WASHINGTON — Members of a Senate committee today grilled Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw and environmental officials over the response to the Feb. 3 toxic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
Shaw repeated his promise that the railroad will do whatever it takes to make things right in East Palestine, now and over the long term.
The railroad has spent $20 million to date in the form of reimbursements and investments in the community, which Shaw said was just a down payment on the railroad’s commitment to cleaning up the derailment site as thoroughly and quickly as possible. (Shaw’s prepared remarks are available here.)
Senators said they would hold NS accountable for paying for cleanup costs, medical bills, and for the financial toll the derailment has taken on the residents and businesses of East Palestine.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and other Democrats on the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works were critical of job cuts and multi-billion dollar share buyback programs at NS and other railroads over the past few years, which they claim have jeopardized rail safety.
Brown said NS could have hired more inspectors, added car mechanics, and installed more wayside detectors. “Norfolk Southern’s profits went up and up and up and look what happened,” he said.
Investigators have said the derailment was caused by the catastrophic failure of a wheel bearing on the train’s 23rd car, a covered hopper carrying plastic pellets. The hot axle triggered a hotbox detector alarm on the outskirts of East Palestine moments before the derailment.
Shaw noted that NS this week said it would install 200 more hotbox detectors across its system as part of a six-point safety plan. The first new detector, he said, was installed on Wednesday near East Palestine to close a 19.2-mile gap that had existed between detectors on the westbound approach to the town.
Shaw said NS was committed to doing what’s right, but declined to specifically promise to back all proposed safety regulations, compensate residents for the decline in home values, or to stop the railroad’s share buyback programs.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., asked Shaw to make a commitment that he will lead the industry in ending the “disastrous” Precision Scheduled Railroading operating model imposed by Wall Street.
Shaw said NS employs 1,500 more people now than it did a year ago and noted that at the railroad’s investor day in December he charted a new course for the industry by moving away from a near-term focus on profits and instead is now taking a longer-term view. “We were the first to pivot out of it,” he says.
Sanders also asked NS to provide all of its workers with paid sick days. NS has reached sick leave agreements with three unions, Shaw noted, and continues to negotiate with other unions.
Committee Chairman Tom Carper, D-Del., and West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the panel’s ranking Republican, were critical of the lack of transparency from NS and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the first hours and days after the derailment.
There was confusion, they noted, about the controlled venting and burning of vinyl chloride from five derailed tank cars. First responders didn’t immediately have knowledge about what hazardous commodities were on the train. And the EPA was slow to provide residents with data about the safety of water and air.
Capito said the lack of transparency allowed armchair experts to spread misinformation via social media, which has spawned a lingering distrust of cleanup efforts and whether residents are safe in their own town.
Shaw noted that, in response to resident concerns about a lack of information, the railroad set up a website, nsmakingitright.com, that provides frequent updates about air and water testing as well as ongoing cleanup efforts and how residents can get help.
Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, said the EPA was delaying efforts to move contaminated soil from East Palestine for disposal elsewhere.
He also criticized some of his fellow Republicans for not supporting the bipartisan Rail Safety Act of 2023, which was filed earlier this month in response to the East Palestine wreck. Vance said it was neither unreasonable nor a violation of free market principles to impose additional safety regulations on railroads.
Shaw said he supported the legislative intent to improve rail safety, noting that NS has been calling for improved tank car safety rules and increased funding for first responder training.
But senators were critical of lobbying efforts by NS and other Class I railroads against electronically controlled pneumatic brakes and other safety measures.
Shaw noted that National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy has said that ECP brakes would not have prevented the East Palestine derailment or made it any less severe. He also pointed out that various government studies did not support a rule mandating ECP brakes.
Questions from a couple of senators showed their ignorance about the railroad industry in general and Norfolk Southern’s relief efforts in East Palestine in particular.
“If you have brakes on every car, rather than brakes just on the front car, you create the accordion style crashes you’ve been having,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. Yet NS and other railroads have lobbied against ECP brakes, he said.
“If we can put people on the moon we can put brakes on every train car,” Merkley said.
Shaw responded: “There are brakes on every car. I can assure you of that.”
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., asked Shaw why NS was only providing financial assistance to people whose homes and businesses are within a 1-mile radius of the derailment site. A 1-mile evacuation zone was created in the immediate aftermath of the wreck.
Shaw said the railroad has made aid available to everyone in the East Palestine ZIP code as well as in neighboring Darlington Township in Pennsylvania.
Where can one learn about how standards for overheating wheel bearings are determined? How hot do they get in normal operation? How does that compare with the increase in temperature detected before the final detector that was too late?
Vance is right about the EPA doing nothing but getting in the way. A few years ago, an abandoned building collapsed across the street from my office. The city was ready to begin cleanup that very day. However, there was a “possibility” there may have been asbestos in the building so the EPA swung into action to forbid any cleanup until the city spent thousands of dollars to test the debris. Two years later, after wasting much money for nothing, the city was finally allowed to remove the debris after agreeing to spend thousands of additional dollars to treat the entire remains of the building as contaminated waste.
They should just put up a sign in front of these type of projects that say, “Construction clean-up being prevented by order of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Please call 1-888-88-USEPA with your suggestions and/or comments.”
Equipment defect detectors, two according to one report, identified to dispatchers that a wheel journal was overheating on the train enroute to East Lancaster before the accident occurred. Appropriate action wasn’t taken quickly enough to prevent the derailment. That’s not Shaw’s fault; it is his responsibility to take corrective action(s) to keep it from happening again.
So, NS installed a detector at ~~~ MP 59. What was not said was that the detector was activated and fully operational.
