Inside the toxic train derailment in Ohio

CLIP You are listening to a Frequency Podcast network production in association with city.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Canada, of course, is all too familiar with railroad catastrophes.

CLIP The destruction downtown stretches several blocks, dozens of homes and businesses reduced to rubble. Century old trees now look like toothpicks, nothing but debris, where once stood an apartment building a bar, and the town library all just a stones throw from the railway tracks where at least a dozen tanker cars are left piled up like building blocks.

Jordan It was almost a decade ago now that a train carrying a load of crude oil derailed in the center of a Quebec town, killing 47 people and levelling buildings. In the wake of the Lac-Mégantic disaster, there was a focus across all of North America on making trains carrying hazardous cargo, crude oil or maybe toxic gases safer. And earlier this month, it became clear how little of that discussion was implemented — or if implemented later rolled back.

CLIP Fears of a wider health and environmental disaster are growing after 150 car freight train operated by Norfolk Southern derailed and released toxic chemicals last week. A controlled burn of the chemicals following the derailment sent a mushroom cloud of smoke and fire into the air that contained the toxic chemicals.

Jordan Heath Rawlings There is a lot that we don’t know even three weeks later about exactly what happened in East Palestine, Ohio, and what happens now. Who made the decision to vent these gases? How far might the toxins spread? Could they make it into the Ohio River water supply? Could they drift far enough to impact Canadians? And what exactly might they do to anyone who ingests them? What we do know right now is that, once again, railroad regulations or the lack of them have resulted in a disaster how bad it is and for who.

We’ll have to wait and see.

I am Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Rebecca Burns is a reporter at The Lever, a reader supported investigative news outlet that has been leading the way on context around the Ohio trained derailment. Hello, Rebecca.

Rebecca Burns Hi. Thanks for having me. You’re most welcome. Thanks for joining us. I wanna start just by asking you.

Jordan I think it maybe didn’t get the attention it deserved when it happened, and it’s been getting more and more and more ever since. And maybe to start, just take us back right to the beginning. What exactly happened in East Palestine, Ohio? Can you walk us through the initial sequence of events?

Rebecca Burns Sure. So East Palestine is a small town of about 5,000 people on the border of Ohio and Pennsylvania, um, with a major freight line running through it. So on February 3rd, uh, Norfolk Southern Train, about a nearly two mile long train derailed. 11 of the cars that derailed were carrying hazardous chemicals — that wasn’t known at the time, but when those cars derailed. There was an initial fire and then later state officials allowed workers on the scene to do what, what they’re calling a controlled release of the chemicals, which is what created that sort of apocalyptic plumes of black smoke that you could, you know, uh, reportedly passenger jets could see from overhead. So the exact causes of the accident are still under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. Um, what they’ve said so far is that what’s known as a, a wheel bearing was, was on fire and in the final stages of overheat moments before the train derailed. Um, surveillance video has also shown that there was a fire under one of the train cars about 20 miles before it arrived in East Palestine. So something else to keep in mind here is that this, you know, nearly two mile long train was staffed by a crew of two plus a trainee. That’s also certainly, you know, germane to whatever may have happened exactly. We’ll, we’ll find out more from the NTSB, but in the meantime, this is raising a lot of sort of structural and persistent issues that rail workers have, have been warning about.

Jordan And we’ll talk about that and, and what could have led to this. And your reporting is tied up in that. But first, what are exactly the chemicals that were released? What do we know about how toxic they are? If they’re dangerous, et cetera.

Rebecca Burns So the first thing to note is that, you know, reportedly first responders who arrived on this, Theme initially didn’t have that information. Um, so, you know, they arrived to find a hundred foot flames, a chemical smell permeating the air, but no clear information about exactly what chemicals they were dealing with. So what we quickly learned, um, and sort of the chief chemical of concern that was being transported by five of the cars that derailed is vinyl chloride, which is used to make plastics. It’s a known carcinogen. And you know what’s, what’s really concerning is that residents are already starting to, you know, report things like respiratory issues, skin irritation. But it could be quite some time before we know, you know, what the long-term health effects would be. Vinyl chloride, um, sometimes can have a long latency period in between when people are exposed and, you know, when they may develop more serious illnesses. So that was in the first few days after the accident. It took about a week for the EPA to post information that it had from Norfolk Southern, um, which was the list of chemicals and other goods being transported on the train, um, which also contained other chemicals of concern, including benzene and, you know, other substances that also are, are linked to, you know, some serious kinds of cancers and can irritate skin and cause respiratory issues.

