by Mary Fanning, America Outloud:
The environmentally disastrous February 3, 2023 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, of Norfolk Southern train 32N, transporting rail tanker cars filled with dangerous chemicals, has been compared to the 1986 Chernobyl radiation disaster in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Ultimately, responsibility for the Chernobyl disaster lies at the feet of Soviet officials who controlled the nuclear plant and launched an immediate cover-up, and responsibility for the East Palestine disaster lies at the feet of the federal officials who regulate U.S. railroads: President Joe Biden and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
Responsibility for the East Palestine derailment environmental catastrophe also lies with Norfolk Southern, which adopted a controversial cost-cutting operational strategy known as precision scheduled railroading (PSR). The biggest Norfolk Southern shareholders are Vanguard Group, JP Morgan Investment Management, and Blackrock Fund Advisors.
On this episode of The National Security Hour, executive producer Mary Fanning invites guest Alan Jones for a discussion of trains, toxins, and government lies: the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and the ensuing environmental catastrophe.
Motherboard Tech by Vice reported on February 15, 2023:
Motherboard has been reporting on the freight rail industry for two years, during which time we have interviewed dozens of Norfolk Southern employees across the company’s service area about how a change in management philosophy has made working conditions worse and jeopardized safety in exchange for supposed gains in efficiency…
…In the past week, Motherboard has also interviewed two workers with direct knowledge of 32N. Those two workers have provided additional details about 32N included in this story that shed light on the train’s reputation in the months before its derailment…
…For years, Norfolk Southern, like several other major freight rail companies, has prioritized moving trains as quickly as possible out of terminals and rail yards over safety as part of a wider move across the freight railroad industry towards a management philosophy called Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) intended to move more freight for lower costs. Safety inspection times and personnel have been slashed, hindering efforts to ensure trains are safe before they leave yards or terminals. Crews are dissuaded from reporting safety issues. Workers that persist in raising red flags are often ignored.
Buttigieg possessed no significant transportation sector experience when Biden nominated him to the federal government’s highest transportation cabinet position, and has maintained a cavalier and disinterested attitude concerning the East Palestine train disaster throughout the nearly three-week period since the derailment that initiated the environmental disaster.
Fox News reported:
President-elect Joe Biden tapped Pete Buttigieg to serve as transportation secretary, but as leader of South Bend, Ind., the former mayor had a pothole problem…
… But in 2019, the South Bend Tribune reported that many residents felt the city had the ”worst pothole situation in the state.”
Pete Buttigieg’s father, Joseph Buttigieg, was born in Malta and translated the “Prison Diaries,” written by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci.
While staying largely silent on the East Palestine toxic train catastrophe, Transportation Secretary Buttigieg did find time to complain that “often a neighborhood of color that finally sees the project come to them but everyone in the hardhats on that project looking like, you know, doing — doing the good paying jobs don’t look like they came from anywhere near the neighborhood.”
ABC News reported in a February 13, 2023 article titled “There were more toxic chemicals on train that derailed in Ohio than originally reported, data shows”:
State health officials were initially concerned about the presence of vinyl chloride, a highly volatile colorless gas produced for commercial uses, which spilled after about 50 cars on a Norfolk Southern Railroad train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 3 while traveling from Illinois to Pennsylvania. Other toxins, like phosgene and hydrogen chloride, were emitted in large plumes of smoke during a controlled release and burn, prompting officials to issue mandatory evacuation orders in a one-mile radius of the crash site.
A list of the cars that were involved in the derailment and the products they were carrying released by Norfolk Southern reveal several more toxic chemicals that were released into the air and soil following the crash.
A Norfolk Southern train derails PDF document posted on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s website reveals that the status of four tank cars, IDs ILX 402025 (line #28), OCPX 80235 (line #29), OCPX 80179 (line #30), and OCPX 80370 (line #55), all DOT 105J300W tank cars hauling stabilized vinyl chloride, UN ID 1086, a flammable gas, is “car did not leak/cars vent product through the PRD [Pressure Release Device] and ignited/vent and burn performed.”
The status of one more tank car, GATX 95098, (line #31), another DOT 105J300W tank car hauling stabilized vinyl chloride, is “vent product through the PRD [Pressure Release Device] and ignited/vent and burn.”
“Vinyl chloride was released into the air Monday from five of those cars before crews ignited it to get rid of the highly flammable toxic chemicals in a controlled environment, creating a dark plume of smoke,” USA Today / The Associated Press reported on February 8, 2023.
Read More @ AmericaOutloud.com
