Woke NTSB Says ‘Overheated Wheel Bearing’ Derailed Train, Doesn’t Even Call Secretary Mayor Pete Gay

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued a preliminary report yesterday on its investigation into the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The report says the train’s crew knew one car on the train had a badly overheated wheel bearing, and had already begun slowing the train just before the derailment.

Weirdly, the NTSB didn’t place any of the blame for the February 3 crash or the subsequent toxic chemical spill on President Joe Biden, Transportation Secretary Mayor Pete Buttigieg, or on transgender kids in American schools forcing others to acknowledge their preferred pronouns. That’s sure to come up on Newsmax.

Buttigieg was in East Palestine himself yesterday, where he didn’t buy McDonald’s hamburgers for anyone, unlike Donald Trump, who was there the day before and personally fixed everything. While Buttigieg was there, he acknowledged the rightwing media complaints that he hadn’t personally visited the site sooner, saying he’d “do some thinking” on whether he should have gone sooner. Oh for your sake, Pete! You really do over-intellectualize things a bit, but that’s how you do:

“What I tried to do was balance two things — my desire to be involved and engaged in on the ground, which is how I am generally wired to act and my desire to follow the norm of transportation secretaries allowing NTSB to really lead the initial stages of the public facing work,” he told reporters. “I’ll do some thinking about whether I got that balance right. But I think the most important thing is, first of all, making sure that the residents here have what they need.”

For all his introspection, Buttigieg got a Fox News story headlining how he’d gone on MSNBC last night and cruelly pointed out Donald Trump’s rollback of safety regulations, what a monster. Fox News also ran a fun story rounding up rightwingers on Twiitter mocking the “leather dress shoes” Buttigieg had worn, because what real man goes to a muddy disaster site in anything but steel-toed work boots?


So there’s your payback for the liberal media making fun of Ron DeSantis’s weird white hurricane boots, haw haw. Maybe Pete left his high heels in the car, replied one wag, because you know he is an effete gay homosexual who never wore boots, certainly not during his combat tour in Afghanistan. That’s him, second on the left, in a campaign photo. Those look like boots!

Jesus, you see how easy it is to get sucked into this stupid performative macho shit? Anyway, if Buttigieg had worn gnarly steel-toed work boots, wingnut media would have accused him of fakery because does he really wear Thorogood American Heritage steel-toed work boots around his soft office job? He does not, and how dare he spend $250 on boots just for a photo op? Damn him to hell!

So yes, the NTSB report.

Among the top findings were that the train crew appears to have acted appropriately; the train was traveling 47 miles per hour, a bit below the maximum speed for that area of 50 miles per hour. It was already slowing a bit when automated trackside monitoring equipment detected that a wheel bearing on the twenty-third car of the train was dangerously hot, 253°F above the ambient temperature of 10°F. (When car 23 passed two earlier detectors, they picked up temperatures that were rising, but well below the temperature threshold that would trigger an alarm.)

The detection equipment “transmitted a critical audible alarm message instructing the crew to slow and stop the train to inspect a hot axle,” and the engineer began slowing the train down, but then “an automatic emergency brake application initiated,” which Axios explains may have resulted from train cars separating from each other.

Once the train stopped, the crew “observed fire and smoke and notified the Cleveland East dispatcher of a possible derailment,” and with permission from the dispatcher, set the hand brakes on the first two cars and uncoupled the locomotives to move them a mile away for safety. The report does not note whether the train crew said “Whew!”

Thirty-eight cars of the 149-car train derailed; among them were 11 tank cars carrying hazardous chemicals. Fire broke out and also damaged 12 cars on the train that hadn’t derailed.

Axios notes that first responders who arrived on the scene got the initial fire under control, but Ohio authorities were concerned about five derailed tank cars carrying vinyl chloride, a carcinogenic chemical used in making PVC plastic. Temperatures inside one of the cars kept rising, “suggesting the chemical was undergoing a polymerization reaction and could explode.”