Jordan How far could the risk of these chemicals stretch? I’ve seen lots of maps with a lot of red on them. Sometimes when they’re made by US publications, they magically stop at the Great Lakes, which would be great for us. But could they reach across the border into Canada? Like, what do we really know about how widespread this is?

Rebecca Burns Right. You know, I’m not a scientist, but I don’t think chemicals stop at the border. Yea it’s not clear yet, certainly how wide the concern is. I’ve seen experts say somewhat on, on back of the envelope math, like, you know, 50 miles around this could be a, a zone of concern. What we can say is, you know, in addition to releasing the fullest of, of chemicals initially, the EPAs first updates noted that they had found traces of, of chemical contamination going into tributaries that fed into the Ohio River. So I believe that piece is being monitored, but that’s, that’s quite a big concern. You know, they’re traveling downstream now, that’s a source of drinking water for about 5 million people. I think there’s also a lot of concern about, you know, folks downwind, um, you know, soil contamination. So I think it’s certainly not just residents in the immediate area. You know, there was a one mile evacuation zone initially. Certainly residents, well outside of that, you know, the initial evacuation zone are, are reporting respiratory issues. And since this is, you know, the, the sort of other border here is that this is right on the border of Ohio and Pennsylvania. So I think it’s, it’s, it’s also likely that this is, you know, not confined either to East Palestine or just to Ohio.

Jordan Before we talk about the aftermath of this, what happens now, who if anyone is punished for this — how did we get here? You know, in, in looking at a lot of the reporting around this, I have to say I learned that the United States has something of a recent history of toxic materials on trains being vented. This is not like, I mean, it is unusual obviously, but this is not unprecedented.

Rebecca Burns Yeah. So, I mean, there are about a thousand derailments every year in the us um, and I. I’ve seen that offered as a way to, you know, perhaps d downplay or point out that this accident isn’t unique. And, you know, I would respond to that, that that’s, that’s part of the problem that we’ve, you know, this is, this is a different scale, but there have been other very serious incidents involving spill or release of toxic chemicals by rail transport. So, you know, the other piece of context here is overall derailments in the US by nu by number of, you know, by number of accidents have gone down since the seventies, but the number of accidents per mile have, have actually gone up. Norfolk Southern, specifically the company who is behind this derailment, who’s train derailed, um, its accident rate has also been going up in recent years. And if you talk to, you know, rail workers or sort of rail safety experts, what they’ll actually say is, you know, what’s surprising is, is not that this happened, what’s surprising is that it doesn’t happen more often. That given the deep cuts to staffing, resistance from railroads to invest in needed maintenance and safety upgrades, this kind of accident was not a matter of if, but when.

Jordan What do we know about regulations that either did or did not or maybe should have applied here and, and how we got to this point? So this is where you and your colleagues at The Lever have broken some pretty important context about the root causes of all this.

