusible plug on the axle box connected to the brake pipe. If the axle box gets too hot the plug melts, lets the air out of the train pipe and the brakes come on and the train stops. No complex electrics or detectors required.
Thank you. I live east of East Palistine. I was on a work related trip. My friend was flying in a small plane when this happened and sent photos to me.
The full story: negligence
CAPITALISM BABY
🍾💵💵💵💵
@@MrAlexs888negligence never happens under any kind of system.
more like greed and wilful negligence engineered and enabled by greed.
Greed*
Just a side note as a conductor for a US-based Railroad: At 8:57 you said, "The rules require the train to be immediately brought to a halt. However, the driver the driver (Engineer) didn't put on the emergency brakes, instead applying the dynamic brakes to slowly bring the train to a stop." That is normal as most railroad rulebooks say something along the lines of, "To bring the train to a stop using good train handling unless conditions require an emergency brake application." This is because emergency brake applications can sometimes cause derailments on their own when a train is moving at higher speeds because of basic physics, especially when its one of the 10,000 Feet+ long monsters most of these Class 1 railroads love to run these days.
But I also want to note that NS's Hotbox detector "sensitivity" is disgustingly low, requiring a temperature so high that most of the time a bearing may have already failed completely before triggering an alarm over the radio. (I'm never gonna forgive NS for that mess, but I wanted to point out that little tidbit.)
Very interesting, I was working under the assumption like how in the UK railway rule book immediately bring your train to stand means emergency brake application.
its interesting how its done in different countries!!
@PlainlyDifficult , setting air brakes while still on the detector can trigger more alarms too.
Also if you're moving over crossings that need to be cleared, DB is the preferred method in a HB scenario.
Sometimes both methods are used in tandem in everyday operations or sometimes independently.
"Plugging it" can cause more harm than good as mentioned by the first reply above.
Handling long and heavy mixed manifests like the culprit in the video have to be handled with extreme care by the engineer.
I've been at it 22 years and I still sometimes get sweaty palms bringing the big ones (10k feet) to a stop coming into yards and signals.
Thanks for all the great videos, just finished this after a 31 hour round trip on 2 similar trains, yay..
@@PlainlyDifficult UK trains are much shorter and lighter.
I'm not in the industry so best to ask one who is. That said, an e-brake (air dump) on a freight train seems to be a potentially destructive thing with few uses. The train will still need thousands of yards to stop with e-brake but will also have damage and risk of a derailment.
Yes sir. Plugging it can cause excessive longitudinal and lateral buffering forces.
I dont know anything about trains, but I was thinking same thing. If you pull handbrake on a car it can actually make you loose controll. I would expect the same thing with trains. Only little knowledge of physics I would expect exactly what you describe with emergency brake aka things could have been even worse..
Thank you for covering this story. I'm from Salem, Ohio, which is 18 miles away from East Palestine. The train was already on fire when it passed through Salem. My dad was an insurance agent who had many clients in E.P., and he started getting phone calls from people asking him for help or where they could stay. He knew everything before it hit the news. Speaking of the news, it was hushed up for several days and journalists were ran off until it finally hit national news.
Wonder why 🤔🫣
That is sadly how corruption governments operate.
Im in Mentor. Wife is from Rostraver PA (south of Pitt). We stop at the BP in Salem every trip (exactly half way point). I go to Colum and Salem for thrift stores as I'm a media reseller. Havent been that way since Memorial Day 2023
_Everything is fine. That oily substance floating on your water is just... minerals. Those fish? They're napping. Yeah, napping._
Incredible that this kind of behavior is still happening in 2023............
Guy in full MOPP
"nah, its fine mate, fish and small pets die all the time"
😟
If small animals are dying, people are too, it will just take longer. Although one possible factor is if the dangerous gases are heavier than air, so the lower down animals are more effected. That still tends to mean contamination of plants and soil which is likely to affect humans to some extent.
Not from EP, but I've heard the smell lingered around for months. I've smelled burnt polyvinylchloride (PVC), and it's not great. I was around it one day for a couple hours, and I'm sure it wasn't great for me, but the long-term effects would be minimal.
Monomer vinylchloride, I assume, would have similar combustable effects. I actually can't imagine spending my whole week in a town where a cloud of those combustion products were hanging around, breathed in every breath. I really hope they got a good settlement from the lawsuit...
@@krissteel4074 I can corroborate that fact, animals do routinely die. Therefore all is well
😬🙄
@@nickdubil90I used to make a living having to burn PVC at least at the start and end of every shift... It sure smells like it's cancer incarnate.
Now I work with cadmium! - edited to add - not just handling, but vaporizing cadmium!
(both are in Ohio, and sought after jobs for the average Joe in my community!)
As someone who is from Norfolk, let me say that a few years ago Norfolk Southern moved their entire operation lock, stock and barrel to Atlanta and has absolutely nothing to do with our city anymore. We disavow any and all association.
Bla bla bla😊
@@johndonajelon21 Damn, such a shame, you babbling under such a good relevant comment. 🤔
@@johndonajelon21Same thing the teacher said when you tried to read in front of the class?
@scottl.1568 Maybe that move was to consolidate operations. Nothing against the town at all. Ever class 1 railroad as done it and it was not against the towns they were based in all over.
I live about 35-40 mins south of E Palestine. I remember making my entire family not drink the water but drink bottled for months. My area really is rust belt exemplified, forgotten and not cared about. Great video.
But now no bottled water huh? Sad people force kids to live around that toxic disaster.
Same here. Weirton.
13:31 I love how you swapped out the old phones that would typically be in your more historical disaster videos to a modern cell phone, but left the curly cord 😂
Wait… a curly phone charger cord would be so fun 😯
@@onlybecauseoftimeI think they make those actually as a novelty charger
@@onlybecauseoftimeI have several of those! One usb>thunderwhatever, the other USB A-C.
They’re nice for that curly “snap-back” ability.
