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AndyinPA
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#276

Post by AndyinPA »

The EPA and the state have finally gone across the state line from Ohio into PA to test and set up clinics and provide help to the PA communities who have been impacted by the wreck. All the people there have wells; there is no city water in Darlington and the area.
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#277

Post by Frater I*I »

Phoenix520 wrote: Tue Feb 28, 2023 2:31 pm Actually, get some Sawzalls. Turn Georgia upside down, start cutting at the southern tip, where New Georgia and SC meet, cut all the way west across the top of Flawduh. It’ll make quite a satisfying THUNK as it drops into the ocean.

We can watch it float off to Cuba where I’m sure they’ll all be very happy living the authoritarian life.
No send GA with it....
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He's got the answers to ease my curiosity, He dreamed a god up and called it Christianity"

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#278

Post by AndyinPA »

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... derailment
At least 32 people have been killed and 85 injured after two trains collided near the town of Tempe in central Greece, the fire brigade said.

The two trains – a passenger train travelling from Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki, and a cargo train from Thessaloniki to Larissa, collided head-on outside the central Greek city, Konstantinos Agorastos, the governor of the Thessaly region, told local media.

“The collision was very strong,” he said, adding that the first four carriages had derailed, while the first two were “almost completely destroyed”.

Agorastos said about 194 passengers were evacuated safely to Thessaloniki on buses.
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#279

Post by AndyinPA »

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ck-ironton
Long-lost Lake Huron shipwreck with lifeboat attached confirms tragic tale

Cargo vessel the Ironton sank in 1894 killing five but has been rediscovered ‘remarkably preserved’ in cold waters off Michigan

Even for the Thunder Bay area, a perilous swath of northern Lake Huron off the Michigan coast, the fate of the Ironton seems particularly cruel.

On a blustery night in September 1894, the 191ft cargo vessel collided with a grain hauler, sinking both. The captain of the Ironton and six sailors clambered into a lifeboat but it was dragged to the bottom before they could detach it from the ship. Two crewmen survived.

The gravesite long eluded shipwreck hunters but the mystery has now been solved, officials with the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Alpena, Michigan, said on Wednesday.

A team of historians, underwater archaeologists and technicians located the wreckage in 2019 and deployed remote-controlled cameras to scan and document it, said the sanctuary superintendent, Jeff Gray. The sanctuary plans to reveal the location and is considering placing a buoy at the site. Officials have kept the find secret to stop divers disturbing the site.
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#280

Post by northland10 »

I'm pretty sure the Ironton going down in Lake Huron is bad for Biden.
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#281

Post by AndyinPA »

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... nt-dioxins
At a townhall meeting in East Palestine last week, people talked about what it was like when the black cloud reached their property. One person who lived 15 miles away described burned ash material from the fire that settled on her property. Another who lived 3 miles away described how the black cloud completely smothered his property. Repeatedly people asked: was it safe for my kids to play in the yard? Is it safe to grow a garden? What is going to happen to my farm animals?

These are important questions that deserve to be answered. Today there are no clear answers. Why? Because no one has done any testing for dioxins anywhere in East Palestine. No one. And, it seems, that the EPA is uninterested in testing for dioxins, behaving as though dioxin is no big deal.

This makes no sense. Testing for dioxin, a highly toxic substance, should have been one of the first things to look for, especially in the air once the decision was made to burn the vinyl chloride. There is no question that dioxins were formed in the vinyl chloride fire. They would have formed on the particulate matter – the black soot – in the cloud that was so clearly visible at the time of the burn. Now, the question is how much is in the soil where people live in and around East Palestine. Without testing, no one will know and the people who live there will remain in the dark, uncertain about their fate.

This is important because of the adverse health effects associated with exposure to dioxins. Exposure to dioxins can cause cancer, reproductive damage, developmental problems, type 2 diabetes, ischemic heart disease, infertility in adults, impairment of the immune system and skin lesions.

The EPA is very familiar with dioxins. For more than 25 years, the agency evaluated and assessed the risks posed by exposure to dioxins. They published multiple draft reports on the health effects caused by exposure to dioxins. They published an inventory of dioxin sources and devoted an enormous amount of time to studying dioxins. The agency knows this chemical very well.

So why is EPA unwilling to test for dioxins in the soil? My guess is because they know they will find it. And if they find it, they’ll have to address the many questions people are asking. It will not be easy to interpret the results of the testing for dioxins in soil, but to avoid testing is irresponsible. The EPA’s mission is to protect human health and the environment. Clearly the situation in East Palestine is the place where EPA should follow its mission and do right by the people who live in this town. EPA must test the soil in East Palestine for dioxins.
Opinion piece.
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#282

Post by RTH10260 »

EPA having done the research in the past has obviously never reached a level where they mandated restictions on this compound or made recommendations about handling it in the wild. I guess it is not up to the EPA to initiate the testing, but it is up to the state officials to perform them. According to above opinon there have been preliminary / partial reports published. Interested parties ought to review them. I wonder why the author was not more specific on theses research papers when he uses them to blame the EPA.
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#283

Post by AndyinPA »

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... rain-crash
In leaked audio heard by the Guardian, a manager for one of the US’s largest rail companies can be heard explaining to a former carman that they should stop tagging railcars for broken bearings. The manager says doing so delays other cargo.

