train safety
Ohio Gov. DeWine touts career tech during Plain City visit
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine kicked off the week Monday with a visit to Tolles Career and Tech Center in Plain City. The facility mostly serves high school juniors and seniors interested in trades with specialized, hands-on instruction. The governor has made boosting investments in career tech a budget priority. During Monday’s tour he spoke with […]
Ohioans in the U.S. House and Senate have introduced rail safety bills, how do they differ?
Ohio’s congressional delegation was quick to promise legislative action in the wake of the East Palestine train derailment. Now, lawmakers have introduced bipartisan measures in both chambers of Congress. In a moment of divided government and fever-pitch partisanship, it’s notable lawmakers from both parties came together to propose substantive policy changes. However, proponents could still […]
Ohio Attorney General Yost sues Norfolk Southern over East Palestine train derailment
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a 58-count civil lawsuit in federal court Tuesday seeking to hold Norfolk Southern financially responsible for the Feb. 3 train derailment in East Palestine that caused the release of over 1 million gallons of hazardous chemicals, “recklessly endangering” both the health of area residents and Ohio’s natural resources, a news […]
Ohio state senators hold rail safety hearing as pressure builds for federal action
This week Ohio’s U.S. Senators criticized Norfolk Southern for “putting profits over people,” and insisted their legislation presents a “time for choosing,” in a closely watched committee hearing. In Ohio, meanwhile, lawmakers held their own hearing on rail safety. Separately, the rail industry announced plans to install about 1,000 additional wayside detectors in response to […]
Will Norfolk Southern’s political spending help shield it from consequences?
Officials are all singing from the same hymnal. Republican and Democrat; state, local and federal; all agree Norfolk Southern will be, must be, held accountable for the train accident in East Palestine. Wednesday, U.S. Sens. J.D. Vance, R-OH and Sherrod Brown, D-OH, put pen to paper, introducing legislation for rail safety. But the company has […]
Federal, state officials weigh plans to increase rail safety
Ohio’s U.S. Senators have introduced sweeping rail safety legislation alongside four other senators from both sides of the aisle. Their Rail Safety Act of 2023 demands procedural and equipment changes, while increasing fines for violations and offering funding to spur improvements. Meanwhile, Ohio legislators met in the new Senate Select Committee on Rail Safety to […]
Opportunists exploiting East Palestine’s suffering population with politics and race-baiting
Poor East Palestine. It’s bad enough that the northeast Ohio village is living through the nightmare of a toxic train wreck. Apprehension and uncertainty grip the town. Nobody knows what the long-term health effects of air and water contamination will be after the controlled burning of cancer-causing chemicals from derailed tanker cars. Official reassurances that […]
What Norfolk Southern’s accident reports say about the company and industry
Last October in Sandusky, a Norfolk Southern train derailed 21 cars and spilled 10,000 gallons of paraffin wax. In 2020, a Norfolk Southern conductor tried to pull out of a Rossville, Tennessee train yard while one car was still connected to an unloading tower. The accident released about 500 gallons of maelic anhydride — an […]
Railroad workers warned us: Greed is dangerous
The toxic clouds that billowed up from a derailed freight train in Ohio this February are a chilling metaphor for the toxic greed that has infected so many of our big corporations. After having to evacuate, residents of East Palestine, Ohio are cautiously going back home, but they still don’t know the full extent of […]
A Norfolk Southern policy lets officials order crews to ignore safety alerts
This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Norfolk Southern allows a monitoring team to instruct crews to ignore alerts from train track sensors designed to flag potential mechanical problems. ProPublica learned of […]
Pa.’s Shapiro blasts Norfolk Southern for ‘arrogance and incompetence’ in train derailment
EAST PALESTINE, Ohio – Freight hauler Norfolk Southern showed “arrogance and incompetence” in how it handled a fiery train derailment near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border earlier this month, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Tuesday. “The combination of greed, incompetence and lack of concern for our residents is absolutely unacceptable to me,” Shapiro said during a news […]
State Fire Marshal: First responders likely didn’t know hazardous substances were burning
The following article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland. When the call came in about a train derailment, first responders rushed to […]