Seems like an ecological disaster unfolding and I haven't heard or seen a single thing about it in the news
It derailed last weekend carrying vinyl chloride from Illinois to Pennsylvania. This is the Ohio-PA border. The tank caught fire and was going to explode. They evacuated a town of about 3000. They burned the vinyl chloride to prevent explosion, and the plume went largely into PA. Its an absolute mess, but people are back into homes now and there is no burning.
Well, it is a toxic waste spill. Not sure you can just walk into the sealed area. This is from last weekend:
I’ve seen enough documentaries to know that when officials give a ”one-mile evacuation radius”, it means get the fuck out if you live within 25-30 miles.
i'm curious, what changes are made when a train is deemed non-hazardous compared to hazardous? do they run slower? on tracks that are better-inspected and maintained?
Last week's train derailment in eastern Ohio needs a thread. East Palestine, Ohio evacuated with no return timeframe. Water, soil contaminated. Pets, livestock dying off. It's a fucking catastrophe and it's fucking wild that there's almost like a media blackout about this. Catastrophic train derailment shortly after Biden admin forcibly ended a potential rail workers strike over safer working conditions and more time off. Good thread with links to ongoing stories:
My brother works for a competing freight railroad in the South and the shit these companies are getting away with running their staff absolutely into the ground and making trains longer and longer to save on costs is disgusting.
Like there's multiple times in the past year that Norfolk Southern trains have been so long that when they crossed the busy railway crossing near my house they came to a full stop. Maybe because another train was ahead or that there was just so much inertia to overcome. I'm assuming this has always happened for long freight trains, but I can't remember it occurring twice so in a relatively short timespan to me.
Engineers operate the train, conductors are in charge of everything else. Think of it like in Formula 1. Max Verstappen is the engineer. Christian Horner is the conductor.
Yeah, apparently he was trying to do a live broadcast while the actual press briefing was occurring, which news reports state disrupted the press briefing.
Republicans continuously ruin this country because of greed and the thirst for power. They are enemy #1 and should treated as such.
Rail companies are some of the shadiest to exist. The whole reason CA has the proposition system is because the railroads basically owned the state government for 30 years.
They're basically the OG capitalist scum. Just because rail has fallen off since the days of Vanderbilt and Pullman and the like, doesn't mean that their present day counterparts aren't still absolute scum as well.
a lot of people are calling it the biggest derailment in Ohio since the Baker Mayfield Hype Train ran off the tracks.
Several times I've gotten caught by a train going home for lunch. 15 minutes of your lunch hour waiting on a train. It pretty frequently blocks busy intersections at 5:00. You would think there'd be some kind of ground rules for when they can block traffic but I guess not.