NTSB: No alert for train crew until just before derailment

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — The crew operating a freight train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, didn’t get much warning before dozens of cars went off the tracks, and there is no indication that crew members did anything wrong, federal investigators said Thursday as they released a preliminary report into the fiery wreck that prompted a toxic chemical release and an evacuation.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg made his first visit to the crash site and took shots at former President Donald Trump, who had visited the day before and criticized the federal response to the train derailment. Their back-and-forth was the latest sign that the East Palestine wreck has become a hot-button political issue, prompting a rebuke from the head of the National Transportation Safety Board.

“Enough with the politics. I don’t understand why this has gotten so political,” safety board Chair Jennifer Homendy, clearly exasperated, said at a briefing in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. “This is a community that is suffering. This is not about politics. This is about addressing their needs, their concerns.”

The NTSB report, which laid out the facts that investigators have gathered to date, said crew members had no indication the train was in trouble until an alarm sounded just before it went off the tracks.

An engineer slowed and stopped the train after getting a “critical audible alarm message” that signaled an overheated axle, according to the report. The three-person crew then saw fire and smoke and alerted dispatch, the report said.

“We have no evidence that the crew did anything wrong,” said Homendy, who announced a rare investigatory field hearing to be conducted in East Palestine this spring as officials seek to get to the bottom of the derailment’s cause and build consensus on how to prevent similar wrecks.

Investigators said the temperature of the failed wheel bearing increased by 215 degrees in a span of 30 miles , but did not reach the temperature threshold that railroad company Norfolk Southern had set for an alarm to go off until just before the wreck.

The train was going about 47 mph , under the speed limit of 50 mph , according to investigators.

Outside experts who looked at the report said the system appeared to work as designed, from the spacing of the hot bearing detectors along the tracks to the operation of the sensors.

“There’s nothing in the NTSB report that surprises me at all,” said Dave Clarke, the former director of the Center for Transportation Research at the University of Tennessee. “I can’t see anything to really criticize about what happened or how the response was made.”

Christopher Barkan, director of the Rail Transportation and Engineering Center at the University of Illinois, said the spacing of the sensors that recorded the temperatures of the Norfolk Southern train — 10 and 20 miles apart — is common in the industry.

He said the detectors would not have notified the train crew of elevated bearing temperatures unless they met the threshold for action.

“I don’t see anything wrong here, but we just don’t know,” Barkan said.

Homendy said investigators would look at whether industry safety standards — including high-temperature alarm thresholds and sensor spacing — will need to change to prevent similar derailments.

Norfolk Southern did not immediately comment on the report.

The freight cars that derailed on the East Palestine outskirts, near they Pennsylvania state line, included 11 carrying hazardous materials.