@@mendfri OMG IM BUYING IT
@@jimtalbott9535 I’m getting one 🤩
pretty much full bingo card today bois, been waiting for this. thanks john
Not much missing at all one of the biggest cards I ever seen. Unfortunately for the people living there you dont win big but you lose
Excellent video as always! As a train driver from Europe i would just like to add that in case of a hot box, it is best to avoid an emergency braking as the induced mechanical stress is likely to cause immediate failure of the overheated axle. We are instructed to slow the train down as gently as possible, which is what the crew of that train did. Unfortunately it was too late, even for the gentle braking.
John talking about train geekery sets off my hot axle box detector.
Mine is practically detecting all over the place.
89 degrees
Ooooh she cookin’
My equipment sure is dragging
Your videos are a great example of not overly dramatizing these accidents
So many bad actors on this site using tragedy for views
Thank you!!
Agreed. The amount of respect and care shown to each story sets these videos apart. Instead of fishing for clickbait we get a genuine telling of the story and a presentation of the facts as well as they're known at the time.
Train safety is simple.
It's Plainly Difficult!
PD is one of the few I trust right from the beginning to be entirely objective in his videos, ALL of them.
The sensitivity shown to the loss of animals was very respectful. So many people, many of them kids, seeing their beloved pets die. 💔
I live a few minutes away a bit downwind from East Palestine, you could SMELL that mess all the way over here, it had a flavor in the air that stuck with you and lingered all along the river valleys. all the way as far as pittsburgh and further had air warnings from the burn cloud. We had animals getting sick here, my cat, my beloved was 20 years old and had started getting thyroid problems the last few years and then the wreck happened. it destroyed her, she couldn't breathe, even with bottled water to drink and the windows kept shut she just got sicker and sicker until she didn't make it home from the vet the last time, it was so fast and so miserable for her. a lot of the neighborhood strays just went missing, or were found later passed away. a lot of people with asthma were in bad shape for a long while. Norfolk Southern still has an attitude about it all, and the ground is still tainted in places over there, people still get sick, and so do animals in the area and we all know what its from but everyone not a member of the peasantry just shrugs and says its not their fault and that there's nothing wrong.
DuPont pulled some of the same shady talk back in the town i came up here from, back when they made the creek smell like bleach and turned it grayish blue in the 80s and 90s before they snuck their business out of town when people started getting after them about all the asthma and cancer and birth defects, and the game commission got mad about deer dying on the state lands, people they didn't care about but god forbid the deer start getting sick and tourism get impacted oh nooo. companies that treat people as obstacles to their profits instead of as people still make me furious.
My heart goes out to you all over this ! I work on the railways in the the Uk and I watched the aftermath on TH-cam and gathered information and couldn't believe what I was seeing ??? Just a nightmare situation 😔
In mild defense of the game commission... their whole job is to monitor and regulate game animals and how and when they may be hunted. Their job doesn't include humans except for in their actions regarding game animals.
I honestly suspect that someone in the area who worked with the game commission deliberately checked on the health of deer and such, knowing the effects on people they know, and when they found what they were looking for, they sicced the only regulatory body they had available on the company - the game commission.
Remember people who manage state lands directly live in the state and very local to the lands. They would have been directly or indirectly affected by the same DuPont situation.
What I am concerned _didn't_ happen is that a rise in asthma, cancer, and birth defects in a locality either wasn't reported to or wasn't investigated by the CDC, though it is possible they were investigating quietly and spooked DuPont. Maternity wards in hospitals should have noticed the trend and contacted them, because it could have been any number of infectious causes as well. CDC would have potentially determined it wasn't technically a disease, and contacted the EPA to deal with it. Which makes me suspect that they weren't contacted or were contacted not long before DuPont moved (but I think they would have investigated regardless).
So I honestly suspect someone dropped the ball, either it wasn't reported, was reported late, or state and federal agencies knew and dropped the ball (more likely for the state, less for federal who don't care what DuPont thinks of them and deal with this sort of thing more often). This is why "if you see something, say something" matters, because if everyone assumes someone else will, no one will, and because enough reports annoying an agency will get action just to make people stop asking.
@@samarnadra”Feds don’t care what DuPont thinks of them” is hilarious. DuPont literally funds the politicians who appoint the regulators
Guessing you live out in Darlington? I live near BF. Couldn't smell it much (although you still could) but you could see the plume from near 10 miles away. Can't believe they still have security along Taggart rd trying to keep people out
I talked to people as far down as Negley who said they could smell the chemicals like crazy.
This is by far the best disaster based content channel I've ever come across. Thank you so much for all of your hard work!
Johns been a staple of my weekends since I stumbled across the SL1 disaster many many moons ago, work your way through the back catalogue, we can meet back here in 18 months
Check out Fascinating Horror as well
So succinct 🎉
Welcome! there’s a few years of backlog for you to enjoy.
Check out his yearly omnibus videos and you won't miss a thing.
I drive for a living. It took me a couple weeks, but I got through everything. Join the channel and you get bonus videos!!
Talk about a company trying to shift blame all over the place . Surprised they weren't blaming nature for being to close .
"aCt Of GoD"
Well, that stream really had no business encroaching on RR property - and the fish and birds swam/flew right past, ignoring posted warnings...
Thanks for the update. No one talks about this event anymore.
The other Palestine has taken over the news at the moment.
I hardly hear from this event anymore let alone an experience from an East Palestinian about the non-immediate aftermath.
Shaw got fired because he was boinking a employee at NS
Money was thrown around and mouths were gagged with it.
As a retired chemist (25 years industry & laboratory), the phrase, "Eat My Ass!" generally sums up industry's attitude towards regulatory agencies (EPA, OSHA, & DOE) succinctly!
Seems the government thinks the same of us peasant taxpayers.
@@xcalibertrekker6693 Exactly! What so many people fail to realize is the reason we don't respect regulatory agencies is because they treat us like second class citizens. If these agencies took a better approach to regulation enforcement, you'd see a much better safety culture in tbe US. But as it stands, having a grumpy pencil pusher up your ass doesn't inspire cooperation...
