Was the train on fire? How security cameras pieced together the East Palestine derailment

Flames lit up the underside of a Northern Southern train's railcar as it rolled by a business in Salem, Ohio, around 8:12 p.m. Feb. 3, 2023 — but the fire's foreboding glow went unreported until it popped up on security camera footage days later.

It's possible the flames continued for roughly 42 minutes, when an alarm began to blare aboard the same freight train as it passed the edge of East Palestine. The alarm told the crew aboard the Norfolk Southern locomotive to slow to a stop to inspect a hot axle that had surged above 200 degrees.

By that point, though, it was too late.

Thirty-eight cars slid off the track, including 11 carrying hazardous chemicals, such as vinyl chloride, that would later be disposed of in a controlled burn that upended life in East Palestine for months.

Roughly 2,000 residents were forced to evacuate and more than 35 million gallons of contaminated water along with 167,000 tons of soil have since been removed, according to Norfolk Southern. And a year later, remediation efforts are still underway.

The security camera video, from several miles earlier, was one of many that popped up online in the days following the East Palestine derailment, alleging to show the train just before the crash and the explosion that followed. The footage is being investigated by both Norfolk Southern and the National Transportation Safety Board, which has also called for more visual and audio recording equipment on trains.

"We go deep, and we use everything that's at our disposal," said John Fleps, vice president of safety for Norfolk Southern. "We don't brush anything off without a very thorough evaluation of its validity. Obviously, we saw those videos."

The video, posted to Facebook by Butech Bliss, a steel equipment manufacturer with property along the railway, was viewed more than 40,000 times on the social media platform. It also appeared on local and national news broadcasts, such as CNN.

What has somewhat stumped internet sleuths and railroad experts alike is how the fire went undetected.

Sensors, commonly called hot box detectors, are on average placed every 25 miles or so along the tracks of Class 1 freight railroads, according to the Federal Railroad Administration. The infrared detectors record the temperature of a train's wheel bearings to ensure they do not overheat.

It's difficult to know how hot box detectors didn't catch that the train was on fire, said Chris Hand, head of research for the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen union. The train passed three detectors that night on the way to and through East Palestine that noted a bearing's temperature rose from 38 degrees to 250 degrees just before it derailed.

Read More: Are trains carrying hazardous material any safer a year after East Palestine derailment?

"It was clearly on fire prior to hitting that box detector," Hand said of the three detectors the train passed that registered rising temperatures. "The only answer I could give was these sensors are kind of based on mirrors and they're infrared looking at a certain spot. So if the wind hits it just right and blows that flame, it's probably not going to detect that."

Moments after the derailment, an Amazon Blink camera at a local winery a few blocks from where the train came off the tracks caught the explosion and fireball that ascended into the sky. Footage captured around 8:54 p.m. at the East Taggart Street winery also shows the sky turn a burnt orange as it filled with fire and billowing black smoke from the crash.

The winery was so close to the derailment that part of the street on which it's located would remain closed for nearly eight months afterward, according to Norfolk Southern.

It's standard practice for the NTSB to collect surveillance video and any other recordings it can get in the immediate aftermath of a derailment or accident it's investigating, according to the agency. About 20 days after the derailment, NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said the agency had become aware of surveillance video and that investigators were analyzing footage from cameras along the route.

In a preliminary report, the NTSB stated that surveillance video it obtained from an East Palestine home appeared to show a wheel bearing in "the final stage of overheat failure moments before the derailment."

Black-and-white footage the agency obtained shows what it described as the train hitting the brakes near East Palestine. The video shows sparks flinging from the train, a bright flash and a loud banging noise as it began to derail around a quarter of a mile from the Ohio and Pennsylvania border.

The video became so integral to the NTSB's investigation of the derailment, which is expected to wrap up this spring or summer, that Homendy told Congress in March that more devices capable of recording data, audio and video are needed aboard trains.

The Norfolk Southern locomotive in East Palestine was equipped with both inward and outward facing recorders that capture audio, visuals and data such as speed, braking information and operator commands, according to the Federal Railroad Administration. But Homendy said Norfolk Southern put the locomotive immediately back into service following the derailment and so data was overwritten resulting in just 15 minutes of data before and five minutes the derailment being available to investigators.

Following Homendy's testimony, the Federal Railroad Administration in October issued a mandate that passenger railroads must install recording devices on their locomotives. But the administration stopped short of requiring all freight railroads to do the same with their trains, stating that the "cost of installing such devices could outweigh the safety benefits."

Homendy called the Railroad Administration's decision to exclude freight trains from the new requirement an insult to places like East Palestine, which could have benefitted from having more recordings from the train.

“We’re also deeply disappointed the rule excludes freight rail entirely," Homendy said in October. "In fact, FRA’s belief that the cost 'could outweigh the safety benefits’ is an affront to every community that’s experienced a freight or freight-passenger rail disaster.”

mfilby@dispatch.com

@MaxFilby

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: East Palestine train derailment: How doorbell cameras helped investigators