Silicon Valley Bank seized by FDIC, another train derails in the U.S.

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Silicon Valley Bank was seized by the FDIC Friday in the largest bank failure since 2008.

Former President Donald Trump sees support fade among Iowa Republicans. Another train derails in the U.S., USA TODAY National Correspondent Trevor Hughes looks at the string of train derailments. Plus USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub says New York City rats have been found infected with the virus that causes COVID-19, we'll talk about what that could mean. And another atmospheric river storm soaks California.

Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here.

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and this is 5 Things You Need to Know Saturday the 11th of March, 2023. Today, what the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank means for the rest of the economy, plus how Republicans are shaping up in the latest Iowa polling. And we take a closer look at trained derailments.

The US sees the assets of Silicon Valley Bank yesterday. The move comes after the largest failure of a financial institution since Washington Mutual at the height of the financial crisis more than a decade ago. Silicon Valley Bank failed after its depositors, including mostly technology workers and venture capital backed companies began withdrawing their money this week. Just before noon eastern time yesterday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or FDIC, announced it was closing the bank.

Silicon Valley Bank was heavily exposed to the tech sector and there's little chance of the incident bleeding over into the banking sector, similar to the chaos leading up to the Great Recession. Major banks have capital to avoid a similar situation though the sector has been under pressure all week and the stock market tanked late this week, including the S&P 500's sharpest weekly decline of the year so far, according to the New York Times.

Former President Donald Trump is seeing his support fade among Iowa Republicans, according to a new Des Moines Register MediaCom Iowa Poll. Trump has seen his favorability numbers in the First Nation caucus state fade steadily among Republicans since peaking in September of 2021. And the percentage of Iowa Republicans who say they would definitely vote for him if he were the nominee in 2024 has plummeted by more than 20 percentage points since June of 2021.

His favorability numbers there are about on par with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. 44% had very favorable feelings toward Trump compared with 42% for DeSantis and just 17% for former Vice President Mike Pence, and 16% for former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. You can look at more of the poll's findings with a link in today's show notes.

Since the February 3rd train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, it seems like derailments are popping up all over the country, including this week in Alabama. So what's going on? I spoke with USA Today national correspondent Trevor Hughes to find out. Trevor, thanks for hopping back on the podcast.

Trevor Hughes:

Absolutely. Good to be here.

Taylor Wilson:

So let's just look at the numbers to start here. How often do trains actually derail in the US and are things getting better or worse?

Trevor Hughes:

This is one of those things where people are suddenly realizing that trains derail, but the reality is trains actually derail quite often in this country. They derail less often today than they did in the 1980s. Right now, we see derailments happen about three times a day. It's actually a surprising number. But back in the 1980s, you had something like 7,000, 8,000 derailments a year. Now it's important to remember that these derailments aren't necessarily tragedies. These aren't major disasters. In many cases, this is a minor thing that happens at low speed in a railroad yard, maybe a train jumps the track when it's being moved around. But because the threshold for damage is $10,000 to be reported, that's the data we see.

Taylor Wilson:

And so what are actually the major causes? You mentioned the railroad yards. Is that where most of these incidents happen?

Trevor Hughes:

Derailments can be caused by any number of things. Basically, we saw in Ohio, that derailment they think is caused by a train wheel that the bearing overheated seized up and caused the wheel to jump off the track. In about 60% of derailments, they happen in train yards, which means they're generally happening at low speed. But you have trains that are being made up each morning, putting all the cars together so you have trains going forward, going backwards, pulling.

And so derailments can happen in a number of ways in the yard because you've got these directional changes, you've got these speed changes. When we're talking about trains running on the tracks and long haul trains, the tracks can buckle, they get hot, they get bent, they can get frost heaves just like any other road can. And then you also have the issues with bearing, so the wheels themselves can overheat and seize up, and that could cause a derailment, especially if it's going around a corner. And then that's another reason. Sometimes trains just go around the corner too fast. And just like a car can skid off the road, a train can skid right off the rails.

Taylor Wilson:

So obviously, one of the big issues with the East Palestine derailment, these hazardous materials that seeped out afterwards. How often do crashes involving hazardous materials happen?

Trevor Hughes:

This is one of those situations where it's a terrible tragedy, but the reality is it doesn't happen very often. Because if it did, we'd hear a lot more about it. And the reality is that hazmat spills from trains are very uncommon. They're actually far more common in trucks driving down the road. We also see a large number, relatively speaking, of reported leaks in hazmat instances. But those aren't necessarily things that cause actual damage to humans or to wildlife or to the environment. That might be the release of a gas or a liquid that is cleaned up relatively quickly.