Cant let pesky things like ethical and environmental concerns limit their potential profits. Its apparently more inhumane to let the shareholder or executive go without buying his or her 3rd mansion.
@@candlestyx8517Those agencies screw over the little guy just as much. Want to build a shed in your backyard but there's a "wetland" (read as muddy puddle not an actual marsh) within 100 yards? EPA says no. Well it's actually CAMA but they're under the EPA's umbrella. We really need to break the illusion that more power to government regulatory agencies ONLY sticks it to billionaires. They'll pay their way around it. You won't.
Just the video for midnight by the fire with a pint... in my nice, cozy shed down here in Australia. Cheers!
Cozy shed? Dang, y'all's housing market is that bad too, huh?
@@spazzypengin not that bad outside of capital cities... but like the Brits we love our sheds!
Bidding you hope and grace 👑 🙏🏻
Did you bring a can for the spiders as well?
Norfolk Southern fucked up. The government response fucked up. As usual, the little guy suffers
Rail service for a country as big as the US should be nationalized. At least that way, you have a position to keep or remove with a vote.
The government response was a result of the senator and president these residents voted for. They wanted a guy who gutted the EPA and so they got what they wanted.
@@nickdubil90 I understand where you're coming from. However, I don't believe we could trust our government to competently manage all rail service in the US. Attempts to build high speed rail, for example, have only ended in a boondoggle where billions have been spent for a few dozen miles of track.
The government should maintain it's regulatory nature over rail infrastructure. Allowing companies to do as they see fit as long as they're following safety standards and maintenance upkeep.
@@nickdubil90 Socialized transport would make a bigger mess of things. One particular socialist government nationalized the railroads and created a heating crisis -- despite the heating fuel of choice of the day, coal, sitting in heaps next to the coal mines, the railroad had been so mismanaged they couldn't move it to the cities where it was needed. While people froze, the government bragged about running the railroad "according to socialist principles".
Another socialist country "made the trains run on time" by reducing the number of stops on a route and moving the stops to be ten minutes later. It wasn't that the trains operated any better, they just normalized the poor performance there was before.
@@E100Omega123 I totally agree with your "high-speed rail" assessment. I live in California, and we have been promised "high-speed rail" since the 90's with little to show for it. It's BS. I think it will eventually happen, but the budget overrun and everything will almost render it moot.
To be clear: that project requires brand-new rail lines to be constructed from the ground-up, including purchasing territory from profitable farmers, from Gonzales to Paso Robles. It requires A LOT of new land purchases. Cali can claim "immenent domain", but they still have a lot of land to buy that is increasing in value and don't want to pay full price for.
With Rail, the difference is that they already own the land. Norfolk Southern and a handful of other rail companies already own the rights-of-way. They make good money with the freight traffic on those rails.
If the government just buys-out the existing rail system, I think it would be a net benefit. That's totally different from building a "new, high-speed rail" system that relies on buying-out existing properties. The use of which, I agree, should be done in a more democratic manner.
I don't like winner-take-all politics. I think the House votes should be done in a proportional manner, with seats based on the proportion of party votes. But that is different from the American tradition. Not my choice, though.
I’m from here, thank you so much for covering it. I love seeing channels I watch regularly cover it.
If you haven't found it, Status Coup tubeyou channel has been at all of their town hall meetings, as well as meeting residents in their homes to cover this.
(Since you're a fan of good journalism.)
@@joyfulone1816 oh thank you! I live .4 miles away from the derailment site and I hate our local coverage on it.
I'm so sorry for what happened in your town. I was so angry and helpless to do anything to help. But I think of this tragedy often. I wish everyone well.
@@rebirthoftragedy I appreciate it! Everything seems to be doing a lot better now, thankfully (at least for my family).
I remember when this happened. Apparently some people thought this happened in Palestine in the Levant. And immediately start saying that these people deserved what happened to them and Hamas was probably behind it... What a world we live in.
People can be very stupid. It's a running theme with this channel.
Those people are just stupid. Lets send those stupid people to visit a place like Pripyat. I'm sure they won't do something stupid like digging in the Red Forest, or grabbing the gear that is in the hospital.
remember the Russia Georgia conflict in 2008? had people in the USA thinking Russia had invaded the US state of Georgia...
Most people are just incredibly dumb. They never read the whole story, or wait for all the details before saying something absolutely ignorant. It's kinda a good thing though. You usually don't need to wonder too long if the person talking is an idiot, because they'll usually say something that tells you just what level of stupid you're dealing with.
Uh-huh. Sure. What else did you hear on Tik-Tok?
I remember this in the news in Central Europe. These disasters are not commonly covered in Slovakia, but this one was.
Fun fact, Michigan and Ohio nearly went to war over the Toledo strip when they were drawing the state lines. Militia were called up and they shared hurled insults. Jackson intervened, and Michigan received the entire Upper Penninsula for the loss of Toledo. Michigan and Ohio still hurl insults at each other, but we use U of M and OSU football teams instead of militia. 😅
So, we remember the time when Michigan and Ohio went to war, and Wisconsin lost. 😊 (they were still a territory and had no say)
The UP, pronounced by its letter U P not the word up, was wilderness at the time. Later they discovered a huge Iron ore deposit, which is still being mined to this day. There are big iron ore freighters that run thru Lake Superior (the Edmund Fitzgerald was one😢). It's largely state forest, with a natural beauty that awes, and has a mostly rural population. This contrasts with Toledo that was an important port, including iron ore, which was used for steel production and the car industry. Jeep was based in Toledo, and was a large chunk of ww2 war machine production.
@@MarianneKat I know the Toledo area, and anything that is natural and beautiful contrasts strongly with Toledo! 😉
(Although they've got a great art gallery!)
GO BLUE 😂
I just went down a rabbit hole looking into this, it’s very interesting history. Thanks for sharing!
Vinyl chloride monomer is genuinely wicked stuff.
