Crew tried to prevent toxic East Palestine train derailment: NTSB

Crew members tried in vain to prevent the train carrying hazardous materials through East Palestine, Ohio, from derailing, a government report released Thursday said.

The train, which was traveling three miles below its maximum authorized speed, passed by a hot bearing detector in Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 3 that registered a temperature 253 degrees above normal.

The sensor “transmitted a critical audible alarm message instructing the crew to slow and stop the train to inspect a hot axle,” which the crew immediately listened to, according to the report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

As the crew worked to slow the vehicle, “the train engineer increased the dynamic brake application to further slow and stop the train,” NTSB investigators said.

When the train came to a stop, crew members noticed a fire, and immediately called the Cleveland East dispatcher, warning about a possible derailment. After receiving authorization, the crew “applied handbrakes to the two railcars at the head of the train, uncoupled the head-end locomotives, and moved the locomotives about 1 mile from the uncoupled railcars,” the report said. 

Fifty-one cars ultimately derailed, five of which were carrying a total of 115,580 gallons of hazardous vinyl chloride.

After the derailment, officials grew concerned because a tank containing vinyl chloride continued to heat up, suggesting the gas “was undergoing a polymerization reaction, which could pose an explosion hazard,” the report said. This led the train operator, Norfolk Southern, to release and burn the gas into the air. 

The short report comes as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg arrived in East Palestine on Thursday to visit the derailment site.

Both Buttigieg and Norfolk Southern have come under intense scrutiny from residents, who believe they were exposed to toxic materials that will negatively impact their health and don’t think the government and the company have done enough to protect them.

“This is an explosion of cancers waiting to happen. And you won’t see it for years — sometimes five, 10, 20 years. This is scary stuff,” attorney Michael Barasch, who represented those sickened by the 9/11 collapse of the World Trade Center, told The Post on Wednesday.