Biden administration comes under fire for response while East Palestine residents worry about long-term health implications
Joe Biden received a briefing on Friday on the multi-agency response to the derailment in Ohio of a freight train carrying toxic chemicals, as his administration came under criticism and safety regulators said the incident had been “100% preventable” – although the train crew were not at fault.
The White House said the US president was being briefed a day after transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg visited East Palestine for the first time since the toxic spill and fire three weeks ago.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chair Jennifer Homendy expressed concern about rail safety measures, as the agency released an interim report.
“We know for a fact what caused this derailment,” Homendy said on CNN on Friday morning, indicating that it was the dramatic overheating of a specific wheel bearing, and the fact that sensors on the track did not catch that overheating until it was too late.
“The crew did not do anything wrong,” she said, noting that they had responded correctly to an alarm but the train derailed anyway on 3 February.
“Now it’s looking at how we got there,” Homendy said. “What conditions were present to allow that to happen? And then we’re going to look at what would prevent it from reoccurring in the future.”
The NTSB said 38 cars had derailed and that a fire had damaged 12 more. Of those that derailed, 11 carried hazardous materials.
Asked by CNN if the safety systems were “inadequate”, Homendy noted that they were set by the rail company in question, Norfolk Southern, and not by government. “Those temperature thresholds are not set by regulation. They are not set by guidance. They vary by railroad and it’s their decision,” she said.
