Ohio may have ‘missed a bullet’ in latest train crash

News

From Markus Moore

March 5, 2023 | 11:52 a.m

The Ohio city where a Norfolk Southern train derailed on Saturday may have “missed a bullet” because its cars appeared not to be carrying toxic chemicals like last month’s disaster in eastern Palestine, Rep. Mike Turner said Sunday .

“This train may have been empty. It appears hazardous material poses no threat to the community,” Turner (R-Ohio) to NBC News’ Meet the Press.

But U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said he spoke with Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and law enforcement officials and was “not entirely satisfied” with Norfolk Southern’s response to the latest debacle.

“Because I want to know if… there are any remains of anything that might have been in those cars.” Brown said on ABC News’ This Week

“These cars were mostly empty. But I want to know if there is any contamination left in those mostly empty cars that could have infested Clark County near the fairgrounds to Springfield.” where the accident took place on Saturday, Brown said.

Springfield is about 300 miles west of eastern Palestine.

Brown said the train that derailed in Springfield had more cars than the one that crashed in eastern Palestine on February 3 when a toxic mix of chemicals released into the air, soil and water in and around the town of about 5,000 spat on residents led to widespread evacuations.

“This train consisted of over 200 cars, which is 50 cars more than the East Palestine train,” police said of the Springfield crash, in which about 20 of the containers fell off the rails.

So the railroad has a lot of questions that they need to answer, and they really haven’t done it very well,” he said.​

Turner noted that Ohio stands for rail and road at the “Crossroads of America” ​​and that an “incredible amount of freight travels through Ohio — some of it dangerously.”

“What we’ve seen lately in terms of the risks to communities is unacceptable,” Turner said.

Asked whether the rail industry should be subject to stricter regulations, he said: “Absolutely.

“The fact that we’re having one derailment after another really shows the lack of investment, the disinvestment in our infrastructure, and that needs to change,” he said.​

The Clark County Emergency Management Agency asked residents living within 1,000 feet of the crash site to protect themselves on the spot.

The agency later shared a Tweet by DeWine said: “We do not believe that hazardous materials were involved.”

Transport Secretary Pete ButtigiegCriticized for the government’s slow response to the East Palestine derailment, tweeted Saturday night that he had received an update on the Springfield crash and had been in touch with the Ohio governor.

“I was briefed by FRA leadership and spoke to Gov. DeWine to offer our support following today’s derailment in Clark County, Ohio,” Buttigieg wrote.

“No release of hazardous materials has been reported, but we will continue to monitor this closely and FRA personnel are on the way,” he added, referring to the Federal Railroad Administration.