Two days of hearings before the House Oversight and Reform Committee began on Thursday with the NTSB releasing hundreds of documents from its probe ranging from interviews with train crew to lab analysis reports, and relevant Norfolk Southern safety protocol files.
The agency’s chairwoman, Jennifer Homendy, described the hearings as “a fact-finding step” aimed at helping the NTSB complete its investigation.
"The communities most affected by this tragedy deserve as much insight as possible into our investigation, which is why we're holding an investigative hearing in East Palestine," she said. "While we unfortunately cannot change what happened that day, our entire agency is committed to carrying out our mission, which doesn't end when we get to the bottom of what happened and why it happened - we'll also work vigorously to prevent it from ever happening again."
However, Norfolk Southern, one of the two major railroads that dominate rail shipping in eastern North America, has failed to hand over numerous documents requested since March. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the committee’s ranking member, and other House Democrats penned a letter to NS CEO Alan Shaw on Thursday demanding the railway “cease its efforts to hide from oversight” and hand over the desired documents.
“We are dismayed that, instead of producing all of the information we requested, Norfolk Southern has turned over only a handful of materials that appear to be publicly available or referenced in publicly available filings while falsely claiming that the regulations of a federal agency prevent it from complying with congressional requests,” Raskin wrote. “Norfolk Southern should immediately cease its efforts to hide from oversight and produce to the Committee all of the documents we have requested.”
He noted that the missing files include internal documents about the implementation of precision scheduled railroading practices and their effects on the railway’s operations and financial position, as well as a list of workers’ positions that have been eliminated as a result of “workforce reductions.” The committee also has yet to receive Norfolk Southern’s internal policies on wayside detectors and sensors as well as the railway’s communications with state and federal officials involved in the response to the crash.
Crash and Cleanup
The crash happened on February 4 in the eastern Ohio town of East Palestine after the wheel truck of a freight car overheated and snapped, derailing the car and causing a massive pileup behind it.
Residents have reported widespread respiratory pain and coughing in the wake of the explosion and cataloged the accumulation of chemicals in local waterways. The deaths of numerous pets and wildlife were also reported.
When the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sent a team to East Palestine in the weeks after the blast to study the effects on locals, seven of the 14-person team got sick with symptoms similar to those experienced by the people they were surveying, including sore throats, headaches, coughing and nausea.
Norfolk Southern has partially given in to demands to help compensate those affected, but restricted its help to those inside the formal one-mile “evacuation zone” declared around the crash site.
It has provided $17 million in assistance to nearly 10,000 families in the area inside of that radius, but critics say it’s inadequate to address the much wider area affected by the blast. The railroad is fighting several court battles over attempts to make it cover more of the cleanup costs.
Analyzing the Crash
According to the NTSB’s preliminary report, the crew operating the train did nothing wrong the night of the crash and the fault lay with lax safety standards by the railway. In the documents released on Thursday, a Norfolk Southern engineer was revealed as having expressed concerns to his supervisor about the train’s length during an inspection at a railyard.
“If you talk to the manager, they said this train was 100% rule compliant,” the engineer said during an interview with the NTSB. “To me, in my opinion, you know, you got 32% of the weight on the headend. Twenty percent in the middle and 40% weight on the rear end. So, to me, that’s why we reported that to the yardmaster and like I said this is what they want.”
The train was 150 cars long, part of a trend of increasing train lengths in recent years in a bid to maximize efficiency. Some states have passed laws limiting the length of trains, both for safety measures and to minimize the inconvenience to drivers waiting at grade-level crossings. In an April report, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) noted “a rising trend in recent incidents where train build and makeup have been identified as a potential cause or contributing factor.”