There is ZERO reason to expect a Senator to know details about railroads or operations without preparation. The faux pas are the fault of careless, slipshod staff preparation of the senators. Obviously staff didn’t know or bother to get the details of the tragic wreck so proper questions could be asked. Merkerley’s statement was nonsensical and blame should be directed at staff. We should expect better, but unfortunately this is typical of many politicians. It would be enlightening to read the hearing transcript or with proper refreshments, watch it on Cspan.
Sen. Merkley’s question may not have been received well, but his point is spot on. Folks who are criticizing his question as “ignorant” don’t understand how freight car air brakes function. YES, if a car near the head-end of the train (23rd of 149) derails and initiates an automatic emergency brake application, the brakes will apply sequentially toward the rear of the train at the rate of 960 ft/second. In this particular case, the brake application would not begin at the rear until about 9 seconds later. Full application of the brakes will then take another 15 seconds after initial emergency application on each car.
ECP braking would apply immediately throughout the entire train with no delay. Testing of ECP brakes, prior to the regulation being killed, proved that stopping distances were reduced by very significant amounts.
Saying that ECP brakes have proven themselves reliable is a false statement. Tests by the USDOT could not prove that reliability and consistent application of ECP brakes was an expected probability.
The AAR reported that the USDOT found, “… in extensive, real-world tests of ECP brakes … that the failure rate of ECP systems is significant, and the repair time is much too long to make them practical. Worse, ECP- equipped trains that became unmovable due to ECP failures blocked the track for other trains and caused far-reaching disruptions.”
Yes, Mr Dupee, theoretically ECP brakes should apply instantly and greatly reduce the time it takes to stop a train. The problem is that in tests the technology has been unreliable and the high failure rate is “significant.” Until that issue is overcome it causes more problems than it solves and railroads have gone to using mid train DPU’s receiving a signal from the lead locomotive to initiate brakes on cars behind that locomotive, which has proved far more successful than the current form ECP technology
Most politicians are lawyers. They are, therefore, experts in 2 areas:
1. Circumventing the law, and
2. The acquisition and maintenance of power and money.
Other than that, they pretty much don’t know Jack Squat about many of the things that come under their purview, and a few of them couldn’t find their rear ends with both hands. It’s up to their staff members to do the research and other legwork to inform their boss about whatever happens to be the show topic of the day. So it’s down to who has the brightest and hardest working staff, and one can tell from what Sen. Merlkey said that it isn’t him.
Don;t forget they couldn’t “…find their rear ends with both hands…. and a flashlight.”
James Squires should have been getting grilled by the Senate, not Mr. Shaw. Sure, Shaw has been CEO since about May 2022, by Mr. Squires is the man who should have been standing there.
These hearings are nothing more than a kangeroo court with ignorance on both sides of the aisle. You have a CEO of a major railroad who is nothing more than a stooge and puppet for Wall Steet who is controlling the rail industry and has blood on its hands for the both derailments as well as the unfortunate death of a Norfolk Southern employee earlier this week. And you have senators who are totally ignorant of how the railroad industry works and what they transport. Put some real railroaders on this investigation People who actually operate the trains and have boots on the ground. Not some bumbling and ignorant bureaucrats and politicans who are shwing just where their brains are.While we are on the subject of railroad knowledge and know how, the various news outlets and news personel also show ignorant they are about trains and railroads. When reporting about these accidents and derailments, they are using terms and language that is not relevant to how trains operate and what a railroad does and operate. It is a wonder that any of these folks even know what a train is. And let us really expose who the real culprits and villians are in these disasters Wall Strret and their insane policy of forcing the rail industry adopt PSR as the operating standard of the rail industry.
Joseph C. Markfelder
Joeseph, explain to me how Shaw has blood on his hands when a truck runs into the train and kills the employee.
Mr. Markfelder: You should be ashamed at having characterized Mr. Shaw as a “stooge and a puppet for Wall Street. Maybe I’m being naïve but he seems very much to want to “turn a page” away from that. As Mr. Weinberg commented above, that characterization fits Mr. Shaw’s predecessor, James Squires. Squires is the one who, after ripping Hunter Harrison and his gospel of PSR up one side and down the other when Harrison was attempting a hostile takeover of NS, did a 180 soon after Harrison’s death. Squires drove Harrison off (with maybe a little coaching from Charles Moorman) and Harrison then managed a takeover and conversion to PSR at CSX. And after seeing CSX’s stock price rise Squires took NS into an abrupt about face.
The media coverage and political fallout from this event have emphasized just how little most reporters and many politicians understand about the railroad industry.
“If you want to make broad statements about railroads and trains, generally try not to be wrong or completely wrong, because if there’s one group of people that know way more than you, it’s train people”.
-Alan Fisher
Since a bunch of those reporters and politicians were wrong/completely wrong, I think that it’s up to us to destroy all of them with facts and logic.
These hearings are nothing more than a kangeroo court with ignorance on both sides of the aisle. You have a CEO of a major railroad who is nothing more than a stooge and puppet for Wall Steet who is controlling the rail industry and has blood on its hands for the both derailments as well as the unfortunate death of a Norfolk Southern employee earlier this week. And you have senators who are totally ignorant of how the railroad industry works and what they transport. Put some real railroaders on this investigation People who actually operate the trains and have boots on the ground. Not some bumbling and ignorant bureaucrats and politicans who are shwing just where their brains are.While we are on the subject of railroad knowledge and know how, the various news outlets and news personel also show ignorant they are about trains and railroads. When reporting about these accidents and derailments, they are using terms and language that is not relevant to how trains operate and what a railroad does and operate. It is a wonder that any of these folks even know what a train is. And let us really expose who the real culprits and villians are in these disasters Wall Strret and their insane policy of forcing the rail industry adopt PSR as the operating standard of the rail industry. The greedy investors of Wall Street are just as guilty and responible for these accidents and also have blood on their hands and must be held accountable as well
Joseph C. Markfelder