The decision to blow open five tank cars and burn the toxic chemical inside them after a freight train derailed in Eastern Ohio last year wasn’t justified, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board told Congress Wednesday.
But, she said, the key decision-makers who feared those tank cars were going to explode three days after the crash never had the information they needed.
The vinyl chloride released that day, combined with all the other chemicals that spilled and caught fire after the derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, have left residents with lingering fears about possible long-term health consequences.
Experts from the company that made the vinyl chloride inside those tank cars, Oxy Vinyls, were telling contractors hired by Norfolk Southern railroad that they believed that no dangerous chemical reaction was happening, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said. But Oxy Vinyls was left out of the command center.
“They informed them that polymerization, they believed polymerization was not occurring, and there was no justification to do a vent and burn,” Homendy said. “There was another option: let it cool down.”
However, that information was never relayed to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and the first responders in charge, she said.
Some of this information came out at NTSB hearings last spring in East Palestine. Homendy’s comments Wednesday were the clearest yet that the controversial vent-and-burn action wasn’t needed. But the agency won’t release its final report on what caused the Feb. 3, 2023, derailment until it holds another hearing this June.
DeWine’s spokesperson Dan Tierney said it’s frustrating to hear now — more than a year after the derailment — that it wasn’t necessary to blow open those tank cars.
“The only two scenarios that were ever brought up were a catastrophic explosion occurring, where shrapnel would be thrust in all directions to a one mile radius or averting that through a controlled vent and burn,” Tierney…
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