Rebecca Burns That’s right. So, You know, pretty much since railroads became a major industry in the United States, um, they’ve been run much more like a financial asset. So there’s been persistent efforts to resist regulation, resist mandatory safety updates, um, by the Association of American Railroads, the major lobbying group, which is, is quite powerful and has been quite successful in its efforts. I believe it’s sort of Canadian counterpart, you know, also has quite a bit of sway. So the most sort of recent era of, of attention to rail safety sort of actually stems from the aftermath of the accident in Quebec in 2014, right? You know, when an oil train derailed, killed, I believe 47 people and, you know, destroyed a town center. So that incident and a couple of other ones, not, not quite as large in scope in the U.S., sort of focused attention specifically on this issue of trains carrying crude oil, but also other hazardous chemicals. So under the Obama administration, there was a push to really tighten safety regulations, you know, on hazmat trains. So, um, two things happened that sort of weakened what could have been quite strong regulations. First the chemical lobby, you know, chemical producing companies stepped in during the rule making process and said, ‘Hey, we don’t think this rule, you know, oil’s fine. We don’t think this rule should apply broadly to other types of flammable hazardous materials and in particular flammable gases.’ Now I mentioned that, um, Exactly what was an issue in the, in this train crash in East Palestine was vinyl chloride, um, a class two flammable gas. So again, during this rule making process under the Obama administration, uh, the National Transportation Safety Board had actually requested that. Flammable gases, which would’ve included vinyl chloride be covered by this rule. The Obama Department of Transportation and its sub-agencies kind of sided with the chemical lobby, um, and restricted the rule to class three flammable liquids, you know, and, and crude oil kind of remained the, the main focus of, of the rule. Now, still that rule, you know, was important. It required lower speed limits, um, sort of enhanced newer tank cars, better disclosure to first responders and state agencies, um, you know, about what kind of chemicals would be, would be passing through by rail. And then also, uh, a provision requiring upgrades to the breaking systems of freight trains. So just a small sort of piece of context here is that most of the nation’s freight trains still run using a breaking system developed during the Civil War era. So it has slower stop times. It’s a compressed air break that’s sort of when, you know when the break is pulled by, the engineer stops trains one by one, kind of like a giant slinky. So this Obama era rule, um, for trains carrying oil and certain other hazardous materials would’ve required upgrades to newer, electronically controlled breaking systems with faster stop times. Now, sort of the second piece of, of this backstory here of, you know, missed opportunities in terms of regulations is that, you know, this was in 2015 that the rule was passed. Under the Trump administration, the piece of this rule pertaining to breaking was repealed. Railroad lobbyists had, had fought the rule during the Obama administration donated really heavily to, in particular Republican congressional campaigns in the 2016 cycle and worked with first Republicans and then the Trump administration, um, to repeal this breaking rule. So all of that to say that this train that, you know, burst into flames in East Palestine was not classified as what’s known as a high hazard flammable train. You know, despite the photos that that we’ve seen, because of these sort of two moments of regulators siding with industry lobbyists.

Jordan You mentioned that almost since their inception that trains in America have been run as financial assets. So what’s the cost benefit analysis here? Because like just looking on as an outsider, it seems to me that it’s surely way worse in terms of the negative PR, whatever they may end up having to pay in damages and lawsuits than it would be to simply, uh, like update the breaking systems from the Civil War era.

Rebecca Burns Yeah. So I’m gonna give you an example sort of specifically related to these breaking systems. So what we found when we started looking into the history of regulatory efforts here was that in the early 2000s, the railroads, including specifically Norfolk Southern, were, you know, all on board to use a train metaphor with these newer breaking systems. They were actually the ones testing them, saying they’re great. Um, Norfolk Southern a newsletter letter in 2007 where it sort of boasted to investors that it was making railroad history by beginning to upgrade some of its trains to these new breaking systems. You know, railroads at the time had estimated that this was gonna be a cost efficient investment over time. But over time is, is kind of the key phrase there. That when I say railroads are run sort of as financial assets, what that means in part is that they really wanna be able to show short-term returns to their investors. So railroads are very focused on what’s known as the operating ratio. So you know, how much are they spending compared to what the profits are, right? So even investments that you know, might pay off in, you know, five, 10 years, however long, really don’t look good when you’re reporting quarterly earnings and doing dividends, doing stock buybacks to try and maximize profits to investors quarterly. So I think that’s kind of the key piece of context of why, you know, railroads, you know, frequently from what we’re told, will sort of test new innovations, say these are great, um, you know, this, this, this could really help make things run smoothly. But often when regulators say, okay, so we’re gonna make this mandatory industry wide, that’s when you’ll see the industry sort of turnaround and fight, uh, these types of mandatory improvements.

Jordan So the initial derailment was almost three weeks ago now. In the wake of the disaster. How has, uh, Norfolk Southern responded and, and how has the government responded? And I imagine that this is, um, like everything, when I interview somebody from the United States turning into a partisan fight.

