Train Explosion Gif

[Tarja Rabito]

On Friday, February 3, 2023, at approximately 9:30 p.m., a Norfolk Southern train had 53 cars derail in East Palestine, Ohio. The site of the derailment is less than one mile from the Pennsylvania border.

Water and soil monitoring has been ongoing in nearby communities in Beaver and Lawrence counties. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Norfolk Southern (under EPA order and supervision) have all been collecting and analyzing water and soil.

Soil is being sampled within the two-mile radius zone and within an area nearly three and a half miles downwind of the derailment site. Sampling locations were determined by placing a grid over these areas. The grid squares measure 2,000 feet by 2,000 feet, and samples are collected where the lines intersect.

By using grid sampling, DEP can evaluate the entire area around and downwind of the derailment site for potential deposition. DEP is trying to accommodate as many individual requests as possible for soil sampling, and if there's a request near a gridline intersection, a sample is taken at that location. All soil test locations and results are posted on the DEP GIS map as they become available.

Five of the train cars contained the hazardous material vinyl chloride. Norfolk Southern scheduled a controlled vent and burn of the vinyl chloride from all five railcars on the afternoon of February 6. The air plume from the vent dissipated, and air quality monitors around the perimeter of the derailment site did not measure any harmful pollutant levels entering Pennsylvania as a result of the derailment or the controlled burn. In addition, all previously damaged train cars were removed from the tracks. Based on this information, the governors of Pennsylvania and Ohio announced on February 8 that residents may return to their homes and no longer need to shelter in place. There are no long-term air quality concerns related to the derailment.

The explosion caused by the run-away train cars occurred at 4:48 a.m. sending plumes of ominous black smoke into the sky while scattering train debris across campus. The collision of train cars caused massive damage to the Carroll campus and forced the pre-dawn evacuation of hundreds of students from the dormitories as temperatures dipped to 70-below zero with the wind chill.

Thirty years later we are able to reflect back on that day and recount the shared experiences, revisit the physical devastation, express our gratitude to the Helena community and most importantly, be forever thankful that miraculously no one was seriously injured during this truly monumental event.

Ed Noonan is a current Carroll College adjunct faculty member for film studies and a commissioner for the city of Helena. He formerly served as the Director of Student Activities at Carroll at for many years as well as the Executive Director of the Myrna Loy Center in Helena.

People of faith,
being the way they are,
did not see the February blast
as a measurable human failure to set brakes,
allowing a train to roll down the side of the Divide
impacting another train,
exploding outside the windows of the College,
shaking Bishop Carroll's old foundations
in ways soon to be explained
in insurance ledgers of hours and costs.
No, people of faith,
analyzing facts the way they do,
saw an act of God,
who knows the force and direction of the Arctic winds
and the smallest measurements of the continental slope
and the hour of Helena's awakening,
to make our reawakening
to that special God place,
and those same people,
looking at reality in the way they do,
saw the black cloud
burning some unknown mixture
suspended over the College
on that frigid February day,
as a burning of everything old,
old sins, mistakes, misunderstanding,
all that had been misplaced,
allowing those waiting on the perimeter of the campus
to return to a restored
and well loved God place,
a fresh beginning,
a new start
to those people of faith,
who see new creation
as their God's art.

On Feb. 3, 2023 the derailed cars triggered a massive fire, belching toxic smoke into the air far above East Palestine. Twenty of the cars contained hazardous materials, including vinyl chloride, which was later set on fire in a controlled burn to prevent a larger explosion.

And while the cleanup effort at the site itself has made substantial progress one year later, the East Palestine community is divided and exhausted, with many residents ready to move forward, even as others continue to raise concerns about the air and water.

"When we got here, there were cars on fire. This was still the immediate response, it was getting that situation under control," said Christopher Hunsicker, Norfolk Southern's regional manager of environmental operations.

Once the train was taken off the tracks, Norfolk Southern began assessing the environmental damage. It then removed all of the toxin-laced soil and limestone, and shipped it off to licensed landfills.

