Ohio Environmental Trainwreck

Terraformer · 2023-02-11 14:01:07

Residents of the town of East Palestine in Ohio, near the border with Pennsylvania, have been allowed to return to their homes following a train derailment that led to a toxic chemical leak.
Hundreds of residents from the area surrounding a railroad were forced to evacuate on Friday. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro on Monday urged residents in his state within a 1-mile radius to evacuate and those within 2 miles to shelter in place.
Officials said they had decided to initiate a controlled burn of vinyl chloride due to the risk of tanker cars exploding. They warned, however, that it would send toxic gases phosgene—used during World War I—and hydrogen chloride into the atmosphere.
-- Newsweek

Having not had much experience with handling toxic chemicals (the closet I have come was in sixth form, inhaling a bit of ammonia), I can't judge whether or not the controlled burn was prudent in this situation. It does seem that Vinyl Chloride has quite a high threshold for causing problems as far as toxic chemicals are concerned, with acute exposure to levels below 1000ppm being safeish. Whereas Phosgene causes trouble at 0.1ppm. So whether burning it was the better course of action to risking the explosion in order to disperse it as is, I don't know. But there are users here I believe with such experience?

kbd512 · 2023-02-11 18:02:44

Terraformer,

They don't really have the money or equipment for a proper cleanup, so the "obvious solution" is to burn it.

SpaceNut · 2023-02-11 19:10:07

We do question whether there is a safer method of hazardous materials to be transported and it comes back to risk when using any of them as greed to make the means as cheap as possible to allow for the greater profit always wins out.

Terraformer · 2023-02-12 03:01:51

How many people in America have experience with situations like this, anyway? It strikes me as something rare enough that local emergency response officials would be out of their competancies here. Be interesting to know how they made the decision that lowering the risk of an explosion in exchange for highly toxic air was a worthwhile tradeoff. One would *hope* it wasn't just that they understand explosions and don't understand toxicity...

GW Johnson · 2023-02-14 10:37:22

The railroads use "hotbox" detectors placed at intervals along the track to detect failing axle bearings in train cars as they go by. Such get rather hot and emit light and heat. The idea is to detect an axle bearing going bad, and stop to do something about it before the fire gets out of hand, or the car derails when the bearing comes completely apart.

The train in Ohio was video'd with quite the ball of fire and sparks under one car, which is more than enough for one of those "hotbox" detectors to see. So, either a detector wasn't working, or someone failed to get the word from the detector. The train rolled on too far without getting stopped.

What's really wrong here is a labor cost problem being pushed too far by corporate management. The railroads have reportedly laid off about 30% of their workers, overloading in particular the inspectors charged with finding worn-out axle bearings and wheels (and worn out track and improperly-working crossing signals). Doing it "right" costs a bit too much for management's taste, and they typically fail to evaluate the costs of disasters induced when they scrimp too much to prevent them. Its a pattern we have already seen in a lot of different businesses.

Don't get me wrong. Free market capitalism is the most powerful engine of creation yet devised by man. But, we have multiple millennia of experience with it that so very clearly shows that it must be constrained by rules, or else it will not serve us all, only the few at the top. No rules is worse than the wrong rules, which makes a dangerous lie out of the political agendas advocating take all the rules off. Better to try to develop the right rules, which is simple common sense.

GW

RobertDyck · 2023-02-14 11:15:27

I'm going to post something from another website that I belong to. I won't post the first two paragraphs, because they're just conspiracy theory.

@McVoice wrote:

Next... This "burn off" must be highly illegal and NOT how you treat dangerous chemicals like this. You treat the chemicals to make them safe then remove them by special treatment trucks to a safe location. Why do I say this? I work for an engineering company in Australia, and we deal with the isolation and removal of dangerous chemicals - and this is the biggest no-no ever! You send in special chemical fire trucks to STOP hazardous chemical fires like this, NEVER to start them!
Where the hell is the EPA during all this? They should have been the FIRST on site to assess the danger and methods of safe removal. This looks like a taste and test of things to come. It looks 100% deliberate, not accidental.

Ok, the last sentence was "conspiracy theory" anyway.

I want to point out news reports stated one of the chemicals was phosgene. Phosgene is a component to make polycarbonate, the most popular brand is Lexan. However, phosgene is poison gas. It was used during World War 1 as a chemical warfare weapon.
From the Centers for Disease Control: https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/phosgen … /facts.asp

Wikipedia: Phosgene

GW Johnson · 2023-02-14 12:47:16

I don't know how accurate the reporting is, but my understanding is that there were 5 tank cars carrying vinyl chloride at risk of explosion in the post crash fire. That stuff is very flammable and quite explosive in a fire. They chose to release and burn the vinyl chloride at a slower controlled rate, slower than a mass explosion.

Products of pool-fire fuel-rich combustion in air would include ugly stuff like hydrochloric acid, phosgene, and some other really ugly stuff. A slower release without a giant blast is less damage done to the adjacent public, that a fast mass-blast release, but you still have to evacuate, either way.

Without the mass blast, there might still be homes for the evacuees to return to. That would be the thinking; it's rock-and-a-hard place stuff.

