Hazardous derailment not as likely to happen in Mercer County

Feb. 24—It's very unlikely a train derailment similar to the one in East Palestine, Ohio, would happen in the Mercer County area, a local railroad expert said.

Norfolk Southern's freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed there on mainline tracks — which are railroad's version of interstate highways, said Nate Clark, a Hempfield Township transportation consultant. Clark specializes in railroad freight.

"The last mainlines in our area were used in the '90s," he said. "That's where you see most of the traffic of this kind going."

On Thursday, the National Transportation Safety Board issued its preliminary report on the Feb. 3 accident in which 38 railcars derailed. The report said the train had a sudden major failure in one railcar's wheel bearings area that caused temperatures to soar above 250 degrees — way above safety levels.

While that's important, Clark pointed to a video of the train which showed sparks flying beneath a railcar. But it also shows what appears to be railcar metal melting.

"You have to be in the thousands of degrees for that to happen," he said. "The investigation will have to find what caused temperatures to escalate to that level."

Emergency responders at the scene have been unfairly criticized for releasing vinyl chloride in five tanker cars, Clark said.

Vinyl chloride must be shipped in climate-controlled tankers where temperatures are well below zero so that it's a liquid, he said.

"If you have a tanker containing that chemical and it begins to heat up — it would be like adding rolls of Mentos into a bottle of pop," Clark said. "The liquid will begin expanding and will create a huge amount of pressure in that tanker to build up. If the chemical hadn't been released, it would have caused a devastating, unimaginable explosion."

Here's where things get tangled. The railcars involved in the Ohio accident aren't owned by NS.

"They're owned by a railcar leasing company," Clark said. "A huge number of railcars aren't owned by railroad companies — they're owned by somebody else."

He acknowledges this was a serious accident.

"But this is something very, very rare. I've never seen anything quite like it," Clark said.

It will take slow, methodical work to investigate how the accident happened to get a final report, he said.

"This could take up to a year," Clark said.

A message left with NS on Friday wasn't immediately returned.

What really shook East Palestine residents and the region is the environmental fallout after the accident. Huge plumes of billowing chemical smoke could be seen for miles after emergency crews burned the chemical.

In its report, NTSB went out of its way to say the agency wasn't involved in air monitoring, testing of water quality, environmental remediation, or evacuation orders at the scene.

Residents in the area complained of getting rashes, sore throats, scratchy eyes and other symptoms following the accident.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources estimates around 38,200 fish were killed within 5 miles of the the derailment. About three-fourths were minnows, with other species including other small fish, amphibians and crayfish.

The derailment was about 30 miles south of Sharon, about a mile west of the Pennsylvania-Ohio border.

There is no evidence any pollutants from the accident reached Mercer County by air or by water, said Frank Jannetti, the county's Department of Public Safety said.

"I've had my eyes on this the whole time," Jannetti said.

He said he has been in constant contact with Ohio and Pennsylvania environmental and emergency officials along with his counterpart in Columbiana County, where the accident happened.

"They're all telling me there's an air monitor two miles from the accident that isn't picking up anything," Jannetti said. "We're 29 miles away and it could not have had an impact on the air quality in Mercer County."

The state Department of Environmental Protection has found no evidence of any chemicals in the local air from the accident, he noted.

An air monitoring station is located in Farrell to detect specific pollutants, such as carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide, Tom Decker, a DEP spokesman said.

"DEP can conduct monitoring or require air monitoring to be done in emergency or unique circumstances when an extended emergency situation could impact air quality," Decker said.

That type of air monitoring is typically coordinated through the state's emergency response program, he added.

"If you remember, we had United Refining set up a monitoring network throughout Warren (Pa.) which we had access to for H2S (hydrogen sulfide) when a floating roof sank on one of their tanks last year," Decker said.