May 3, 2024
EAST PALESTINE, Ohio (AP) — The crew operating a freight train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, didn't get much warning before dozens of cars went off the tracks, and there is no indication that crew members did anything wrong, federal investigators said Thursday as they released a preliminary report into the fiery wreck that prompted a toxic chemical release and an evacuation.
The NTSB report, which laid out the facts that investigators have gathered to date, said crew members had no indication the train was in trouble until an alarm sounded just before it went off the tracks.
An engineer slowed and stopped the train after getting a “critical audible alarm message" that signaled an overheated axle, according to the report. The three-person crew then saw fire and smoke and alerted dispatch, the report said.
“We have no evidence that the crew did anything wrong,” said Homendy, who announced a rare investigatory field hearing to be conducted in East Palestine this spring as officials seek to get to the bottom of the derailment's cause and build consensus on how to prevent similar wrecks.
Investigators said the temperature of the failed wheel bearing increased by 215 degrees in a span of 30 miles, but did not reach the temperature threshold that railroad company Norfolk Southern had set for an alarm to go off until just before the wreck.
The train was going about 47 mph, under the speed limit of 50 mph, according to investigators.
Outside experts who looked at the report said the system appeared to work as designed, from the spacing of the hot bearing detectors along the tracks to the operation of the sensors.
“There’s nothing in the NTSB report that surprises me at all,” said Dave Clarke, the former director of the Center for Transportation Research at the University of Tennessee. “I can’t see anything to really criticize about what happened or how the response was made.”
Christopher Barkan, director of the Rail Transportation and Engineering Center at the University of Illinois, said the spacing of the sensors that recorded the temperatures of the Norfolk Southern train — 10 and 20 miles apart — is common in the industry.
He said the detectors would not have notified the train crew of elevated bearing temperatures unless they met the threshold for action.
“I don’t see anything wrong here, but we just don’t know,” Barkan said.
Homendy said investigators would look at whether industry safety standards — including high-temperature alarm thresholds and sensor spacing — will need to change to prevent similar derailments.
Norfolk Southern said the NTSB report showed the heat detectors worked as intended and the train crew operated “within the company's rules." Nevertheless, the company said it would “need to learn as much as we can from this event” and “develop practices and invest in technologies that could help prevent an incident like this in the future.”
The freight cars that derailed on the East Palestine outskirts, near the Pennsylvania state line, included 11 carrying hazardous materials. Villagers evacuated as fears grew about a potential explosion of smoldering wreckage.
Officials seeking to avoid an uncontrolled blast intentionally released and burned toxic vinyl chloride from five rail cars, sending flames and black smoke into the sky. That left people questioning the potential health effects even as authorities maintained they were doing their best to protect people.
In another sign of the environmental impact, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources said Thursday it now estimates spilled contaminants affecting several miles of streams killed nearly 44,000 fish, mostly small ones such as minnows. Its initial estimate was 3,500.
