What Caused the Ohio Train Derailment and Chemical Spill in East, Palestine?
- Last Updated: July 27th, 2023
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What Caused the Ohio Train Derailment and Chemical Spill in East, Palestine?
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is still investigating the cause of the Ohio train derailment that resulted in a chemical spill in East Palestine, OH.
While the NTSB has not made an official determination, they have obtained two videos that show preliminary indications of mechanical issues on one of the railcar axles.
A hot box, which is when a wheel bearing overheats on a railcar, led to a fire which then caused the derailment.
The train did drive through a hot box detector shortly before the derailment, which alerted the crew to the mechanical issue.
An emergency brake application was initiated, but the train was not able to stop in time.
Former State Rep Bob Hagan, who worked in the railroad industry for 50 years, believes cutbacks on railroad jobs are partially to blame for situations like the one in East Palestine.
Trains are now longer, and there are fewer employees to monitor the hot box detectors and to stop the train if there is an issue.
“When I was working on the railroad, you would have 100 cars which would be about one mile, they’ve doubled those up, sometimes tripled those up.
So now you have trains that are three miles long that are impossible to look out the back window when you’re going around a curve to see if anything is on fire,” Hagan said.
The train was carrying 141 load cars, nine empty cars, and three locomotives.
It was transporting goods from Madison, Illinois, to Conway, Pennsylvania.
Security footage captured in Salem, Ohio, around 20 miles west of East Palestine, showed sparks or flames under at least one of the cars on the train before the derailment occurred.
While the NTSB has not yet made a determination, it is believed that a mechanical issue with an axle of one of the 150 cars caused the derailment of at least 50 of the cars.
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