That prompted local responders on February 6 to evacuate a larger area around the crash site, then vent the five cars and burn off the chemicals, which took several hours. The NTSB report is careful to point out that the agency wasn’t involved in that decision, or in testing air and water quality following the crash. Please take your questions to the EPA and to Ohio GOP Governor Mike DeWine, who authorized the chemical burnoff after advisers warned him of the high risk of an explosion. (OK, fine, the NTSB didn’t specify DeWine, just that it wasn’t the feds’ decision.)

The NTSB will focus its ongoing investigation on:

[T]he wheelset and bearing; tank car design and derailment damage; a review of the accident response, including the venting and burning of the vinyl chloride; railcar design and maintenance procedures and practices; NS [Norfolk Southern] use of wayside defect detectors; and NS railcar inspection practices.

We should also point out that nowhere in the report does the NTSB examine the crucial railroad safety thoughts of Donald Trump Jr., who on Wednesday night went on Newsmax to explain that nobody in the Biden administration knows what they’re doing because Pete Buttiieg is gay and that was his only job qualification.

The son of the former president, who has never held a real job outside his daddy’s business/crime organization (or gigs in rightwing media resulting from that nepo baby status), claimed Joe Biden “doesn’t give a crap” and “couldn’t care less” about the people of East Palestine. You know, unlike his father, master of empathy Donald “have a good time” Trump.

Then it was time for the full-on gay-hatin’.

Newsmax host Carl Higbie started Junior off with the sage observation that “You know, Pete has no business in that position,” and the failson was off and running:

But, you know, he’s the guy who had no business running for president but they let him do that cause he was gay and they check off a box and then he didn’t win, so “he’s the gay guy, so we gotta give him something, let’s make him transportation secretary,” what does he know about it? NOTHING! His failure, after failure, after failure are truly affecting the American people.

Just to make clear that Buttigieg is a feminine not-man, Junior also came back to the rightwing meme about Buttigieg’s paternity leave after adopting twin babies, mocking “the time he spent chest-feeding while we were in the midst of a supply chain crisis.” Haha, can you just imagine that little unmanly wimp trying to feed a baby?!

MORE: How Donald Trump’s Sociopathic Parenting Made Donald Trump Jr. The Winner He Is Today

As we all know, real men subject their children to emotional abuse so they’ll learn how to be manly, and that’s why the train crashed, the end.

[NTSB / Axios / NYDN / Insider]

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Donald Trump Tosses Hamberders, Lies At East Palestine Residents’ Heads, Crisis Over

Donald Trump made a campaign stop in East Palestine, Ohio, yesterday so he could pretend to make everything better there, bringing along a couple pallets of bottled water from his cheesy resorts and lying that his visit was the only reason the Biden administration is “finally” helping the community.

In mere reality, federal agencies have been in the small town on the border between Pennsylvania and Ohio since right after the February 3 derailment of a Norfolk Southern freight train resulted in a huge spill of toxic chemicals. President Joe Biden has been in regular contact with Gov. Mike DeWine, and EPA Administrator Michael Regan visited East Palestine last week.

During a 10-minute speech in the town’s firehouse, Trump lied to the small crowd, claiming, “They were intending to do absolutely nothing for you.” Trump also

bragged about having a strong working relationship with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, noting that it initially had not planned to assist relief efforts. Trump claimed, without evidence, that the Biden administration only directed more resources because he announced that he would visit East Palestine.

“They changed their tune,” Trump said. “It was an amazing phenomenon.”

DeWine said last Friday that FEMA turned down his request for assistance because the agency is “most typically involved with disasters where there is tremendous home or property damage” following natural disasters. A few hours later, however, FEMA announced it would send a Regional Incident Management Assistance Team to the area, which arrived on Saturday. The team will “support ongoing operations, including incident coordination and ongoing assessments of potential long-term recovery needs,” according to FEMA’s announcement.

The agency probably didn’t mention that it was all Donald Trump’s doing because it’s jealous of how much better he is at throwing paper towels to disaster victims than it is.


On Monday, the EPA ordered Norfolk Southern to take full responsibility for cleaning up the toxic mess, warning that if the railroad slacks off, the EPA will do the cleanup and charge the company triple the cost.