At least it was not cars full of Organic Peroxides lol
Do you know how it is different from polyvinylchloride? I assume it's like Silicone, where the base pairs form "strings" in polymerization. I've only delt with PVC in construction settings. Working with semiconductors, it's not a normal chemical I'm totally familiar with.
@@nickdubil90 PVC is pretty benign as long as it isn’t on fire. VCM has a wikipedia page that covers it, and it’s a hell of a read.
@@CanielDonradthere was a car that overheated and blew in alabama a couple months ago. Half the car was airborn for ~15 seconds if I remember correctly. I half ass did the math and it went ~4500 feet in the air if I remember correctly
@@jimsvideos7201 "as long as it isn't on fire".
I guess it's similar to silicone then, as I thought. I have nothing against PDMS, PVC, H2O2, or any number of industrial chemicals, so long as they are correctly used and disposed of.
This one’s still a raw nerve for many Americans in light of later disaster response fails, calling into question as it does federal, media, and corporate handling of the disaster. Thanks for the technical coverage (and the train nerdery.)
What makes this even worse is class 1 railroads are virtual monopolies. Since they stick to their own rails, a competitor can't just show up in a town you have tracks through unless they have their own.
So, not only can they set their own price, they also don't reinvest that profit into safety improvements. Making Norfolk Southern a legitimately evil company. And the rest (BNSF, UP, and CSX) aren't far behind.
Basically none of this is true. "Monopoly", Mono for "one", and "poly" for many. One where they would or should be many. There are multiple, not one, Class 1 railroads. None of them are monopolies.
Smaller railroads constantly and frequently operate on track owned by CSX, Norfolk Southern, and BNSF. The rail network would not function if that's not the case. This is done via Trackage Rights, where the owners of the tracks lease the rights for other railroads to run trains in their track. It's a basic operational principle of railroading since the end of the 19th century.
Not only this, but the idea that competition amongst railroads is good is just hilariously wrong and a great indicator that someone has absolutely no idea what they are talking about, and no knowledge about the history of the industry. Competition amongst railroads is universally destructive, not constructive, and results in rate wars and profit-hawking that prioritize financial gains for individual shareholders than efficient operations.
Trump removed all checks and stops and laws ..for the rail barons..of curse..
@@Volorai
You're ignoring that monopolies don't have to be on the scale of the entire US to be a monopoly. You can have regional monopolies.
Also, competition amongst railways is stupid, but only because infrastructure like railways are natural monopolies. Therefore the correct solution is to have the railways to be state owned and train services be competitive. In the same way roads are state owned and taxicabs and delivery services are competitive
@@Voloraiif I have a town that is only served by NS, NS has a monopoly over that town. IMO all tracks should be owned by the state DOT and leased out to railroads
@@badlyniceness2315 Are you just going to forget that rail monopolgies happened at all because of government? There were no checks and stops, lmao.
Good thing Nestle's buying all our water, otherwise this might worry rich people.
They also use the left overs from your abortions as a sweetner in some of their products.
Moral of the story, Never EVER Trust Norfolk Southern.
It wasn't completely their call. The EPA let them do it.
Or trump. See, Trump was the one who approved deregulation.
@@rcrawford42 The EPA that was gutted with the help of the congressman East Palestine had voted in since 2011.
@@gyvren It's always cute when people blame the presented scapegoat that could never be held fully accountable while the lobbyists and companies who bribe their way into getting it done don't even get a mention. It's why they put these insufferable clowns into office, so that people can get mad at them instead of the real villains.
@@gyvren Trump\Vance 2024
The thing about this disaster like a lot of environmental disasters is that we may not know the true extent of the damage done for years.
Turn a train wreck worse by venting off an organohalogen and burning it? They cause caucer and this is not me spooking people. I did my 18 year old study at college and the organohalogen was carcinogenic
True….
We can guess.... and the guesses are BAD.
It's The Love Canal 2.0
How do you get a link to your comment like that? The "environmental disasters" became blue and a link
I still have the Cuyahoga river being on fire again on my disaster bingo card.
Now I'm trying to remember how many times that poor river has burned!
I'd like to see info on other rivers catching fire. Poor Cuyahoga gets painted like it's the only one. It's not, even if you only count in the US. This century, there's been one in Bangalore & another in Wenzhou too.
@@eliscanfield3913 I'm pretty sure that the Detroit River has caught fire before, and if it hasn't I'd be surprised. Same for the St. Clair River. I grew up in that area, and those were particularly notorious for their levels of pollution. There have been jokes about using water from the Detroit River for paint thinner for over a century!
@@thing_under_the_stairs If you've never been to River Rouge, you'd think it sounds like one of those idyllic 'Pure Michigan' resort towns,lol.
Thankfully today the Cuyahoga River valley is not a bad place to hike in and explore. The “pinko commie EPA” was at it… probably, “affecting businesses”.
Go to Cleveland and see how many metal plating and similar toxic material process shops are boarded up. For a good reason. Because nobody in the heyday of this Real American Industry gave a rat’s ass about environment. They operated on borrowed time, slowly making the community sicker.
I'll never understand a company's mentality to squeeze out the most basic of maintenance things just to save a few dollars, and ultimately it then blows up to become a multi million or billion issues. A $100 oil change in a work truck every few months sure is a lot cheaper than a new $15k engine every few years. This is the exact opposite of leadership effectively managing a business and it's capital. They extremely poor at it, thinking the 'risk' is low on scrimping out on things like this, then clutch their pearls and are flabbergasted when something like this happens, that could have been prevented had they had a handful of $100k/year yard mechanics who's entire job was to make sure those wheels stay in good shape. It's only getting worse as these clowns take control of companies, cause anyone at them who actually used to care to quit, and then we end up with another Boeing with doors blowing off in flight on their jets, and stranding astronauts in Space. I think if we all knew the depths of incompetence in major companies like these, we would be living in terror every day. Great video on this incident, always fascinating to watch your content! :)
Penny wise, pound foolish. Short term gains better for shareholders.
@@ferretyluv The Holy Shareholders are the only company stakeholders that matter. Employees? Customers? The people who live near the tracks? Considering their welfare is heretical.
