Crew in Ohio Train Derailment Was Alerted to Problem Just Before Accident, NTSB Says

Mar 20, 2024

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The crew tried to slow down after an overheated wheel bearing set off an alarm, but 38 cars still ended up leaving the tracks, the National Transportation Safety Board said.

By Mark Walker and Emily Cochrane

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — The crew of a freight train that derailed in Ohio this month received an alert about an overheated wheel bearing only shortly before dozens of the train’s cars left the tracks, federal investigators said on Thursday, raising questions about the adequacy of safety measures used by the train’s operator.

An initial report from the National Transportation Safety Board found that while the wheel bearing had been heating up as the train carried toxic chemicals and other cargo through Ohio, an alarm did not sound to alert the crew to check a hot axle until the train passed a sensor not far from where it ultimately derailed. The sensor registered that the wheel bearing was 253 degrees above the ambient temperature, the report said.

The crew, already braking as the train followed another, slowed down even more after hearing the alarm, according to the safety board. The crew then saw fire and smoke and reported a possible derailment to the dispatcher. Thirty-eight of the train’s 149 cars ended up leaving the tracks.

The timing of when the crew was alerted to the overheated wheel bearing is a key issue in the federal investigation into the derailment on the outskirts of East Palestine on Feb. 3. When the train passed two earlier sensors, it did not register a temperature high enough to trigger an alarm under the parameters set by train’s operator, Norfolk Southern, according to the safety board.

“This was 100 percent preventable,” Jennifer L. Homendy, the board’s chairwoman, said at a news conference in Washington. “We call things accidents; there is no accident. Every single event that we investigate is preventable.”

The initial report was released on Thursday as Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, visited East Palestine to view the wreckage and pledge ongoing support to the community. Mr. Buttigieg and other government officials have faced criticism over what some residents and lawmakers have seen as a delayed response, and he acknowledged that he should have spoken out sooner.

“I was taking pains to respect the role that I have and the role that I don’t have, but that should not have stopped me from weighing in about how I felt about what was happening to this community,” Mr. Buttigieg said after walking through the mud of the derailment site. The visit came a day after former President Donald J. Trump visited East Palestine, near the border with Pennsylvania, and criticized the Biden administration for its response.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday that Mr. Biden had been in touch with the governors of Ohio and Pennsylvania and was satisfied with the federal response. She cited the presence of multiple federal agencies in East Palestine when pressed about why Mr. Biden had not visited.

The president is “staying updated on what is occurring on the ground but also appreciative of the work that his multi-agencies have been doing over the past several weeks,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said.

Since the train derailed and officials agreed to burn off some of its hazardous cargo to avoid the threat of an explosion, state and federal environmental officials have emphasized that initial tests have found the water and air to be safe and have not shown significant amounts of toxic chemicals.

On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered Norfolk Southern to take responsibility for cleaning up the contamination as well as paying for it. The office of Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio said that removal of contaminated soil began on Thursday, with nearly 5,000 cubic yards of soil excavated. But residents have continued to report an array of lingering symptoms, including headaches and rashes, and have questioned whether it will be safe to continue living in the area over the long term.

In a statement, Norfolk Southern said that it and the rail industry needed “to learn as much as we can from this event.”

“Norfolk Southern will develop practices and invest in technologies that could help prevent an incident like this in the future,” the company said. “We will also work with the owners of the rail cars on the integrity and safety of the equipment we use.”

Ms. Homendy stressed that the safety board had not yet drawn conclusions about what caused the derailment, but she offered more detail about the sequence of events that led up to it. She also said that the three people on board the train — a locomotive engineer, a conductor and a trainee — had not done anything wrong.

The initial fire was caused by the combination of the heated axle and plastic pellets in the car, she said. Five of the derailed cars were carrying about 116,000 gallons of vinyl chloride, a colorless, flammable gas. The fire melted the plastic placards on the train cars that are intended to notify emergency responders about the cars’ contents, she said.

The safety board’s investigation into the derailment and its aftermath is expected to take at least another 12 months, and it will include what Ms. Homendy described as an investigative field hearing in East Palestine this spring.

The safety board plans to examine the wheel bearing that overheated; the response to the derailment and the decision to burn off some of the train’s toxic cargo; how rail car inspections work under Norfolk Southern; and the company’s use of sensors along rail tracks.

Ms. Homendy acknowledged that many of the board’s eventual recommendations would require policy action. It is unclear whether a divided Congress would be able to come together to pass legislation on the subject of rail safety.

“Sometimes our recommendations are not implemented,” she said, after rattling through a series of statistics about train derailments. “That is frustrating. If they were, those numbers I read you would be much lower.”

Aishvarya Kavi and Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting from Washington.

Mark Walker is an investigative reporter in the Washington bureau. He was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Covid-19 in 2020. He grew up in Savannah, Ga., and graduated from Fort Valley State University. More about Mark Walker

Emily Cochrane is a national correspondent covering the American South, based in Nashville. She was previously a congressional correspondent in Washington, chronicling the annual debate over government funding and economic legislation. More about Emily Cochrane

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