Ohio Derailment

[TheIronMonkey]

I didn’t know if i should go with or i wish we could do two!

The “plug or fill” translation was a user submission, not a real translation.

 

[AJL67]

The “plug or fill” translation was a user submission, not a real translation.

That’s ok i was just laughing in general.

 

[Tbaggins]

What’s absolutely bizarre is they filmed the movie white noise around the same spot and even used locals as extras. Movie starts out with a train wreck spewing a toxic cloud that wreaks havoc. Sure seams like predictive programming. I work for another railroad, they absolutely cut corners with hazardous materials when it benefits the company. Skeleton crews, forced overtime, four scheduled days off a month, good luck asking for a day off. When I hired one ten years ago it was a highly in demand job, I was one of 35 in my class with hundreds of applicants. Now we can’t even hire a class of 20, and retain less than half of that when training is over. Word is out railroads are a horrible place to work.

 

[Chasing Embers]

not a real translation.

Names rarely are. The translation of "mouth" does make it even more funny though.

 

[pantsBoots]

Today's under-30's only want to live in the world created by those who came before them, not maintain it.

Oh God, that is rich. Baby boomers were born into a strong economy they inherited from the real heroes, the Greatest Generation followed by the Silent Generation. Boomers didn't build squat - they slowly sort of maintained while easing up on the quality because it was more profitable that way. All the WW2 love babies did was squander everything and take what wasn't nailed down. Environmental capital and regulations built around fair treatment being their chief spoils.

Being born Gen X or later is like starting Monopoly mid-game. The terms of the game have changed since the 40s and the 50s. No longer can a single middle class earner purchase a home and support a family on their one salary while saving a nest egg and going on one or two vacations per year. Those days are dead and we're playing a new game now.

 

[Jaylotw]

What’s absolutely bizarre is they filmed the movie white noise around the same spot and even used locals as extras. Movie starts out with a train wreck spewing a toxic cloud that wreaks havoc. Sure seams like predictive programming. I work for another railroad, they absolutely cut corners with hazardous materials when it benefits the company. Skeleton crews, forced overtime, four scheduled days off a month, good luck asking for a day off. When I hired one ten years ago it was a highly in demand job, I was one of 35 in my class with hundreds of applicants. Now we can’t even hire a class of 20, and retain less than half of that when training is over. Word is out railroads are a horrible place to work.

Thanks for the real experience here. The White Noise movie is a crazy coincidence, indeed.

I hope the railroads are at least treating you fairly, I looked into it a few years ago, and even then I decided it was not for me.

 

[Jaylotw]

Oh God, that is rich. Baby boomers were born into a strong economy they inherited from the real heroes, the Greatest Generation followed by the Silent Generation. Boomers didn't build squat - they slowly sort of maintained while easing up on the quality because it was more profitable that way. All the WW2 love babies did was squander everything and take what wasn't nailed down. Environmental capital and regulations built around fair treatment being their chief spoils.

Being born Gen X or later is like starting Monopoly mid-game. The terms of the game have changed since the 40s and the 50s. No longer can a single middle class earner purchase a home and support a family on their one salary while saving a nest egg and going on one or two vacations per year. Those days are dead and we're playing a new game now.

Hell yeah. I'm 35, and the world I need to function in is vastly different than the world my parents had. I work my ass off. My partner has a PhD, and it took her 20+ years of 70hr work weeks just to be able to buy a modest house. She did everything our parent's generation told her to do...and still struggled.

And now, people are blaming US. The same people who gut safety regulations to line their pockets are pushing blame onto us, because we'd rather not see our neighbor's lives destroyed by preventable disasters, because we want a safe place to work, because we want the same wages our parents got for (often) less work.

Norfolk Southern, the railway in question here, is worth BILLIONS. They can afford safety inspections longer than 90 seconds. Electronic brakes. Time off. More workers.

 

[fireground_piper]

I generally feel like I don’t have my head in the sand all the time but yesterday is the first time Iv heard of this. I imagine a number of people know exactly what was in that perfectly safe cocktail of chemicals that spilled out of the trains and the decision to set them on fire is miraculously, probably, better than having done something else to it, which is fun to consider.

So how many years do I need to ride my bike to work instead of my car to offset this safe for human contamination?

 

[Jaylotw]

I'm sorry to admit that I'm completely missing the point you've been trying to make in this thread, George. From what I've read, @Jaylotw is not asking us all to believe more strongly in the hopes that will change reality. He seems to be calling for awareness of and outcry over the historic trend of industry leaders and politicians prioritizing profit over safety, while skirting as best he can the specific calls to action this forum might shun as overtly political. There are numerous examples over the years of movements to regulate industry for the better or enhance worker's rights/safety, so I can't imagine you're suggesting that's just wide eyed optimism on his part.


Again, I don't understand your point. No one here is suggesting you lobby your congressman to repeal physics. Sure, people today still die in car accidents because we can't vote against momentum and the general squishiness of our bodies relative to metal, but are seatbelts and airbags somehow empty gestures because of human nature? I'd say most of the success of the human race over time has been because of our efforts to make things safer, more efficient, and just generally better.