Maintenance and inspection cost money. Eliminating them immediately reduces that cost. Some companies have decided that when the equipment fails you’ll just just fix it then and that save money and increased bonuses. This exact same thing happened with BP and the Deepwater Horizon.
You think they do it for the sake of the company?
They are doing it for themselves, shareholders want to retire before 50s, they don't want to lead a company until they die
Fun fact most rail cars are not theres
I love your illustration. It is my favorite part of your channel. The audacity of these preventable disasters are easy to explain, and your graphical storytelling can explain these failures to a 5 year old. Well done, as always!
I live in northern WV, not far from this site. I've been hoping you'd cover the story of this travesty of negligence and greed.
Thank you!
"Rail Services" are not suitable for our modern conception of a Corporation. THEY DON'T GROW. At one point, they did, and made Robber Barons and Ayn Rand books. That is FINE. But now, they are INFRASTRUCTURE. These rail networks and companies need to be nationalized to avoid a race-to-the-bottom. Noone wants to invest in a company that isn't growing anymore. Rail is a thing where even larger throughput doesn't increase operating cost or revenue (usually to keep bulk goods economical with road transportation).
I live near Springfield, oh and we have had 3 derailments here in the last 4 years, but no chemicals were involved so it didn’t make the national news
you also have immigrants eating your pets, just saying.........
That isn't true. They aren't eating the pets
@@TrickiVicBB71here is a question if the Haitians themselves say they have problems with some of their population being cannibals why is it so hard to believe that they'd eat somebody's pets.
I see the Musk Disinformation Corps are here spreading their bullshit.
What essential work are the Haitian rocket scientists and brain surgeons carrying out, except for filling out fake ballots for Calm-Allah?
I lived close enough to see the smoke coming up from this crash and I can't overstate just how scary it was at the time especially with my then gfs son and my son being around. It was a truly awful time.
Kinda weirdly exciting to have your home town covered on one of my favorite channels given the situation
You remain in my thoughts. Truly a tragic injustice
Hey John I have been watching for about a year now and I love watching your videos. I also enjoy putting you’re videos on while I fall asleep, tidy or on long car trips just wanted to say I love your content ❤
Across the pond infrastructure is by law separated from operation. We are using failure state detectors coupled with train control. Typical "hot box" part consist of eight discrete infrared thermometers. If anything is above threshold next signal block would impose speed restriction and train must stop at nearest station for inspection. Yes, we have learned.
Correct, we have hot wheel detectors here as well. Three detectors up the line it was too hot. We know this because of the security camera video. We have the same rules about stopping and walking the train. Retired rail here.
None of those things will do a bit of good if the company running the train doesn't care. With that attitude you can throw all the money and technology you want at this problem and it will keep happening.
@@piquat1there is a difference tho. Today no manual intervention is required if a failure detector sees any anomaly. Anomaly means automatic signalling block change to a safe speed and next station route dispatch can only stop such train. The driver is either informed by the digital train control about the speed restriction reason or by the dispatcher via radio. But braking is essentially obligatory. It is utterly important on mixed corridors
How it should be, automated detection and execution of protocols to avoid the human apathy element. If you override that system, you're personally making yourself responsible for whatever comes after, and the last thing people want to do is take the blame!
This accident is brought to you by the billionaires who have bought and still pay for politicians,who then allow lax oversight by the government agencies they oversee and self regulation,still cutting cost and safety in maintenance and staffing with the costs of accidents like this payed by the customer and taxpayer/citizen and the guilt remain free of any consequences.
Yep, and it's why our vote doesn't count, it's the corporations vote. Ya know, when the Founding Fathers were talking about fighting against tyranny, I'm certain they'd consider these corporations to be tyrants... Just sayin'.
"For your convenience" (and their profit) no less 😮
Jews make up a fractional minority of the global population and are disproportionately over represented in the billionaires bracket, for a group of minorities who are so opressed, this doesnt add up does it? Isnt systemic oppression characterized by poverty? Cant really be oppressed and the most powerful at the same time.
@@RealAICCl Right because people like a certain ex President are of that faith -_-
@@sebforce1165 its just honesty, i see their faith being used as a shield while they work together for eachothers benefits. In a society, this is not a good thing to have a group who values themselves above the actual group(society) so they are a destabilizing element. Wether intentional or not is irrelevant.
Thanks for covering this. I live near Springfield, where there was another train derailment just after this event, and it was a scary time.
I remember that. It was scary!
I can't wait to see if USCSB does a video about this.
I hope they do. Their disaster breakdowns are so well made and informative even for a complete layman. I just wish they existed as hypotheticals instead of tragic realities.
Hey, that's me! I lived within a mile of the accident and was thus evacuated. Fun fact, we don't say our name like Palestine in the middle east, but Pales-teen. As of the 2010 census, our population was below 5,000 and are categorized as a "village". It's really weird seeing my hometown on youtube channels.
You said the vent and burn was completely pointless. I disagree. It got the rails up and running faster than if they hadn't blown the tanks and that's what's important after all.
On the bright side, they're completely redoing our park and building a new swimming pool. Really that makes it all worth it /s
I also lived in the 1 mile evac zone and the park was fine the way it was. Fuck NS
The "vent" was with plastic explosives to do a controlled burn on several tank cars that were burning, with their internal temps rising which could cause a massive explosion, thus they were vented to make a small hole to allow pressure to release without going boom. I agree with you.
@@chessiecat96 When we got told to evacuate the second time it was because they worried large pieces of the tank cars would go flying. They dug a trench alongside where the explosives were placed so the vinyl chloride would collect there before burning instead of running off everywhere. Watched the explosion on tv and recognizing the street I drive over all the time was surreal.
@@jordanmolnar3889 holy shit.
Competence should be placed on the endangered species list.
This video uploaded five hours ago and already has 26k views and i love that for Plainly Difficult
I don't believe you have ever got too geeky on anything let alone trains. Well done, it was so politicized when it happened, you didn't know what was true and it wore me down, this was concise and I believe you. Usually, you are the 1st click Sat morn, I put this one off for a bit but glad I watched, thanks.