Rebecca Burns It is indeed. So, you know, what is both common and really concerning in these types of industrial accidents is that the company at fault here is often really allowed to control the initial response and, and also control the flow of information. So, for example, the decision to do what they’re calling the controlled release of, of the vinyl chloride to burn it off. I don’t know, you know, I don’t, I don’t have the, the expertise here to know whether that was the right decision, but I’ve seen some really serious questions raised, you know, including by an expert commentator who said, you know, they basically did that to get the railroad open again, that that wasn’t the right choice for, for public health. So there are some questions there. I think Norfolk Southern also, you know, is reportedly offering some initial compensation to residents. Um, there are questions about whether, you know, anything that they do now may, may limit people’s ability to take them to court later on. I think the federal government response here really has been lacking honestly. It took transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg more than I think 10 days, um, to sort of say anything at all. Even while he was on, you know, se Sunday talk shows, you know, talking about the State of the Union. And I think that in part is why, you know, we’ve seen sort of the right really latch onto this situation in, in a, in a cynical way. So East Palestine is a overwhelmingly white town that voted for Trump. And in sort of the conservative media, they’ve seized on that as the rationale for why we’ve seen sort of a slow response to the federal government. Now, what is happening in East Palestine is, is not abnormal at all. You know, when we’ve seen environmental disasters like those in Flint, Michigan, you know, an almost entirely black town, the federal government has also been very slow to respond. And it, it’s taken months or years for people raising the alarm to sort of be taken seriously. So now it’s been, let’s see three weeks? A little more than three weeks. Uh, we are seeing, you know, statements made by, in particular transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who got a lot of pushback, including from his own party, you know, both sort of the progressive and the conservative wings of the party. So as of today, he’s saying, you know, that he’s willing to take some steps or work with Congress to take some steps, um, for example, to pass legislation reinstating the breaking rule to do better information sharing with first responders. You know, the question really is, I think first, you know, there’s a real question of why it took that long. And then the second question is just, you know, that the transportation secretary actually has pretty broad regulatory powers over rail safety. It, you know, rule making takes time. There aren’t things that he can necessarily snap his fingers and just do, but thus far he’s been sort of resistant to, to using those powers. You know, possibly in one interview, the Biden administration said because of this pushback that they get from, from the raill industry in particular.

Jordan So last question then, and I guess there’s still so many unknowns at this point. What will you and other reporters be looking to learn now in the coming weeks? Like what are the major questions still outstanding here?

Rebecca Burns Yeah, you know, I think looking into the decision to do this, this could. You know, again, controlled release is sort of an industry term here, but what went into that, whether environment or health experts, uh, were consulted as an important question. You know, the exact role that the EPA is playing now, whether, for example, it’s doing adequate soil testing and cleanup, you know, what the monitor water monitoring looked like. Some of the initial information posted by the EPA was that it was doing air testing inside people’s homes, you know, which is probably an important step, but from what I understand isn’t adequate. You know, they also really need to be testing at the site of the accident, downwind of the accident, and attending to, you know, the possibility of both air, soil and water contamination. And then, you know, just this bigger question of what can be done to make freight trains in general but also you know, particularly the transport of hazardous materials by rail, I think is an important question to, to stay on as the attention from this fades a little bit. You know, there are other accidents in 2012, a train derailed that was carrying vinyl chloride and released, you know, thousands of pounds of it. Residents in that area are now reporting long-term health concerns. So, you know, as, as the attention fades, it’s also important to, to, to see that there’s like ongoing health, health monitoring for, for residents both of East Palestine and, you know, as we’ve discussed, the surrounding areas to make sure that they can, you know, get the support and the compensation that they deserve.

Jordan Rebecca, thank you so much for this time and thank you and the team at The Lever for all your work on this story.

Rebecca Burns Thanks so much. Rebecca Burns is a reporter at The Lever.

Rebecca Burns That was The Big Story. For more head to The Big Story podcast.ca, find us on Twitter at The Big Story FPN. Talk to us anytime via email. Hello at The Big Story podcast.ca, or call and leave a voicemail, (416) 935-5935. You can find The Big Story wherever you get your podcasts. You can ask your smart speaker to play The Big Story podcast. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.