Awareness and better communication are among the key takeaways for area first responders assessing the NTSB’s final report on the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment.
>> RELATED COVERAGE: NTSB chair says Norfolk Southern interfered with derailment probe
The NTSB shared several recommendations to prevent toxic derailments like the one in East Palestine, including using an app to communicate with first responders and establishing standards for how railroad companies should respond to alarms that signal a bearing failure.
Gary Rettig, Dayton Regional Haz Mat coordinator, said he has been re-reading the summary, looking for takeaways.
“I would say that we have an increase of an awareness to reach out and network with the railroads that go through your communities,” he said, noting that first responders in his eight-county region regularly train with railroad companies.
They use special apps, which News Center 7 has reported on previously, showing what rail cars are hauling at any given time.
One major key to handling situations such as what happened in East Palestine is to avoid taking the knowledge hazmat and EMA teams have for granted.
“What I’d like to see going forward is if we don’t get to that complacency,” Rettig said. “We need to maintain these relationships with the rail industry and make sure that we partner with them so that they understand that should we have an event, we all need to be talking to each other properly.”
>> RELATED COVERAGE: NTSB reveals cause of 2023 toxic train crash in East Palestine, Ohio
For Michelle Clements-Pitstick, Clark County EMA director, it’s about maintaining relationships.
“It really is having those relationships ahead of time, having those conversations ahead of time before the disaster happens and knowing your resources in the community.”
Meantime, neighbors say the 2023 derailment is a never-ending nightmare that disrupted thousands of lives and changed the Ohio community forever.
“It was just a breath of fresh air in what seems like this never-ending nightmare,” East Palestine resident Jessica Conard said Wednesday.
Conard has spent much of the last year lobbying for her community.
“It’s so validating and that’s all we’ve been wanting to make our own decisions and move forward with our lives,” she said.
In a statement to News Center 7, Norfolk Southern defended its decision to vent and burn toxic vinyl chloride in East Palestine.
That decision was contradicted by the NTSB, whose investigative team concluded that the burning of the toxic chemical was not needed to prevent a catastrophic explosion that was feared at the time.
Here is the railroad company’s entire response to the NTSB’s final report.
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