Bro we were panicking over here in Cincinnati. This was a huge thing!
Would love a PD video covering the downtown Bozeman, MT gas explosion.
i lived a couple towns over from that disaster, to where I could see the smoke of it happening from the to of the hill. it was horrific
I went and read through the NTSB report after watching this and was somewhat surprised that nobody called CHEMTREC until the next morning (their phone number is printed inside the Emergency Response Guidebook for a reason!). Then I read on and saw that the State of Ohio sets a *MAXIMUM* of 36 hours of training for volunteer firefighters, which effectively precludes them from taking Hazmat courses...that is genuinely shocking.
Their number is also painted on the side of some tank cars.
Because by law, they'd have to be employed and paid if they go over that. Which means they aren't volunteers anymore.
@@sprolyborn2554 That's...not how labor laws work, or how volunteer fire departments work. Ohio may have some dumb stupid rule, but volunteer firefighters in other states receive far more training than 40 hours and are still volunteers.
@@FayeVert it's state by state. We are talking about Ohio so IDGAF what they're doing in other states as it's wholly irrelevant.
@@sprolyborn2554 It's relevant because Ohio is doing something wrong by requiring their volunteer firefighters to be ignorant of Hazmat response and god only knows what else. They're screwing over their own first responders. They're lucky none of them were killed. Get your shit together, Ohio!
Share buybacks were once illegal, until Reagan of course. They need to be again.
I don't think we'll ever see that kind of change until it's no longer possible to funnel unlimited funds into political campaigns, making obedience to only the wealthiest donors a prerequisite for even attempting to run for office. And we'll never see _that_ change for the same reason. Almost like our electoral system that was created to serve only the wealthiest of landowners is still doing the thing it was designed to do and is incapable of being reformed to do anything else.
I seem to recall reading this book from this old guy that said something like "the working class must break up, smash the 'ready-made state machinery', and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it."
It made sense to me and also the guy had a really cool goatee.
Companies buying their own shares back is fine, some companies allow workers to buy shares at a discount rate which is a good thing for both workers and the company. CEOs buying lots of shares smacks of insider trading and needs to be strictly limited.
@@meatharbor
The Supreme Court said that billionaires can pump as much money into politics as they feel like just like our founding fathers intended. Because they’re originalist’s.
@@nlwilson4892
Who told you the CEOs were buying those shares. They are given those shares as part of their pay package.
See it turns out if they get paid in shares, they pay less taxes
@@neilkurzman4907 Odd. That was never a complaint when it was unions doing the same thing. Only when it's a private individual who earned their money, not when it's a government-enforced monopoly that extorts the money from workers.
Been waiting for this topic...
Thanks for another great video!
Say "Oopsie" three times for complete absolution, train guys.
I'm honestly really appreciative of the explainer on how axle bearings work. Never knew that.
Thank you for covering this, I live near here and couldn't believe what I was seeing, they kept telling people it was safe to go home! safe to drink the water!!
Norfolk Southern what's your function? crashing all are trains
Conjunction junction, school house rock. Sixties baby?
@@joyfulone1816 NS made their own licenced version of the song close to a decade ago called "Norfolk Southern what's your function?".
@@Messicrafter omgoodness 🤯😱🤦♀️
All are trains? Who are all trains? The NS people? How can someone be a train?
Are you sure that “are” is the word you were looking for there?
@@jeffclark5268 our
When your at work bored. There’s gotta be something on TH-cam. A PD video?! Yea please thanks
Bon appetite
Just make sure a PD video is not the reason for another PD video
*you’re
The phrase "Too big to fail" comes to mind.
and they tout how great the "free market" is. what a joke
Not a free market when they get bailouts.
I was a Norfolk Southern Employee until just before this derailment in Conway Yard where the 32N terminated. The cost cutting is a symptom of Precision Scheduled Railroading or PSR. As someone who was in Management as a Trainmaster the only thing the company cared about was running trains on time. That meant rushing car inspectors to turn the trains over to the crews so the train could depart. As you can imagine this negatively impacts inspections. Additionally when I was there I think car inspectors had about 2 minutes per car based on their union contract
You may have covered this but maybe do the 2005 Praxair gas plant explosions in St. Louis. A friend of mine had just relocated there, one of the gas cylinders came down in her yard. I forget how many people were evacuated.
This case is a very strong argument introducing a corporate death penalty: if in cases of clearly profit oriented falsification or suppression of proof, and even intimidation of NTSB e.g. the complete company with all its assets could be confiscated and sold for compensation of the victims, I suppose this would constitute a very strong reason for shareholders to insist on good corporate conduct and governance!
Or you could just enforce the laws already in place... What is it with you people, lmao.
"The current law isn't being followed, what do we do?"
"Enforce them?"
"No, make more laws that nobody is going to follow!"
@xenn4985 this
Also laws need periodic refreshing and evaluation. Because to be entirely truthful with you there is about equal amount laws that are being ignored while they are undoubtedly needed, and laws that are being ignored basically because they are so outdated or out of tune that just paying the fine is a better option.
Adding more laws consistently makes the problem worse and just creates more justification for companies to ignore them wholesale. And by piling more and more consequences rather than being effective and consistent just leads to companies just leaving which is the opposite of what you want.
Adding laws is nice, but removing laws and regulations or at least tubing them to remain in touch with what they regulate is just as important.
It also helps drain the natural accumulation of politically or financially motivated decisions made by regulators which otherwise go on to harm entire countries for decades after the perpetrator already got their kickback and retired to some fiscal parasite or cushy executive position.
@@xenn4985 and what is with “you people” (imagine I exaggerated it to get my point across that you have no business talking like that) who keep saying we need to uphold stagnant laws and nothing more. Do you get off on lip service or do you want improvements made? “You people” sicken me, milk toast.
@@xenn4985 I'm not aware that it is already
legal to seize a company and oust its shareholders for criminal behavior of the company's management!?
