ohio train accident

[greenacrylicpaint]

well, that's scary.
and even scarier that it's not more prominent in the news.
too busy with balloons?

@Wanderingowl

Hi

I've gone back and checked headline national news in the US in the days around the derailment and there was just about fuck all on there.

I personally haven't checked so I'll take your word for it, but one things for sure the international agencies such as Reuters started carrying stories such as this on 4 Feb

www.reuters.com/world/us/train-derailment-causes-massive-fire-ohio-local-media-2023-02-04/

and then started covering the chemical aspect of it within another day or so..

www.reuters.com/world/us/ohio-carry-out-controlled-release-chemicals-train-derailment-site-2023-02-06/

I'm not thinking government cover up - I suspect this was a story that many MSM outlets wasn't "worthy", at least until now

There's been something a bit similar gone on with the NZ cyclone which produced a similar thread on MN this AM.

According to some the damage that cyclone caused hadn't been reported to the world...well maybe it was slow making BBC/Sky/ITN headlines but the agencies had been reporting it and it had even obliquely made it into sports news in some UK newspapers because of it's possible impact an cricket test series....

TBH I think a lot of what is presumed by some to be cover up is often down to the way the MSM and other outlets prioritise their news coverage.

Because a controlled release and burn might be the least worse option compared to an explosion. It is impossible to say as a lay person what was best in this scenario. It could be that 2 containers were at risk of explosion that would take 10 further with them so a much greater exposure that just venting and burning those 2 and making the train safer.

And why is chemicals in all caps? It makes it look like you don’t know that everything is chemicals, levels of toxicity vary though.

It's on the websites but I'm talking about tv headline news. Which were largely reporting on spy balloons/ufos and issues around the Ukraine war.

And this news would have been prioritised if the authorities had acted as they should have. It would have been immediately obvious that this was a significantly bigger story than the balloons. Because an evacuation on the scale that should have happened would have been clearly a massive story.

Well, I read the Guardian religiously every day and I managed to miss it - so it clearly wasn’t very high profile. Thanks for the condescension though.

And agree with PP that the scale and harm was definitely underplayed. I only realised quite how bad it was when US friends spoke about it on SM.

This guy has been making some very informative videos about the situation.

instagram.com/nickdrom?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Yea I'd seen brief reports about it but nothing going into just how bad it is and also how little response there has been from authorities.

The regulation in the US and Canada of hazardous transport by train is horrific. They’ve been some big fatal explosions previously. You can’t leave their sort of thing to the private sector. And that includes the maintenance of the infrastructure.

And the reason it wasn’t big news is because it happens frequently - which is horrific eg en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-Mégantic_rail_disaster

This is a good article about the scale of the problem - amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/ohio-train-derailment-wake-up-call

There have also been trains carrying hazardous substances crash in Arizona and Michigan this week...

I asked DH who's a chemistry professor specialising in industrial materials. You're correct, a controlled release was the right thing to do as the least worse option. He says what shouldn't have happened was this chemical being transported at all. It's very simple to make and best practise is therefore to make it where it'll be used so as not to transport it in its dangerous state. This was entirely avoidable.