The disclosure comes as federal agencies investigate the derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. A wheel-bearing failure was cited as the cause of the crash in a preliminary report released by the National Transportation Safety Board.

In late 2016, Stephanie Griffin, a former Union Pacific carman, went to her manager with concerns that she was getting pushback for tagging – or reporting for repair – railcars. Her manager told her it was OK to skip inspections.

Griffin asked if the manager could put that in writing. “That’s weird,” said the manager. “We have 56 other people who are not bad-ordering stuff out there. You’re definitely not going to get in trouble for it.”

Griffin said: “He refused to bad-order [mark for repair] cars for bad wheel bearings. My boss took issue with it because it increased our dwell time. When that happened, corporate offices would start berating management to release the cars.”

Dwell time refers to the time a train spends at a scheduled stop without moving. “It’s very obvious that management is not concerned with public safety, and only concerned with making their numbers look good,” Griffin said.
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#284

Post by tek »

“It’s very obvious that management is not concerned with public safety, and only concerned with making their numbers look good,” Griffin said.
renault.jpg
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#285

Post by Volkonski »

Another Norfolk Southern train derails in Ohio, railroad says no toxins aboard

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/anothe ... 20evacuate.
A Norfolk Southern (NSC.N) train derailed in Ohio on Saturday, the second such incident involving the railroad in that state in about a month, prompting local officials to order residents living near the site of the accident to shelter in place.

Norfolk Southern said the train that derailed near Springfield was not carrying any hazardous materials and that no one was hurt. Local authorities said first responders on the scene were working to confirm that no toxins were involved.

The accident follows the Feb. 3 derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio, 180 miles (290 km)northeast of Springfield. The East Palestine derailment sent millions of pounds of toxic chemicals into the environment and forced thousands of people to evacuate.

Norfolk Southern said in an emailed statement that Saturday's derailment of about 20 cars of a 212-car train happened as it was traveling southbound near Springfield. The statement did not give any cause for the derailment.
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#286

Post by pipistrelle »

Derailments aren't uncommon.
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#287

Post by AndyinPA »

About 1,700 per year. Way more than one a day.
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#288

Post by Volkonski »

Norfolk Southern announces safety upgrades amid derailments

https://apnews.com/article/derailment-o ... afb098badf
Norfolk Southern announced plans on Monday to improve the use of detectors placed along railroad tracks to spot overheating bearings and other problems in response to a fiery derailment on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border a month ago.

The announcement came the same day Pennsylvania’s governor announced that the company had agreed to pay several million dollars to cover the cost of the response and recovery in that state.

The company said it would evaluate the distance between “hot bearing” detectors — currently 13.9 miles (22 kilometers) on average on its core network — and promised to look at every location where the distance is more than 15 miles (24 kilometers), deploying more detectors if practical.

Norfolk Southern “anticipates adding approximately 200 hot bearing detectors to its network, with the first installed on the western approach to East Palestine,” said the company announcement, which comes amid proposals from President Joe Biden’s administration and Congress aimed at improving safety following last month’s derailment.

The National Transportation Safety Board has said the crew operating the train that derailed Feb. 3 outside East Palestine, Ohio, near the Pennsylvania border got a warning from such a detector but couldn’t stop the train before more than three dozen cars came off the tracks and caught fire.
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#289

Post by somerset »

AndyinPA wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 2:46 pm About 1,700 per year. Way more than one a day.
Is that worldwide, or just in the US?

Either way, that sounds like an awful lot of derailments. I'm guessing most of them aren't a big deal.
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#290

Post by northland10 »

somerset wrote: Mon Mar 06, 2023 9:24 pm
AndyinPA wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 2:46 pm About 1,700 per year. Way more than one a day.
Is that worldwide, or just in the US?

Either way, that sounds like an awful lot of derailments. I'm guessing most of them aren't a big deal.
IIRC, a bunch of them are ones where a car or two had a wheel come off the rail in the yard or somewhere similar.