But some outside experts question whether those tests were sensitive enough, and many of the people in the town said they felt sick with nausea, rashes and other ailments in the wake of the derailment

Norfolk Southern paid for Dilworth and others to relocate, and when Dilworth first got to the Best Western in May. The company announced in December it would stop paying for relocation around the one year mark. Norfolk Southern says about 30 households are still using it, and that at its peak, around 200 were.

Dilworth accepts that eventually she will likely relocate. She joined a class action lawsuit focused on extracting damages from Norfolk Southern, and hopes any eventual settlement would help her start over.

"It'd be wonderful 10 years from now [if] everybody's healthy, nobody got sick, nobody got cancer," she said, raising the hypothetical concern that many people in East Palestine bring up. "But we don't know that and I don't have 10 years to sit around and wait."

She's the first to acknowledge that a lot of people in East Palestine don't feel this way. Many people have moved on, or think people like her are either exaggerating or trying to get more money from Norfolk Southern.

"I'll tell you what: I appreciate all the people coming here from the news, but I don't like the ones who get on there and publicly ... gripe about things," East Palestine resident Joyce Davis said one morning as she drank coffee at Sprinklz, a donut shop along the village's main drag.

Since then, Davis said she hasn't been worried. Her well water gets tested, and it's fine: "You can't spend your whole life worrying about what might happen 10 years down the road. And I have many, many outside kitty cats and not one of them got sick over that."

"Eighty percent of the people just want us to ... move on. Be done. To try to come back to where we once were," he said. "And then 10% just don't know what to think. And the rest [think] this was the worst thing that could ever happen to East Palestine, and it's going to be devastating forever, and we'll never get back from it."

Following the derailment, reaction and commentary focused on industry working conditions and safety concerns, including: the lack of modern brake safety regulations,[3] the implementation of precision scheduled railroading (PSR),[4] reduced railway workers per train, and increased train lengths and weight. Critics said train companies had failed to invest in maintenance to prevent accidents, even though they conduct stock buybacks, in which capital that could be used on maintenance and safety measures is instead distributed to existing shareholders. Railroad Workers United blamed precision scheduled railroading for increasing risks that a disaster would occur.[5][6]

Several unions and consumer organizations expressed concern about private ownership of railways and a "profit-driven approach", which they state puts workers and communities at high risk. The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) also called for public ownership of the US railway systems.[7]

In June 2024, the National Transportation Safety Board held a meeting in East Palestine to review its findings on the incident. The board voted unanimously to accept the findings and announced it would issue a report.

The derailed train was Norfolk Southern train 32N,[10] operating from the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis yard in Madison, Illinois, to Norfolk Southern's Conway Yard in Conway, Pennsylvania, on the Fort Wayne Line. Aboard the 9,300-foot-long (1.76 mi; 2.8 km) train[11] were an engineer, conductor, and conductor trainee.[12] The train consisted of 141 loaded cars and 9 empty cars.[13] Other reports note one more car, for a total of 151 cars, weighing 18,000 tons.[14] Of those cars, 20 were carrying hazardous materials, including chloroethene (vinyl chloride), butyl acrylate, 2-ethylhexyl acrylate, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, isobutylene, combustible liquids, and benzene residue.[15][16][17] The train departed Madison on February 1, and had suffered at least one mechanical failure before the derailment.[18]

Security footage from a business in Salem, Ohio (20 miles [32 km] northwest of East Palestine), and a Ring doorbell camera from New Waterford, Ohio (4 miles [6 km] northwest from East Palestine), show fire emanating from underneath a rail car as it went by on the tracks.[19][20] After this, at around 8:55 pm EST on February 3, 2023, 51 cars derailed on the east side of East Palestine, near the border with Pennsylvania. 49 of the cars ended up in a derailment pile, which caught fire and burned for several days.[21][22] Of the 51 derailed cars, 11 were tank cars that dumped 100,000 US gallons (380,000 L) of hazardous materials, including vinyl chloride, benzene residue, and butyl acrylate.[23][24][25]

About 48 hours later, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released preliminary findings indicating that the derailment was caused by a mechanical problem on one of the railcars' trucks,[26][12] which may be connected to reports that an axle was observed throwing sparks about an hour before.[27] The crew received an alarm from a wayside defect detector shortly before the derailment indicating a mechanical problem, and then an emergency brake application was initiated.[28]

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