Trump also made a few other brief stops in the town, accompanied by Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway. He drove around in a motorcade so he could pretend to be president still, and during his visit, he posed for a photo next to a pallet of Trump-labeled water that’s normally sold at his trash resorts. He claimed he was “bringing thousands of bottles of water—Trump Water, actually. Most of it. Some of it, we had to go to a much lesser quality water. You want to get those Trump bottles, I think, more than anybody else.”

He also rolled up to the town’s McDonald’s, where he made a show of ordering food for first responders and everyone in the restaurant, so his idiot sycophants could post fawning tweets about how Trump had done far more for the people of East Palestine than Joe Biden, who didn’t buy anyone any fast food at all. Professional rightwing trolls Brigitte Gabriel and Nick Adams both enthused that Trump water is in fact the very best water known to humanity, because even if it’s bottled by some generic company that slaps a Trump label on it, that makes it the best. We’re absolutely sure the McDonald’s food in East Palestine also tasted better than at any other franchise in America, at least for the five minutes Trump was there.

In a pathetic attempt to diminish the miracle of water and fast food, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates pointed out that, at the urging of railroad lobbyists, Trump had rolled back Obama-era regulations requiring faster electronic braking systems on some trains carrying hazardous liquids. Bates said in a statement, “Congressional Republicans laid the groundwork for the Trump administration to tear up requirements for more effective train brakes, and last year most House Republicans wanted to defund our ability to protect drinking water.”

The New York Times, not worrying too much about technical matters, notes that a “person close to Mr. Trump countered that federal officials said the cause appeared to be an axle, not a brake issue, and the repealed brake-related regulation had no bearing on the crash.”

This is where we point out, again, that if the train that crashed had had an electronic braking system, it may not have derailed at all, because the train’s old-fashioned air braking system applies brakes from one car to another as the air pressure changes, which causes cars at the end of the train to bump into those slowing ahead of them. Electronic brakes apply evenly to all cars at the same time, so that even if a car derails due to an axle or wheel bearing problem, there’s less likelihood of a pile-up of multiple cars following the derailment.

That said, the Obama regulation had been watered down by lobbying so that it didn’t apply to all trains, so it is indeed possible the Norfolk Southern freight might not have had electronic brakes. (Or maybe it would have, since the regulation might have led to wider adoption of the systems industry-wide.)

In any case, now that Trump has graced East Palestine with his presence, everything will just naturally be fine. Transportation Secretary Mayor Pete Buttigieg will visit the town today, no doubt because Trump made him do it, and the cleanup is continuing. But we bet Buttigieg won’t be anywhere near as wonderful as Trump, who, in typical bizarre fashion, told folks in East Palestine to “have a good time.”

You know, just like he did to the Puerto Rico hurricane victims. And after Hurricane Florence.And Hurricane Harvey. It’s just one of those mangled ways he speaks.

[NBC News / AP / Newsweek / NYT]

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Secretary Mayor Pete Not Having Any Of Marco Rubio’s Sh*t

As part of the rightwing attempt to blame Democrats for the Norfolk Southern train derailment and chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio, GOP Sen. Marco Rubio has been calling for Transportation Secretary Mayor Pete Buttigieg to resign, because … well why, exactly? Mostly for being a Democrat in a Cabinet post, because Buttigieg didn’t keep a commercially owned train from derailing, and also didn’t keep its toxic cargo from spilling, and also something something woke distractions incompetence. Oh, and Buttigieg didn’t fix the computer SNAFU that snarled air traffic in January, and he failed to make Southwest Airlines not suck following a huge snowstorm, either.

Tuesday, Buttigieg called on the railroad industry to improve safety, telling Norfolk Southern and the rest of the industry to take immediate steps to improve safety. Among other steps, Buttigieg called for higher fines for safety violations, for freight railroads to protect workers who report safety issues from reprisals, and for the industry to

Deploy new inspection technologies without seeking permission to abandon human inspections. The removal of human inspections has been a top priority for the rail lobbyists. Recent waiver requests around technology like Automated Track Inspection (ATI) have been framed by industry to set up a false choice between technology and human oversight. We need both to keep our nation’s railroads safe.

