Sorry about suffocating your entire community under a toxic, burning mushroom cloud. Here's $5. We good?

mac_in_tosh said:
Maybe he'll donate a large sum of money to the victims of this tragedy...NOT

The irony is that tRump couldn't care less about these people. In fact his administration revoked some Obama administration railway safety regulations. They might not have averted this accident but could help in other situations.
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maybe he will toss paper towels.
 
mac_in_tosh said:
Maybe he'll donate a large sum of money to the victims of this tragedy...NOT

The irony is that tRump couldn't care less about these people. In fact his administration revoked some Obama administration railway safety regulations. They might not have averted this accident but could help in other situations.
Click to expand...

My understanding in 2012, in response to a 2008 incident in particular, Obama mandated the new braking systems by 2015 on trains carrying “high hazard” materials. And then when the industry said it wasn’t possible, kicked the fan down the road to 2018- but really 2020 if they have “plans” drawn up to install the braking system.

Trump repealed the law. But if he didn’t repeal it, it surely would have been kicked down the road over and over and over again.

The real twist in this blame game of who is responsible is that the regulations are and have been so loose that vinyl chloride is not considered a high hazard by the DOT. Basically that term only applies to crude oil and ethanol products. So even if the law was in effect, the brakes wouldn’t have been required on this train. It‘a also worth asking if they would have likely prevented this accident or merely reduced the risk of it occurring.

Inevitably the Obama admin felt the need to improve safety in reaction to some event(s). The politicians probably have little interest in writing laws about train safety specs and the lobbyists watered it down to a very meaningless policy, knowing how narrow the DOT definition of high hazard materials are. It was never a particularly huge concern for any politician to pay much attention to. And since transport of goods is essential the the economy, the most important thing is that trains are running. Trump meanwhile probably isn’t well versed in the safety culture or the rail industry and can’t point to any major incidents he can remember in recent memory, so things must be safe enough, so why bother with forcing these companies into compliance. They’ve apparently done just fine without it.

This type of thing seems pretty typical in most industries. Rules don’t exist until some catastrophe happens. But no one has much interest in legislating them otherwise. And all the companies will claim it’s harming them. And with little regulation and oversight, abundantly dumb things are allowed to happen and become standard operating procedure. That is until the next disaster happens.

There’s a ton of examples of this in Marine safety, the Titanic probably being the most familiar. The aviation industry was doing pretty well historically until the Boeing 737 problem, which in large part was due to complacency of everyone. The Baby Formula potential contamination and shortage fiasco comes straight out of a demolished lack of FDA oversight that should have been occurring but wasn’t. And so on.

It’s just too bad that these regulatory agencies whose existence is directly related to industry safety continuously fail to regulate until after massive catastrophes, often involving significant loss of life.
 
The DOT commented during Obama’s call for public comment on the proposed rules. They made it clear that these kinds of trains should be classified as hazardous.

Then the lobbyists came. They successfully narrowed the rules down to just the “bomb trains” (as they were referred to in the media at the time) carrying oil and oil derivatives.

The administration was as big a sell out as any. A pox on all their houses. This is not a country, it’s a labor and resource pool for corporate power where people happen to live.

www.huffpost.com

White House Meeting Logs: Big Rail Lobbying Against 'Bomb Train' Regulations It Publicly Touts

Big Rail has talked a big game to the public about its desire for increased safety measures for its trains carrying oil obtained via hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") in the Bakken Shale. What happens behind closed doors, the meeting logs show, tells another story.
www.huffpost.com www.huffpost.com
 
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AG_PhamD said:
It’s just too bad that these regulatory agencies whose existence is directly related to industry safety continuously fail to regulate until after massive catastrophes, often involving significant loss of life.
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And yet, we have regulations on just how think Ketchup can be..... :oops:
 
fooferdoggie said:
another toxic cloud will visit them? poor people.
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While I think his visit is entirely self-serving given his history or lack thereof of philanthropy and environmental concern, I’m not opposed to his visit if it brings attention to both sides of the aisle that our safety standards need to be reformed.

I’m sure Biden could have visited if he wanted to weeks ago, though admittedly I’m not sure it’s the best use of his time and taxpayer money. But in some sense his absence created void that Trump can step in to fill.
 
The NTSB’s preliminary report claims the train fire started as a bearing failure. This was indicated by a bearing temperature sensor. The engineers slowed the train until an emergency brake automatically kicked in. After seeing a fire, they uncoupled the front and rear locomotives and moved them to safety.

It sounds like the crew followed the guidelines for the situation at hand. I suppose whether or not the train had otherwise properly been maintained is another question. And whether or not the policies in place are optimal.

What’s just as concerning as the crash is the response, which seems to have been a total mess. And I hope someone will bother to investigate that.

In addition to regular monitoring of water and air and perhaps reassessing exposure thresholds, I think the residents should be demanding their bodies (via urine or blood) be tested for vinyl chloride and other chemicals released. There are blood and urine tests available for vinyl chloride, they’re just not routine and a specialized lab would have to be contracted to do the testing. It’s not going to be an indicator of damage done or potential future risks, but it’s evidence. AFAIK this has not been offered and I’ve seen people on the news saying no tests exist. Again, not true. I suppose the problem is most doctors are not very experienced in dealing with poisonings of industrial chemicals.
 
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