OAN’s Brooke Mallory
1:41 PM – Wednesday, June 26, 2024
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced during a public hearing on Tuesday that the 2023 media-frenzied derailment of a train carrying hazardous chemicals was caused by an overheated rail bearing that was not detected by a sensor on the railroad rails passing through the community of East Palestine, Ohio.
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During the meeting, the board members blamed several factors in the collision, such as the track-based monitoring systems and the wheel bearings, which purportedly led to the derailment. The original emergency response and the method used to vent and burn the wrecked cars were also deemed inadequate by the NTSB.
Additionally, officials stated that they discovered “no standards” for handling wheel bearing alerts and recommended that the creation of a database for failures would improve detection systems’ ability to avert mishaps in the future.
“In theory, the hot bearing detector should have shown a critical alarm” once the bearing caught fire, but “instead the detector sent a non-critical alert to the back-office analyst,” said Joey Rhine, NTSB railroad accident investigator.
The railroad’s operator, Norfolk Southern, was also accused by officials of making a grave mistake when it decided to burn and vent the chemicals implicated in the disaster, which it claimed was required to prevent an explosion. In addition to other contradictory information, the NTSB observed a declining trend in the tank car’s temperature, which “should have led them to re-evaluate their initial conclusions.”
Meanwhile, according to NTSB officials, their investigation purportedly proved that the train crew acted lawfully and that the accident was not caused by problems with infrastructure nor by the weight and “lading volumes” of the cars which carried hazardous chemicals.
The conference takes place slightly more than a month after Norfolk Southern agreed to pay almost $1 billion to resolve complaints filed by communities and the Justice Department (DOJ) in order to end a potential class action lawsuit. In the settlement, the railroad did not acknowledge any wrongdoing.
“Norfolk Southern appreciates the NTSB’s investigation of the East Palestine derailment and recommendations for enhancing rail safety. We share their commitment to safety and have in the last 16 months implemented many enhancements and technologies including installing 187 additional hot bearing detectors, 17 acoustic bearing protectors and three digital train inspection portals, as well as providing training and deploying real-time access to train consists, locations and emergency protocols for first responders,” a spokesperson for the railroad stated. “As a result of these actions and others, Norfolk Southern’s mainline accident rate declined 38% last year to industry-leading levels.”
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