The United States had a particularly painful year in 2022 as communities grappled with the growing effects of the climate crisis and 18 major natural disasters wreaked havoc across the country amid rising emissions causing the global warming. Meanwhile, in 2023, about 15 high-profile train derailments have already occurred in America. At the same time, hazardous materials were transported in the wagons.Another train accident in the United States occurred on Wednesday in the state of Minnesota. According to CNN, a train derailed and caught fire carrying, among other things, ethanol alcohol. Authorities said there were no casualties, no environmental damage and residents of nearby homes were evacuated. The day before, ironically, on the Ohio River there was a wreck of a barge that carried toxic alcohol – methanol. The barge was part of a group of 10 vessels that broke away from the tug around 2 a.m. after hitting a bridge at the entrance to the Portland Canal. And again, the authorities, as if using the same preparedness in such emergencies, quickly announced that there were no casualties and “there was no damage to the ‘environment”. A few days earlier, a hazardous materials train had derailed in North Dakota.The rail freight industry in the United States has come under intense public scrutiny following the Feb. 3 environmental disaster in Ohio, which involved a 150-car Norfolk Southern freight train carrying products toxic chemicals. 38 carriages derailed in the eastern Palestinian town following what investigators later determined was a mechanical failure. 10 of them were transporting hazardous materials over rough terrain.Fortunately no one was injured, but more than 2,000 eastern Palestinians out of an estimated 4,800 had to be temporarily evacuated from the area due to health problems caused by the chemical spill, reports the British Independent. As part of the cleanup operation, five tanks containing vinyl chloride – a compound used to make plastic pipes, wires, cable coverings, car parts and packaging that can cause cancer – had to be broken into by emergency crews. The material was poured into an excavated trench and controlled arson was carried out to prevent the explosion, sending toxic black clouds into the atmosphere.
The evacuees were allowed to return home after the Environmental Protection Agency and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which have been monitoring air and water pollutants since the accident, said the levels detected were not significant enough to cause long-term health effects. But that did not reassure locals, some of whom nevertheless reported symptoms such as runny noses, sore throats and headaches after the disaster, while around 3,500 fish were found dead in the surrounding waters.
The crash wasn’t even the first to occur in Ohio this year, according to Newsweek, with another accident on Jan. 19 between Trinway and Adams Mill. An Ohio Central Railroad train, consisting of 97 cars and stretching up to two miles, for some unknown reason slipped off the tracks, although at that time they were empty, it n So there was no cargo leak, and no one was hurt. And it is clear that the American media have spoken little about it,
After the incident in eastern Palestine, another accident occurred in the same state involving the same Norfolk Southern company.
Speaking on ABC’s This Week the next morning, State Senator Sherrod Brown said the new incident made it clear that “greed and incompetence by the railroad companies are always more important than” safety. Photo: Reuters
By mid-February, Newsweek had counted at least three other disasters in South Carolina this year alone — near Lake City on Jan. 9, near Loris on Jan. 21 and another near Enory on Feb. 12. Additionally, two incidents on the railroad occurred in rural California, one in the Detroit and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, as well as in Alabama, Alaska, Louisiana and Texas. A Union Pacific freight train derailed in Gothenburg, Nebraska on Feb. 21 after three in the same area involving coal trains in 2022.
Railroad accidents have actually been quite common in the United States over the past two decades, although the consequences are rarely so dramatic. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics recorded 54,539 train derailments between 1990 and 2021, an average of 1,704 per year. The fatality rate from these incidents is low, with an average of only four fatalities per year over the same period. Curiously, according to federal data, since the late 1970s, the number of derailments has fallen by more than three-quarters. In 1978 alone, there were 8,763 derailments in the United States, resulting in 41 fatalities.
But it was the incident in eastern Palestine that shed new light on the US railroad industry, which was not well reported by officials, but sparked a firestorm of commentary, including one visit to the crash site by Donald Trump and led to heavy criticism of Norfolk Southern and the federal government. . Although Ian Jeffries, trade group chief for the Association of American Railroads, tried to reassure the public about the safety of chemical shipments, insisting that 99.9% of all hazardous materials shipments arrive at destination safe and sound.
Steven Dietmeyer, a former senior Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) official, told The Lever news outlet that the severity of the crash may have been exacerbated by the lack of electronically controlled air brakes (ECP).
Former U.S. President Barack Obama passed a law requiring trains carrying hazardous and flammable materials to be equipped with ECP brakes, but that order was reversed in 2017 due to the Trump administration’s attack on “bureaucracy “. The National Transportation Safety Board has confirmed that the derailed trains in eastern Palestine were not fitted with ECP brakes.
In the meantime, the railroad union has argued in The New Republic that a management practice adopted by railroads called Precision Scheduled Railroading, which organizes freight scheduling on the basis of individual cars rather that of the balance of the train as a whole, may have played a role role. And it can contribute to future accidents by overshadowing safety concerns.
Meanwhile, more than 1,000 train derailments occurred in the United States in 2022. At least 1,164 train derailments occurred in the country last year, according to the Federal Railroad Administration. This means that in America, on average, there are about three derailments per day. “However, we don’t hear from left or right about derailments in various places in the country, and the main reason is that it’s not really a major event,” said Mehdi Ahmadian, professor of Mechanical Engineering, at NPR. at Virginia Tech. Industry leaders say most derailments happen at stations and suggest trains are safer than other modes of transport such as the car. Sixteen people were injured and one person died in train derailments last year, according to federal data. Human error was the leading cause of derailments in 2022, and track defects were the second most common cause of train derailments. In many previous years, track faults were the most common cause.Rails can also break and cause train wheels to come off, Ahmadyan said, or train wheel axles can fail over time simply from the heavy loads and high speeds associated with modern rail traffic.
