DISCUSSION — U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigeig, left, talks with Randy Keltz, manager of tank car safety programs with the Federal Railroad Administration as another staff member looks on Thursday morning during a tour of the derailment site of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine. -- Allie Vugrincic

EAST PALESTINE — “We will never forget the people of East Palestine,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Thursday while standing just yards away from the site where about 50 Norfolk Southern train cars derailed earlier this month.

Buttigieg spent the morning in East Palestine, using his visit to highlight a need for more safety regulations for the rail industry. At the same time, he reassured the village that Norfolk Southern would be held accountable for the accident that led to the release of hazardous materials into the air, water and soil and upended village residents’ lives.

Buttigieg spent about an hour in the early morning navigating the mud and wreckage alongside the tracks where the Feb. 3 derailment happened. As he toured the site, he talked with staff from the National Transportation Safety Board and USDOT’s Federal Railroad Administration and Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

Those who are familiar with the derailment and its aftermath gave Buttigieg an overview of the incident and the cars involved, including the 11 cars carrying hazardous materials. In total, the train was transporting 20 cars with hazardous materials, but nine were not involved in the derailment.

Buttigieg saw the car that had been carrying butyl acrylate, a compound that was likely the cause of a foul smell that hung over East Palestine in the days following the derailment, as well as a car that been carrying ethylhexyl acrylate.

Nearby sat the burned remains of five cars that had been transporting vinyl chloride, which was released and burned in a controlled effort after a rapid increase in temperature in those cars threatened to cause an explosion. Two charges on each of the five cars — one on the top and one on the bottom — were set off simultaneously during the burn, said Paul Stancil, senior hazardous materials accident investigator with the NTSB. During the burn, residents in a 1-mile by 2-mile area around the site were evacuated.

Site experts also showed Buttigieg an example of a wheel bearing that had signs of overheat failure, though it was not the one that has been identified as the likely cause of the derailment, said Randy Keltz, manager of tank car safety programs with the FRA.

QUESTIONS

Buttigieg spent the rest of the morning in East Palestine, meeting with federal officials from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as state, county and local officials.

Buttigieg said later in the day he had a good conversation with East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway, who was “clearly very focused on supporting his community.”

In the late morning, Buttigieg met with media in a field at the dead end of East Martin Street that nearly overlooked the derailment site. Almost immediately, Buttigieg was asked about the timing of his visit — 20 days after the initial derailment.

Buttigieg said he was trying to balance his desire to get involved with an attempt to follow the “norm” of the transportation secretary position. He said he wanted to allow the NTSB, which is separate from USDOT, to handle the initial stages of the accident investigation, as is typical.

He said, however, that USDOT had been helping the residents since “day one” and that it is now looking toward the future.

“We can talk about process and that’s perfectly fair, but I don’t want people pointing to process as a way to get away from … rail safety regulations,” Buttigieg said.

He admitted, however, that he took too long to publicly acknowledge the derailment, first Tweeting about it after more than a week had passed.

Buttigieg also acknowledged that the small community of East Palestine has been in the spotlight and that some “national political figure(s)” had gotten involved, referring in part to former President Donald Trump’s visit to the village Wednesday. Buttigieg said his message to other political figures is, “I need your help.”

“Because if you’re serious about this, there is more that we can do to prevent other communities from going through this,” Buttigieg said. Later, he said the people “playing political games” are the same ones who have always sided with the railroad industry.

When asked what Trump specifically could do to help prevent future rail disasters, Buttigieg said that the former president could express support for reversing the deregulation that happened “on his watch” at the end of his tenure in December 2020.

“I heard him say he had nothing to do with it … maybe he could come out and say that he supports us going in a different direction,” Buttigieg said.

REGULATIONS

A word that came up often in Buttigieg’s remarks was “regulations,” as he indicated the need for more oversight and more proactive action on the part of railroad companies.

While there has been debate about whether Norfolk Southern staff were aware or reacted quickly enough to a hot box detector indicating that a wheel bearing was going into overheat failure, Buttigieg pointed out that hot box detectors are not required by regulation. That was something he wanted to look at, he said.

He also wanted to reconsider the designation of trains carrying dangerous materials.

The Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine did not fall into the category of a “high hazard flammable train,” a designation that was created mainly for trains carrying crude oil after a derailment in Canada caused the deaths of 47 people about 10 years ago, Buttigieg said.

“If there’s a category called ‘high hazard flammable train’ and this train that led to that toxic cloud wasn’t in it, what’s going on here?” Buttigieg said.

Buttigieg said that seeing the “twisted metal” of the cars underlined the difference between fortified and weaker tank cars. In general, hazardous materials could be coming through communities in stronger cars, he said. He called on railroads to take the first step in making that happen. He also asked railroad companies to “proactively share information” about hazards onboard, indicating that plastic placards designating cars with dangerous materials failed to withstand the heat in the East Palestine derailment.

“We need to raise the bar on what’s expected and what’s required,” Buttigieg said. “Railroad companies could be doing more right out of the gate.”

He added that Norfolk Southern and other rail companies “have to stop fighting,” attempts to create safety regulations.

Turning back to East Palestine’s embattled residents, Buttigieg noted that they have the support of the USDOT as well as the EPA to provide accurate information, and “they ought to have the support of the whole country.”

“The country should be wrapping their arms around the people of East Palestine — not as a political football, not as an ideological flashpoint, not as a ‘gotcha’ moment, but as thousands of human beings whose lives got upended through no fault of their own,” he said.

He recommended that those who are able visit the village to shop in its stores and eat in its restaurants. It’s safe, he said, as evidenced by his own visit Thursday.