Overheated wheel bearings a focus, U.S. agency says in 1st report on Ohio train crash

A U.S. train derailment that spilled toxic chemicals in an Ohio town might have been avoided if the railway company's alarm system had given engineers an earlier warning that bearings were overheating, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday with the release of a preliminary investigation.

"Had there been a detector earlier, that derailment may not have occurred," NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters in Washington. The incident prompted the evacuation of thousands of people and ignited health concerns.

While stressing a final report on the Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine could be 18 months away, she said the NTSB could recommend railroad companies lower the temperature thresholds that would trigger an alarm about overheated bearings.

The derailment has sparked a political battle and a blame game over railroad safety regulations with residents voicing deep concern over the longterm health impact of millions of pounds of carcinogenic chemicals spilled in their town.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg toured the wreckage on Thursday and urged freight rail companies not to stand in the way of tougher safety regulations.

Wearing a hard hat and orange safety vest while he met with NTSB staff, Buttigieg told reporters: "Norfolk Southern and the other freight rail companies need to stop fighting us every time we try to do a regulation."

Hundreds of derailments per year

There was no immediate response to either U.S. official from Norfolk Southern, whose chief executive apologized on Wednesday at a CNN town hall event that highlighted residents' concerns about soil and ground water contamination.

Homendy said that in 2021 there were 868 derailments across the United States of freight cars in the same class as the Norfolk Southern train that wrecked, a number she said was far too high and the result of both the industry and government not implementing previous NTSB safety recommendations.

The rail industry had said 99.9 per cent of all hazardous material shipments reached their destination without incident and the hazmat accident rate has declined by 55 per cent since 2012.

In its preliminary report, the NTSB said the train engineer applied brakes as soon as an alarm rang on Feb. 3 to warn of an overheated axle on the Norfolk Southern train.

It said "defect detectors" showed the axle and wheel bearing starting to heat up about 48 kilometres from the derailment site, but not to levels that would have triggered the audible alarm to warn the train engineer that far away.

Each individual railroad company determines its own temperature thresholds for when alarms are triggered.

Rare hearing scheduled

Before the derailment, temperature measurements on the Norfolk Southern train's suspect wheel were doubling every 7 km in the lead up to the derailment, the NTSB said.

The board said it would hold a rare "investigative field hearing" near the site in East Palestine and call witnesses. The board said all parties involved in the derailment were fully cooperating with its investigation.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress have exchanged accusations in the wake of the incident, pointing to missed opportunities during the Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations to enact stricter regulations on the transport of hazardous chemicals, as well as general rail safety requirements.

The Biden administration had been criticized for not having made a high-level visit sooner, and Buttigieg said he did not want to make an earlier visit that might have impeded the emergency response.

The NTSB also said it was investigating whether pressure relief valves on train cars carrying the toxic chemical vinyl chloride functioned properly following the wreck and subsequent fire.

Experts had said that if those valves had functioned properly, authorities may not have needed to drain upward of 1.1 million pounds of vinyl chloride from cars and purposefully set it ablaze, releasing heavily contaminating the environment.

Biden and his administration have said the company must pay for the damage and clean-up efforts, and the EPA ordered company officials to attend town hall events after executives failed to attend an earlier meeting.

Russell Quimby, a retired NTSB investigator, said rail companies should monitor differences in temperature readings between the sensors spaced along a rail line, which could give an early warning that a bearing is failing, rather than wait for a bearing to hit a high temperature to sound an alarm.

Front Burner27:50Fear lingers after Ohio's toxic train disaster

Weeks after a train derailed and crews released and burned toxic chemicals, officials are reassuring residents of East Palestine, Ohio that the air and water are safe.Many residents, however, remain wary of the long-term effects of materials like vinyl chloride, with some reporting symptoms like skin and eye irritation and hoarseness. Simultaneously, a political conversation is unfolding about who or what to blame for the crash, with critics pointing to a lack of regulation and cost-cutting from rail giants as they post record profits.Today, a look at what's happening on the ground as residents return to East Palestine, and a look at why rail disasters like this continue to happen more than a decade after the fatal catastrophe in Lac-Mgantic, Quebec.

Quimby told Reuters: "They start slow, but the longer it [the train] goes, the quicker they fail. They stop heating up if they stop the train."

Trump, who is campaigning for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, visited the area on Wednesday.