Taylor Wilson:

And when it comes to passengers, how concerned should they be about train derailments in that case?

Trevor Hughes:

Passenger travel by rail is very, very safe. Last year, I think the statistic where there's something like six people were killed as passengers on trains in this country. In comparison, something like 45,000 people were killed on the roads. It's a dramatically safer way of traveling, trains versus automobiles. But that being said, because trains are so large, because trains have so many people on them, and because the crashes themselves are so unusual, we tend to hear about them when they do happen.

Taylor Wilson:

So then what legislation is being proposed to try and cut down on derailments in the United States.

Trevor Hughes:

The legislation that's being proposed at the federal level has a couple of different components. The first is significantly higher fines for railroads caught violating safety standards. There's an argument to be made that railroads are building the cost of a fine into their operating procedure and moving on. This new structure would actually fine them up to 1% of their annual profit, which is, we're talking tens of millions of dollars potentially for a single violation. The other things that are being looked at are minimum safety staffing, so to make sure that you have both a conductor and an engineer on every single train, there's been a push to automate a lot of this and have just one person, or in some cases just remote control of trains.

And then the other issue is what are called hot box detectors. Now, right now railroads have these detectors scattered along the rails, and what they do is they measure how hot the trains wheels are to make sure that they're not overheating and seizing up and causing these derailments. And the legislation would mandate more or less that a hot box detector would be installed every 10 miles on pretty much every major railroad around the country. And that would make sure that the trains would be caught if they were overheating, that there would be some safety checks along the way and these could be remotely monitored.

Taylor Wilson:

Trevor Hughes, always great info for us. Thanks so much.

Trevor Hughes:

Absolutely. Glad to be here.

Taylor Wilson:

Rats in New York City have been found infected with the virus that causes Covid-19, that's according to a study out this week. I spoke with USA Today health reporter Karen Weintraub to learn more. Karen, welcome back to the show.

Karen Weintraub:

Thanks so much for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

What did this study find about New York City rats and Covid-19 and why was it done in the first place?

Karen Weintraub:

So there's a concern that animals could be breeding SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. We don't know whether the virus originated in a lab or in animals, but it's certainly possible for viruses to jump from animals to people. It's happened. Basically, every virus we know from history has an animal origin or most of the viruses we know about from history have an animal origin. So it's certainly possible for this to happen. The concern is that if the rats in New York are vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2, that maybe they could pass it back to people after incubating for a while in a rat. Maybe it takes on some mutations, comes back to people in a form that's more dangerous or evades vaccines.

Taylor Wilson:

Karen, what do we know about rodents and disease in general?

Karen Weintraub:

Yeah, so many people have this stereotype against rodents that they carry disease. It was actually the fleas on the rats that carried bubonic plague that decimated Europe in the Middle Ages. But we do know that that animals; bats, mice, rodents, mink, in this case have also had SARS-CoV-2. Animals can carry viruses like SARS-CoV-2 and again, potentially pass it back to people.

Taylor Wilson:

And how about other animals? With Covid, thinking about dogs and cats at home, should we be checking symptoms for them?

Karen Weintraub:

Again, it's not clear how the rats got it. It could be that a pet was a vector, but it's unlikely. There's no evidence of that. Could your dog get it from a rat? Potentially. Again, no evidence. Could your dog get it from you? Yes, potentially. There have been a few cases of that. No cases that I know of that where it's come back from a pet to a person. But yes, you could give SARS-CoV-2 to a pet. So you are supposed to isolate yourself from your family members and your pets if you are infected.

Taylor Wilson:

If you didn't like rats before, here's another reason to keep your distance.

Karen Weintraub:

One more reason to chalk it up.

Taylor Wilson:

Karen Weintraub, always a pleasure. Thanks so much.

Karen Weintraub:

Thank you.

Taylor Wilson:

Yet another atmospheric river storm slammed California yesterday with flooding rains, heavy snow, and dangerous winds. One person was killed yesterday when a roof collapsed at a warehouse in Oakland. According to CNN, possibly due to storms in the area. More than half of California's 58 counties were under a state of emergency yesterday due to the storm and wind gusts of over a hundred miles an hour were reported in the state's high elevations. Forecasters are also worried that the combination of heavy rain and snow melt could cause life-threatening mudslides and avalanches. Stay with USAtoday.com for all the latest.

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. James Brown is back with the Sunday edition tomorrow, and I'll see you Monday with more of 5 Things from USA Today.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Silicon Valley Bank seized by FDIC, another train derails in the U.S.