A train loaded with hazardous chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio nearly seven months ago. The crash poisoned the small town and sparked outrage across the nation, but here we are in August and derailments continue seemingly unabated.
The six months following East Palestine saw an average of nearly ten derailments each, according to an investigation by Jalop alum Aaron Gordon over at Vice:
On March 4, a Union Pacific train in Ogden, Utah released magnesium chloride. On March 8, a CSX train spilled diesel fuel into a West Virginia river. On March 30, a BNSF train crashed and burst into flames, igniting ethanol and forcing midnight evacuations in Minnesota. On June 26, molten asphalt spilled into the Yellowstone River in Montana after a bridge collapsed. And in a four-day span in July, freight trains in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Montana, and Wisconsin, all with hazardous materials on board, derailed.
Worse still, Vice only looked at derailments bad enough to generate local news attention, which cut the derailment rate from the 106 reported to regulatory bodies down to 59 derailments covered in the press. Vice’s Motherboard also tracked freight derailments specifically, meaning passenger train crashes weren’t included in the data. The team also didn’t count derailments due to extreme weather or other, non-train vehicles crossing the tracks.
The report, worth reading in full, is a damning look at the safety of American railways — safety that railway unions fought to improve before the “pro-labor” Biden administration cut strike plans off at the knees. Biden saved Christmas, by forcing railway workers to keep shipping products from coast to coast under dangerous conditions with skeleton crews, and all it cost was the health and safety of the millions of Americans who live near railroads.