Wouldn’t you know it, Rubio was one of 23 Republican senators who signed a 2021 letter to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) calling for expanded use of the automatic inspections, but also insisting that the automated tech, mounted on freight cars or locomotives, are so much better that visual track inspections by human beings are “redundant.”

A switch to automated inspections would also save having to pay those human inspectors, which the letter didn’t mention.

(We’ll also note that while track safety is absolutely vital, the East Palestine derailment appears to have resulted from a failed wheel bearing on one of the train cars, not a flaw in the track.)


During a press call Monday night, Buttigieg previewed the safety reform proposals, and noted that the aftermath of the derailment represents

“a moment of potential bipartisan cooperation,” he said, emphasizing the word “potential.”

Buttigieg also took the opportunity to call attention to that 2021 letter Rubio had signed:

We heard from Sen. Rubio last week, who had some pretty strong words about this incident. […] I can’t help but notice the last time this agency heard from him on rail regulation was his signature being on a letter that was pretty obviously drafted by industry, calling on us to weaken our practices around track inspection.

Buttigieg also said — again — that he plans to visit East Palestine once the recovery efforts are farther along, but doesn’t want to go when he might be in the way of cleanup efforts.

Tuesday, Rubio did that pissy little thing that Republicans do, complaining on Twitter that he had been most viciously maligned, and by a lazy good-for-nothing who needs to be fired, no less!

First @SecretaryPete was m.i.a. on the derailment

Then he lies to media claiming my 2021 letter calling for more track inspections was a letter calling for deregulation

He is an incompetent who is focused solely on his fantasies about his political future & needs to be fired

We like the part where Rubio doesn’t say that “more track inspections” in this case referred to more automated inspections, and that the letter explicitly called for the FRA to issue waivers to railroads that would allow “an increase in the frequency of automated track inspections in place of visual inspections” — for efficiency and safety, of course, not for higher railroad profit margins.

Buttigieg replied by stuffing Rubio into his locker, only metaphorically, tweeting

The facts don’t lie. The 2021 letter you signed was obviously drafted by railroad industry lobbyists.

It supports waivers that would reduce visual track inspections.

Now: will you vote to help us toughen rail safety accountability and fines, or not?

Buttigieg followed that by linking to the package of proposed reforms, adding,

Here are some examples of what Congress can do to help (along with immediate steps we’ve been taking and what we demand rail companies do). If you’re serious, I’ll work with you on this.

Rubio replied by calling again for Buttigieg to resign, and didn’t say a single word about rail safety, so he wins we guess.

As for the claim that automated track inspection is far better than visual inspection, you’ll be astonished to hear that that too is one of the issues on which the industry and the railroad unions have disagreed. Railroad giant BNSF sued the FRA last year to demand an extension of a pilot program, while union representatives said the new technology is just fine, but that it’s not yet ready to entirely replace visual inspections by human inspectors, who can see problems the automated systems miss. Buttigieg’s proposal, you’ll recall, calls for more use of ATI, but not at the expense of human inspectors.

Also too, Florida’s other senator, Rick Scott (R), griped on Tuesday that Buttigieg needs to go to East Palestine immediately, never mind whether he’d be in the way of the recovery work, because leaders show up, get in the way, and do photo ops, and that’s how problems get solved.

“When leaders show up, things get done—enough with the excuses,” Scott tweeted. “Show up, do your job and stop playing politics with every crisis you find.”

It sure is good of Sen. Scott to be so non-political about this! In reply, Buttigieg re-Twitterated that he’ll go when it’s appropriate to have a bunch of bureaucrats like him there:

During the initial response phase, I’ve followed the norm of staying out of the way of the independent NTSB.
Now that we’re into the policy phase, I’ll be visiting – and I need your help.

Will you work with us to toughen accountability standards on freight railroads?

Buttigieg again followed that with a link to his proposals, as if passing laws and regulations would make as much difference as showing up for a photo op.

In conclusion, we’re fairly sure a Republican response to the crisis is on the way, and that it will involve tax cuts and deregulating railroads even further.

[Department of Transportation / Politico / HuffPo / Image created using StableDiffusion 2.1 AI]

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