For the 1,700 derailments in 2022, here are the locations (from the Federal Railroad Administration Data)
Screenshot 2023-03-06 215008.png
Screenshot 2023-03-06 215008.png (55.17 KiB) Viewed 574 times
When I limited it to non-yard derailments and damage over 150K (I figured small stuff could add up if they have to repair rails or bring a crane in to lift car or two back onto the track), it was around 180 left. The largest number was Union Pacific by far, followed by BNSF (about half of UP), then NS and CSX. UP and BNSF do have more millage to cover as they cover most of the west from Chicago to the Pacific.
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#291

Post by somerset »

northland10 wrote: Mon Mar 06, 2023 11:11 pm
somerset wrote: Mon Mar 06, 2023 9:24 pm
AndyinPA wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 2:46 pm About 1,700 per year. Way more than one a day.
Is that worldwide, or just in the US?

Either way, that sounds like an awful lot of derailments. I'm guessing most of them aren't a big deal.
IIRC, a bunch of them are ones where a car or two had a wheel come off the rail in the yard or somewhere similar.

For the 1,700 derailments in 2022, here are the locations (from the Federal Railroad Administration Data)


When I limited it to non-yard derailments and damage over 150K (I figured small stuff could add up if they have to repair rails or bring a crane in to lift car or two back onto the track), it was around 180 left. The largest number was Union Pacific by far, followed by BNSF (about half of UP), then NS and CSX. UP and BNSF do have more millage to cover as they cover most of the west from Chicago to the Pacific.
Interesting. Thanks!
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#292

Post by Volkonski »

About 30-35 years ago my employer opened a plastic plant on the Gulf Coast that shipped all of its production in rail hopper cars.

Image

Onsite the cars were moved using trackmobiles with a maximum speed of 5 mph.

Image

Despite that slow speed they had a lot of derailments.

The onsite tracks (which had some tight turning radii) had been built with light 100 lb per yard rails. These were replaced with 135 lb per yard rails. Problem solved.

Later (like 20 years) when one of my coworkers and I achieved enough seniority we changed the company spec for onsite tracks to always use 135 lb per yard rails.

The additional cost of the heavier rails is negligible.
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#293

Post by Phoenix520 »

The Challenger crashed basically because they used a cheaper rubber for o-rings. Not all cost savings approaches are smart.
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#294

Post by tek »

a couple miles from here

2 people killed in small plane crash at Palm Beach County Park Airport near Lantana
Fiery wreck happened late Sunday night about 1,000 feet from runway

https://www.wptv.com/news/region-c-palm ... na-airport
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#295

Post by noblepa »

northland10 wrote: Wed Mar 01, 2023 1:30 pm I'm pretty sure the Ironton going down in Lake Huron is bad for Biden.
It was his fault, wasn't it?

Or was it Obama's fault?
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#296

Post by northland10 »

Another way to see the the derailment impacts

This shows track and equipment costs of derailments. The size is the total cost. There is one hidden behind the legend but I did not have time to tidy things up on the DOT tool.
Screenshot 2023-03-07 130829.png
Screenshot 2023-03-07 130829.png (211.45 KiB) Viewed 479 times
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#297

Post by AndyinPA »

https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news ... ommitment/
PITTSBURGH (KDKA/AP) -- Norfolk Southern will pay out millions of dollars in damages to Pennsylvania, including to a Community Relief Fund, following last month's hazardous train derailment across the border in East Palestine, Ohio.

Gov. Josh Shapiro announced Monday that the rail company will pay $5 million to local fire departments that had to replace equipment.

Another million will go to a Community Relief Fund for those impacted in the Pennsylvania counties of Beaver and Lawrence, Gov. Shapiro said.

"Beaver County was 800 feet from the train derailment. Those are in our residents' backyards," said Beaver County Board of Commissioners Chairman Daniel Camp.

In addition, he said $950,000 goes to the Department of Environmental Protection and $400,000 goes to the Department of Health.
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#298

Post by northland10 »

I would have liked to do more on the derailment analysis, but the DOT data set is somewhat granular but limited on the visuals. If I had more time, I would have extracted the filtered data and done an analysis on my own where I could combine some of their aggregates and put in some different counts that provide more context.

However, I don't have time to do my day job right now, albeit with derailments instead of fundraising data.
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#299

Post by Dave from down under »

Thankfully no-one seriously hurt.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-08/ ... /102067382

An airline passenger has described the moment he and fellow travellers disarmed a man who allegedly tried to open an emergency door and stab crew on a flight from Los Angeles to Boston.

Key points:
Passengers restrained the man, who was described as "really strong"
The accused reportedly told authorities he wanted to open the door so he could jump from the plane
If convicted of the charges against him, he could face life in prison
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#300

Post by somerset »

northland10 wrote: Tue Mar 07, 2023 7:54 pm I would have liked to do more on the derailment analysis, but the DOT data set is somewhat granular but limited on the visuals. If I had more time, I would have extracted the filtered data and done an analysis on my own where I could combine some of their aggregates and put in some different counts that provide more context.

However, I don't have time to do my day job right now, albeit with derailments instead of fundraising data.
Thanks for work you did! I learned some new things :biggrin:
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