@@kamrynsikes The word is "milquetoast" lmao
Dodge Brothers v Ford Motor Company [1919] (aka Shareholder Primacy) strikes again!
Thanks, Dodge Brothers! Nicely done, once again!
I live 15 minutes from the derailment site they are still going through it over there
I have thought about going over to take a peek, but honestly I don't want cancer.
I've been looking forward to this episode since it happened. we are _struggling_ here in Ohio.
Those goats in the beginning has a larger destructive potential than ANYTHING you made a vedeo about. I know from experience of taking care of two of those monsters when their owners were on holidays. I am convinced they can phase thorugh objects, teleport and fly, because they were EVERYWHERE and tryed to eat everything. And combined it with being so cute and loveable that you could not stay mad at them. Diabolical creatures indeed. Will have them again this november. no, i never learn....
My wife always wanted goats because, after all, they're funny and adorable, the does give tasty milk, and wethers are good to eat. We had some blackberries that were taking over a portion of our property so we borrowed a couple goats from our neighbor. They managed to browse an insignificant dent into the blackberries and, after taking care of those monsters for a few weeks, my wife decided she never wanted to see another goat for as long as she lived.
(And thank you so effing much, Luther C. Burbank, for introducing the Himalayan blackberry to the United States. Although, I must admit that, as noxious invasive weeds go, it's darned tasty.)
@@johnopalko5223heh reminds me of the rent a goat business around our way. One of the farmers rents them out to sort overground gardens 🙂
@@johnopalko5223I live in Oregon, and the Himalayan blackberries are such a nuisance! And so many seeds! I think the only thing worse is English Ivy, the kudzu of the PNW.
@@CatMom-uw9jl I grew up in Chicago and, when I first moved to the PNW, I thought it was just so cool that there were wild blackberries everywhere. Food growing right by the side of the road, imagine that!
It didn't take me long to change my mind. I moved to Seattle in 1987 and Portland in 1991. I've been fighting with blackberries and ivy for over 35 years now but I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
@@johnopalko5223 Same here! We moved to Portland in 97 and love it here so much.
Your videos are amazing. Well explained and informative. Thanks so much.
I drive through the current chlorine cloud in Georgia almost daily right now and everybody has been comparing it to the negligence that caused this disaster.
Chlorine is nasty. I was at a resort in Mexico when their chlorine pool tank failed, you can "taste" it in your sinuses even at low levels. Much more and it starts the burn your eyes and lungs.
I'd love to know more on that as Chlorine gas as is not something that really hangs around much in nature it will just react. Where and how/ was it created. I'm genuinely curious
The pollution released by the incident in Georgia far exceeds that released in Ohio. It was a mess here
@@cdavid8139 for sure, it's a much larger area too.
The cause of the accident is very similar to one with a connection to my family. On Labor Day 1943 a crowded passenger train derailed at Frankford Junction in Philadelphia. 79 people died, and my grandfather was gone for two days clearing up after it.
1:58 There's a possibility that Minneapolis and Saint Paul's names were originally, "Long-Sleeve Green Shirt" and "Orange Vest," however, a certain Safety Director sued for copyright infringement.
Thank you! Excellent coverage!
Did the fire department not use gas tubes on approach to the fire? I supply the stuff they use for gas detection and that's scary that they set up 400 feet away from a fire they didn't know the chemical makeup of at the time.
Their bunker gear off-gases dangerous chemicals when exposed to heat so they're almost always using individual gas detectors with man-down alarm systems, but those can't really pick up any exotic chemicals, but they do have a massive suitcase full of tubes of reactants they typically employ before approaching a suspected chem leak or fire - I guess given the rapidity of the emergency combined with the size of the derailment, regular precautions fell by the wayside. I believe the crew in the engine should have had full access to the DG declarations and manifests as well, removing the need to play phone tag with whoever took so long to call them back as well, would also explain them detaching their engines and moving further away, not just to distance themselves from the fire but possibly because they knew full well what they were hauling.
Man my mind is going overtime, in Canada any significant DG shipment like this requires an emergency response action plan (ERAP) that informs the responders how to deal with the chemicals involved to minimize injury or damage to the environment, was the ERAP also in the locomotive as the DG paperwork should have been? We almost always steal our shipping regulations from the US so I'd be surprised if they weren't required down south as well
Train crews are more uninformed workers.
It took them that long to even tell them the manifest that they just gambled. Never a safe move
NS refused to tell people what was even on the train for a long time, and then finally they were like "well none of it it hazardous chemicals, so its fine" except that was a lie because all the hazmat tankers were classed as nonhazmat so they could pass them through populated urban areas because that's just what they do, NS has been doing that crap for a long time juggling classifications on things they carry and making trains longer and longer til they're unmanageable just inviting disaster, and when problems happen its never their fault. what they're required to do and what they actually do are two different things, this is why the rail workers in the US tried going on strike so many times recently because of the dangers on the job and got forced back to work as "essential" because bs and money.
I’ve been looking forward to this one! Thanks for another great video!
Are you gonna cover the Lac Mégantic disaster?
It happened a decade earlier and so much worse because it destroyed the entire downtown
I was going to ask the same question.
@felixar90 John Oliver did a GREAT send-up of the Lac-Megantic disaster a few months ago. Look for it, it involves Thomas the Train.
Ooooo yay!! 🎉
A sparkling new PD video -- and it's 20 mins?! Just how long I'm about to sit right now. Excellent!!
Thanks John ❤
We got showered in highly toxic and highly volatile chemicals and the government was like, "Nothing to see here. Get back to work."
Thank you so much for this video, I will show my family this. I live close to the disaster and this video brought me so many answers to so many questions I had. Thank you ❤
The city is pronounced East Pal ess teen. It's 20 miles from me. The train wheel was caught on camera failing in Salem next to the plant i grew up in. Many of my friends snd coworkers were affected by this.
I came to say the same. I'm from Salem (although I left right after graduation in 1997), and the train was already on fire when it went through. My dad was an insurance agent who traveled to East Palestine and started getting calls from former clients asking him for help. He heard about everything before it hit the news.