GW

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-02-14 20:26:40

The post has dozens of likes and thousands of views
spreading of whispers on Social media chat / rumors

'Patients from Cleveland Clinic - Akron General Hospital, some miles from East Palestine'

https://twitter.com/CaptainCrook6/statu … 7848743938.

If you are in the states of Ohio or Pennsylvania, please do not go outside while it's raining!

HOWEVER

this very same pic but cropped and flipped is dated May 2012
https://imgur.com/gallery/iq2o7

'Volunteered to be a victim for training today, they did a decent job...[ Fake blisters ] '

Life imitating art?

Deadly Ohio train derailment eerily ‘predicted’ on Netflix: ‘Scary’
https://nypost.com/2023/02/14/deadly-oh … lix-scary/
It seems that the Netflix movie “White Noise” somehow eerily predicted the train derailment

Jesse Watters: Who wouldn’t drink from a stream full of dead fish?

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6320416229112

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-02-14 20:38:24)

Calliban · 2023-02-16 02:55:17

There are no easy post accident solutions to dealing with a vinyl chloride spill. The reason the firefighters opted for controlled burn is the risk of vapour cloud explosion if the liquid is left to evaporate. The vapour produced from evaporation of vinyl chloride is a heavy gas, containing saturated liquid droplets. Without controlled burn, the wind could carry a cloud of ground hugging vapour over a town, where any ignition source would ignite it. If that happens, you lose the entire town and everyone in it. Burning the liquid off needs to be a controlled operation due to the risk of a boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion (BLEVE). If a tank fails and the vinyl chloride is above its saturation point, then the contents will turn into vapour, with explosive consequences. So tanks will need to be boundary cooled. This is extremely hazardous for firefighters, who need to be nearby. Future risk mitigation needs to focus upon accident prevention. But there is always a balance to be reached between risk and cost.

GW Johnson · 2023-02-16 10:31:36

Vinyl chloride is quite flammable, and therefore explosive in a fire situation in any number of ways, rather like gasoline. The photos I saw showed the tank cars of vinyl chloride exposed to, and being heated by, the surrounding fire. If these had been gasoline tankers, they would eventually exploded, throwing flaming gasoline all over everything adjacent. The vinyl chloride could do exactly the same thing, and presented the same monstrous risk. So they released and burned it without the explosion. You "buy" the safety-from-the-explosion at the cost of contaminating everything with very toxic combustion products, as well as released reactant. It's a real rock-and-a-hard-place tradeoff.

In short, to prevent the explosion, you deliberately create the environmental disaster. My guess is that some of this will eventually show up in the groundwater. It's already in the creeks and river. And all the surfaces for a mile or so around are contaminated with harmful products,
already causing symptoms in exposed people. All of that would have happened anyway, at one level or another. At least part of the town was not blown away, too.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2023-02-16 10:36:05)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-02-16 12:45:29

Train derails in Van Buren Township; Haggerty Road closed
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tra … 06782.html

Officials investigate derailed train in Van Buren Township
https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/loc … -township/

Aerial video showed several train cars off the tracks. The tracks were damaged, and several sets of wheels became disconnected from cars.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-02-18 13:50:55

Worse than Gonzo Journalism

AI "reporters" spread disinformation about Ohio train derailment: Conspiratorial claims about chemical contamination can be traced back to "reporters" who aren't real.Social Media and Platforms

https://weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p … paign=post

Humans were known to do this before Artificial, Gonzo journalism a style of journalism that is written without claims of objectivity

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-02-19 11:51:55

'Are we under attack?': Donald Trump Jr. claims US train network is being sabotaged

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl … eam-2.html

SpaceNut · 2023-02-19 15:35:09

Is it or is it just poorly being maintained?....

SpaceNut · 2023-02-20 11:03:04

This is not the only train or hazardous materials that have derailed in the past and we have had a Second train with toxic chemicals derailed in Michigan

Sat, February 18, 2023 at Just after 8:30am local time (1330GMT), six train cars, out of 30 in total, crashed off the tracks in Belle Ville, Michigan.
Local authorities said that one train car contained liquid chlorine, however the fire department stated that there was no sign of leaking or damage, and the derailment currently posed no danger to the public.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, Energy (EGLE), and Wayne County Homeland Security have all been notified of the incident. There are no reported injuries.
The incident in Michigan comes two weeks after a separate Norfolk Southern train derailed near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, also carrying hazardous materials.

We have talked about other such hazards in oil, propane and other such items in a variety of topics and here is Four rail-borne risks moving through American communities

We must also consider the vehicles which are used as well as a hazard but when we have the same outcome for a pipeline, we now must consider even more to these risks that we take to bring commodities to market for sale.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-02-22 11:41:00

Criminal referral filed in East Palestine derailment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ8XQvJ_BjM

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-03-04 13:05:54

Norfolk Southern, the activist Erin Brockovich talks and could it be owned by Vanguard Group, BlackRock, Jp Morgan or other big Royal Euro Global Banker names some 'conspiracy'. In alt news gossip they will talk of names that link to the Fed a corporation and family are old du Pont family they helped build some of the old Railway but maybe this time its other names and groups?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gctwmwpA4is

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-03-04 13:06:27)

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Ohio Environmental Trainwreck

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