Jeff Tiedrich tweet about Ohio train disaster:

[tblue37]

weird how the Trump administration rolled back safety regulations for oil trains and now we have a big fucking environmental disaster in Ohio involving an oil train. must just be one of those strange coincidences I guess

Link to tweet

[republianmushroom]

1. Yep, and every republican politicians believe in coincidences

[gab13by13]

2. The people in that town will still vote for trump.

[NBachers]

3. Yep, and that's also the tragedy.

[samplegirl]

10. Not all of us!

Just the GOP

[kimbutgar]

4. You'd never hear that on fox or right wing media

Don’t you know it’s all Biden’s fault?

[Easterncedar]

5. A balloon is so much scarier

[flashman13]

6. I like the sentiment but let's get the facts right.

Of course Trump rolled back the rules Obama put in place because, well, because they were Obama rules. Having said that, Obama's rules were more cosmetic than comprehensive. They were aimed at unit trains (running mainly in the west with 100 to 120 cars) carrying oil and in particular Bakken oil from North Dakota. Bakken oil contains a large amount of volatiles which makes it far more flammable than most crude oils. The Obama rules were a reaction to several major derailments involving Bakken oil which caused horrific fires such as the Lac-Mégantic, Quebec disaster in 2013 which killed 47 people and leveled the town. It should be remembered however, that those major fires took place in trains equipped with old school single walled tank cars. After those disasters Bakken oil is transported in new double walled cars that are much safer and less prone to fire. Having said all that, it was hazardous chemicals that caused the fire in Ohio. I have studied many pictures from the crash, and in my opinion, it appears that most of the tank cars were older single wall cars. Let's be candid. The railroads don't want to impact profits by upgrading their tankers. Again, in my opinion, all of the old tankers should be scrapped ASAP.

Although the rail industry has fought introducing new breaking systems such as (PTC) positive train control for as much as 50 years, they are mostly in place now. While newer, those systems are aimed at speeding and making sure trains can't be on the wrong tracks or pass through the wrong switches. None of those situations were present in the Ohio crash. The Obama rules were to institute (ECP) electronically controlled pneumatic braking systems which are supposed to brake the train more quickly. They were supposed to be in place by 2021 on trains with hazardous oil cargoes. Would this new system have made a difference in Ohio. If what has been publish since the accident, the answer is probably no because no braking was applied before the crash. The cause was probably a mechanical failure due to a roller bearing burn out. Both private security cameras as well as railroad sensors spotted the problem, maybe as much as 20 miles up the line before the accident. That takes us back to costs versus profits. I recent decades human car safety inspection has been severely cut back. Automated safety inspections could certainly replace most of those human eyes, but that will cost money. Stock holders prefer profit to safety. That's what laissez-faire capitalism looks like. If there had been an early warning of mechanical failure system in place, faster braking would have been an asset. Of course regulation could go a long way toward minimizing disaster, but railroads can mobilize fleets of lobbyists far more cheaply than upgrading equipment. But what about Hunter Biden's laptop? You get the picture.

Full Disclosure: I live in a small railroad town within a block of a transcontinental main line. Dozens of trains pass through here every day. Many of them carry Bakken oil or all kinds of hazardous cargo. The implications of a major derail in my back yard concerns me. A Lac-Mégantic event could wipe out my town and me with it. Yes, it concerns me. If an accident occurs in a rural area such as East Palestine, Ohio, the cost in property and lives will be low. But remember, these trains roll through major metropolitan areas every day. It could be ugly. Just sayin'.

[Ray Bruns]

8. I'm sorry, but that is way more information about trains than I ever want to know.

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS1010US1010&hl=en-US&sxsrf=AJOqlzXnvTBnub64DS-cPDISUKn8sjPwFA:1676464405077&q=sheldon+cooper+train+meme&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizhN_KxJf9AhVCFlkFHUVtDCsQ0pQJegQICxAB#imgrc=Qe9p6ieLUhpclM

[Timeflyer]

9. DU'ers know stuff and share info.--love it. Agree--shareholders profit uber alles.

[patphil]

11. Excellent discussion, thank you.

I don't think the full magnitude of this disaster has sunk in with the American public. Part of that could have been competition with the other major disaster, the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria; well over 40,000 dead and counting.
I have a background in Chemistry, and know how dangerous these chemicals are. This disaster will be with the people in that area of Ohio for many years to come.
It's also going to force the Republicans in Congress to actually work with the Democrats to pass rail safety regulations.
Industry never wants to police itself. It needs to be forced to do the right thing; forced to make their systems and processes safe; forced to take steps to insure shit like this doesn't happen again.
Congressional Republicans had better realize this is not a point of confrontation, but one of cooperation.
We don't need jerks like JD Vance politicizing this disaster.

[calimary]

14. Thanks for the details, flashman13.

Sometimes it's challenging to take it all in, because broadcast news delivery systems always go for the quick 'n' dirty "and we'll be back after a few words from our sponsors..." But deeper dives into the facts are never a bad thing.

And yeah, "Stock holders prefer profit to safety." Around our house, it always basically boiled down to "... do you know how much that's gonna COST???"

[Cha]

7. Or not. TY & JT

[Martin68]

12. Republicans have this weird knee-jerk response against taxes and regulations, when both are

required to achieve the Constitution's stated goals. Safety and fairness both require regulations, and regulations cannot be enforced if the government is starved for funds. If the IRS were fully funded, it would pay for itself by clawing back funds from deep pocket tax cheats.

[uponit7771]

13. K&R,

[DENVERPOPS]

15. Along the same lines,

Many decades ago, I attended a conference in Alta Utah on Avalanche Safety and Rescue by a noted authority on Avalanches, a guy named LaChappel??????

I asked him a question during Q and A, about the conditions I faced when Cross Country Skiing at High Altitude. Previous snow history, temperature, wind, angle of slope, new snow depth, etc etc etc. We chose not to cross the snowfield and I asked him if we would have been safe crossing it.........

LaChappel? grinned and modestly he said: "I am supposedly one of the top experts in Avalanches in the U.S........ And that having been said, I can honestly tell you that I have no idea on whether that slope would have slid or not. But with a high degree of accuracy, I can tell you what the hell would have happened if you were in the middle of that snowfield, and it had broken free"

The same thing when the cost cutting/profiteering Railroad Corporations say they can't predict if one of their tanker cars will break open........But we can all accurately predict what will happen, if one does, carrying Methyl-Ethyl-BadSHIT, in a populated area.....

Decades ago, the Denver Rail switching yard was adjacent to Down Town Denver. On Easter Morning, a careless switching engineer drove a rail car into a tanker car with much greater force than normal. The force split open the tanker car and it released a large plume of gaseous, airborne, Methyl-Ethyl-Badshit for hours, and hours, and thankfully the wind was headed away from Downtown Denver and would dissipate before it every reached anyhuman populated area. The chemical released was horrific, and they didn't want to even talk about what if it had drifted into downtown Denver, most certainly engulfing all the people living in the hi rise apartments, hotels etc.

To see an even more horrific railroad incident, You tube the runaway freight train coming over Cajun? pass east of L.A. which happened years ago. Over a hundred, fully loaded, freight railroad cars, coming down a mountain pass, out of control, towards a city at the bottom. The train reached over 100?MPH with inadequate breaking and derailed on a curve in the town. The carnage from the freight train crashing was bad enough, but the cars sliding along the ground on their sides after derailing gouged a large underground gas pipeline which started leaking a day or two later, before exploding and incinerating the entire area of the crash, including the homes in the immediate areas.....