@@Kat-tr2ig I graduated from Sebring in 1997. Small world.
Everyone here in Cincinnati calls it east “pal eh stein” like plainly difficult lmao
🤦♂️
I was going to say the same thing. Ohio has a history of towns with alternative pronunciations.
ive been waiting for this! gr8 topics as usual
Thanks for your neutral and informative coverage on this. I live about an hour away from East Palestine and there was so much misinformation and conspiracy nonsense flying around with this story that I had trouble following what actually happened.
I was/is a logistics company manager and the company had us delivering to the area. We were excluded for 1 mile around the site but my drivers could smell it 5+ miles away. This is before the burn
For the controlled burn, the pertinent question is whether the available information *at the time* showed that there was no polymerization. If the information available was consistent with polymerization happening, it's a question of causing some guaranteed damage, or risking the chance of massive damage.
What I find most damning is that after (and maybe while) the wheel was spewing sparks and fire, the detector only registered a temperature of 103 F. It was obviously faulty, but they didn't know, and had no redundancy set up in their detection systems. How many other defective detectors are on the tracks? It should be easy enough to test - attach a container at axle height, kept at a known temperature.
I think that gets lost in the "the controlled burn was unnecessary" headlines. If they gambled by leaving it alone and it BLEVE'd (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion), contamination would be the least of that town's problems.
It’s crazy how quickly this got swept under the rug by mainstream media
I dig the American-looking pick-up 6:34, the graphic design is top-drawer
Ive watched for years and waited for this one since it happened
I appreciate your talent for succinctly relating pertinent facts. Status Coup chan is continuing their "boots on the ground" coverage to this day. The railroad is fine, business as usual. Didn't pay out a cent of their profit, just handed over their ins settlement as a pittance of an offer to the devastated town's people.
Tragic.
Thanks for covering this. I used to live about 20 miles away from this on the PA side of the border. I got pretty sick immediately following the burn off. Mainly puking, coughing, etc. My 2 golden retrievers were also under the weather for a few days. In the first few days immediately after, the air had an odd taste to it. Oddly, when I was at work in Pittsburgh I felt significantly better. But coming home after work I immediately felt like shit again. I have since moved to Pittsburgh proper (not because of the disaster). Ironically I can actually hear one of the Norfolk Southern trains that passes by my house as I type this. In my time living in Western PA, there have been countless derailments of trains in our area. Quite a happening within Pittsburgh city limits. Hell, the part of town I'm living in has had at least 3 derailments I can remember. Fun times...
And no one goes to jail...
Finally I’ve been waiting for this! I haven’t looked into the whole thing because I was waiting for you to tell me the whole story.
Also, the town is pronounced East Pales-TEEN.
This is around 10 miles from my house, I delivered coke regularly to a business directly across the road from the crash and also hauled some of the contaminated dirt out of the area
We do not need to know about your drug delivery business, sir.
@@GoBlueGirl78 coke is coal burned in the absence of oxygen, used to make steel
@@GoBlueGirl78 I think he means Cola.
I used to work for a division of NS. Our division was relocated, but we didn't get severance. So, when I saw Alan Shaw was fired for cause, I was elated. You see, I think NS owes me $30,000. And having seen their cost cutting at work on maintenance, this video does not surprise me at all.
I would add "company blames victim" to that board, they kept trying to downplay and make them feel they were overthinking. If thats not blame, then things have gone awry. (they still are GREATLY downplaying the effects from what I been finding, cover up on top of cover up.)
Yep, he sure did. And then the knuckleheads on the right blame the Biden administration for not reinstalling those regulations.
Like it's Bidens Job to clean up after Trump.
I’ve been waiting patiently for you to make this video, I’m from Youngstown which is about 15 miles or so from this, and my father works for a company located directly next to the derailment location. Its insane to think about and hear all of the crazy stuff that’s come out about this derailment all over negligence.
Oh! RAMifications! I get it!
🫡
Baaaaaaaa
I remember when this happened. I immediately anticipated a plainly difficult video on it.
You forgot the part where norfolk souther went around to every house in the city to offer free air and soil samples of their homes with a contract to authorize the work. however, they sneakily added some fine print that the homeowners, by signing the contract, omit the right to sue norfolk southerns for any reason.
I wonder why freight cars are not equipped with their own individual hot box detectors, and linked to the cab. Cost, I suppose.
Cost, reliability and complexity of operation. While the detectors themselves are pretty simple (essentially a piece of wire) you'd have to create a standardized interface to run along the whole train - capturing the data and allowing the crew to pinpoint which box is going dry. Interfaces would have to be weatherproof because of all the shunting work, fitting each possible type of cargo car (hopper, platform, tanker, schnabel etc). It also can fail by itself. Having multiple reliable hot box detectors may be more reliable, than multiple detectors in many challenging setups.
@@brylozketrzyn
I’m sure there’s other possible systems. They could simply be wireless. And report the temperature of their serial number. They could be powered by batteries or wheel generators. They could easily network themselves from the last car to the front with existing technology
@@brylozketrzyn I think it was mentioned in the video about machine learning things, one of the possible ideas is to have cameras that can detect sparks or other abnormalities and report it appropriately. If the flaming car was caught near the first hot box detector, this accident never would have happened.
@@neilkurzman4907 Wireless anything is still garbage.
There is a very simple solution which is used on some UK freight cars. There is a fusible plug on the axle box connected to the brake pipe. If the axle box gets too hot the plug melts, lets the air out of the train pipe and the brakes come on and the train stops. No complex electrics or detectors required.
Thank you. I live east of East Palistine. I was on a work related trip. My friend was flying in a small plane when this happened and sent photos to me.
It’s such a common theme. Because the greedy bstrds responsible never get punished.
Well done as usual 👏
6:30 i live just 2 towns south from that yard. Kinda scary to know that it couldve went down the mainline through my town just south.
Ohioan from northeast Ohio here thanks for covering this!