Supporting Palestinians
One need not look very hard or long to discover immense government mendacity and incompetence. Yet, when found, both qualities of questionable federal actions serve to confirm excellence and veracity for those whose intentions are fulfilled thereby. In other words, almost everything federal departments do is subject to the ideologies of long-term employee-perpetrators, and very little to do with the intentions of Presidents or Cabinet Secretaries. Elected officers are relatively temporary, especially Presidents and their appointees – ostensibly the most powerful people in government. All of this potential failure is exposed sharply in a little town named East Palestine, Ohio.
Norfolk-Southern operates a two-track main through the town of East Palestine. Across those rails travel a thousand products every week, mostly in bulk – products like cement, flour, gypsum, wheat, oil, and a host of manufactured volatiles like vinyl chloride, methyl ethyl ketone, butyl acrylate, benzene residue and dozens of other toxic fluids and materials. People whose lives place them along the tracks of Norfolk-Southern, are usually ignorant of, if not oblivious to, all of these potential hazards flying by at 50 and 60 miles an hour on trains that weigh so much that their cumulative momentum require up to a mile of normal braking to come to a halt. On February 3rd, 2023, a train of 150 cars and tankers of various types was routed to pass through East Palestine around 9 o’clock in the morning, but it never made it through… most of it.
A bearing on a bulk dry-materials car was overheating. That car and bearing may have traveled 300 miles or more since the train was “made up,” and the imminent failure of that bearing and axle was visible in Salem, at least 20 miles ahead of East Palestine, as sparks and eventually flames spewed from the doomed journal. It lasted another 20 minutes until it failed catastrophically in East Palestine. By raw luck no one was killed as 38 of the cars crumpled together and started burning, including 10 cars with truly hazardous chemicals. Further luck allowed for only fire and not an explosion, which might have thrown metal a mile or more from the site.
One of the risk factors for the residents of East Palestine appears to have been that many of them voted for Donald Trump and, worse, that most are white-skinned. Otherwise it is difficult to assess why the federal government was so slow to respond to the plight of the little town of 5,000 souls who were so rudely alerted to the unsafe nature of America’s rail transportation, and its ruinous costs for innocent victims of its accidents.
Of course, the huge costs of “breaking” a train somewhere along the main line, in order to remove one defective car, is very, very high. We must recognize the difficulties of running a railroad. Still, had they stopped the train to remove the car with the burning axle, they’d have had to bring another engine up to the rear section and pull it back away from the damaged car. the front section could be pulled away from the other end of that car. But then what? Bring in a crane to pick it off the rails? Probably just pushing the car off the tracks with a piece of construction equipment would have been the cheapest temporary solution. The rest of the train could be coupled together and complete it’s risky journey. Definitely it would have been a more elegant solution than the one they tried. Even the relatively insensitive thermal detectors that all railroads use to alert them to overheated bearings, must have detected a journal with sparks and flames spraying from it
Pulling that mess through East Palestine must have been an economic decision.
Despite Ohio and Federal EPA assurances, no one in East Palestine trusts either the water or the air. Local anecdotes about headaches, sick pets and farm animals, rashes, burns and inability to tolerate the air in their homes and businesses, are discounted automatically. “Everything is safe to breath and drink,” they are told, but after the conversion of vinyl chloride into phosgene gas and hydrochloric acid thanks to “burning off” the remaining vinyl chloride that hadn’t burned on its own, no one is taking the word of anyone in authority. That and the mixed messages of safety and advice to drink bottled water, has everyone who can smell the chemicals on edge. The Secretary of Transportation, one Peter Buttigieg, reassured the aggrieved residents with the information that there are as many as 1,000 train derailments every year in the United States and, despite the excessive attention being paid to East Palestine currently, they shouldn’t feel especially victimized, apparently. Oddly, his wisdom provided no comfort, whatsoever. Who hired that dope, anyway?
Eventually the EPA began serious cleanup, and the black cloud with which “they” had blessed this beautiful little spot of earth, dissipated, which is not to say that the poisonous gasses released “went away.” They are now part of our environment… and everyone’s else, but “the solution to pollution is dilution.” Closer to ground zero, however, the black ash fallout is a worry for those on whose property it fell. No one really knows what the long-term health effects may be for those most impacted. On February 3rd, their homes plummeted in value as did their land. Norfolk-Southern is not likely to make them whole, probably no one can. A thousand derailments per year… hmmmnnh, maybe there is something important for the Secretary of Transportation to do.