And here's where I really lose the thread. Are you suggesting that the problems with our national infrastructure are because 20-somethings are too busy on their iPhones to get their hands dirty? The oldest of them have only been able to vote for 11 years and hold jobs for 13. I have pants that have been around longer than they've been in any position to "influence" the state of our country's railroads, bridges, and roads. I'll admit that might be an issue 20 years from now, but when the problems we're facing today were brewing these kids were in diapers or yet to be born.

That brings me to this point:


I'd put it to you that plenty of under-30s
aren't exactly thrilled with this gift wrapped planet we've created for them. We've allowed for a culture of deregulation in which trains derail and rain burning cancer from the sky, and I don't fault them for blaming us when our collective response seems to be "sh*t happens". We should be trying as hard as we can to make the world better for them, and instead we're romanticizing their "badass" great grandfathers who were electrocuted racing to build Hoover Dam in time so six companies wouldn't have to pay a fine that might eat into their profits.

I'm not sure he even knows what his point is, other than he sees anyone who's angry about a massive chemical spill is just whining cause grandpa got electrocuted...or, something.


But you definitely understand the point I'm trying to make here, and I really do appreciate it.

 

[Jaylotw]

I generally feel like I don’t have my head in the sand all the time but yesterday is the first time Iv heard of this. I imagine a number of people know exactly what was in that perfectly safe cocktail of chemicals that spilled out of the trains and the decision to set them on fire is miraculously, probably, better than having done something else to it, which is fun to consider.

So how many years do I need to ride my bike to work instead of my car to offset this safe for human contamination?

The fire started as soon as the train derailed, as a wheel caught fire at least 20 miles before the site of the wreck. They decided to do a controlled burn, and Vinyl Chloride is incredibly volatile and there was a risk of explosion if it was left in the tanks.

I'm sure if this happened somewhere other than some "hick town" in Ohio, there would have been another course of action...but here, they decided that creating a massive cloud of poison was the safest route.

 

[fireground_piper]

I do not believe there would have been a different course of action if it were somewhere else. Very often the course of action is to let it burn, evacuate and prevent explosion. I don’t think there’s a whole lot of capability to clean up thousands of Gallons of potentially mixed dangerous chemicals and do something with it.

NJ has a number of big warehouses and chemical plants in very dense human population areas. Every now and then that shit hits the fan and sends smoke columns of lord knows what into the sky for miles to see. The course of action is always evacuate, keep it contained, prevent explosion. You can’t really “control” thousands of gallons of chemicals out in the wild having a fun time.

NJ had a major 11 alarm chemicals plant fire this time last year. You can’t really do a whole lot of something that scale, unfortunately.

 

[Briar Lee]

What is polyvinyl chloride?

—-

Polyvinyl chloride - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Polyvinyl chloride (alternatively: poly(vinyl chloride),[6][7] colloquial: polyvinyl, or simply vinyl;[8] abbreviated: PVC) is the world's third-most widely produced synthetic polymer of plastic (after polyethylene and polypropylene).[9] About 40 million tons of PVC are produced each year.

Producers​

About half of the world's PVC production capacity is in China, despite the closure of many Chinese PVC plants due to issues complying with environmental regulations and poor capacities of scale. The largest single producer of PVC as of 2018 is Shin-Etsu Chemical of Japan, with a global share of around 30%.[16]
——

A few years ago McDonalds caught hell for reverting to paper straws.

Here lately I’ve noticed they have some kind of plastic green straw, and the large sweet tea comes in a clear plastic glass.

Can you imagine, a Chinese polyvinyl chloride plant closing to to environmental regulations?

There must have been dead three eyed fish below the plant, not healthy three eyed fish.

My old grandmother used to teach us grandkids songs about stuff like this:

 

[fireground_piper]

A good reference is to look at the ERG (they have a great mobile app now) under UN 1086 and you will see the recommended actions for different amounts and scenarios for vinyl chloride.

There’s just not much society can do once an amount hits a certain critical mass other than let it burn as safely as possible.

 

[craig61a]

I just viewed another report on this. People are pissed. And rightfully so.

I think people (as in those responsible for managing this disaster) are just getting dumber as time goes on... Love Canal and Three Mile Island back in the 70's seemed to be managed better.

 

[Pipeoff]

Thanks, you've distilled a few points in a rational way that I'm still too enraged to really articulate. Please tell people about this, if you can.

One group already knows, the shyster lawyers solvating over this.

 

[AJL67]

Isn’t this the third major train derailment in like a week?

 

[Singularis]

Yeah, it's pretty horrible. I just happened to read recently about the Graniteville train crash near the NC-SC border, back in 2005. Nine or ten people basically immediately died from suffocation because of the chlorine gas released. That was the result of a total newb misreading the track switching, or some such failure. I'm sure there were major issues over the years for the people exposed who didn't die right away.

This ecological disaster appears to be many times worse, even though only one person appears to have immediately died from the wreck. But yes, this is going to have a huge affect on the region for years or decades to come.

I'm scratching my head about why they felt that detonating the chemicals was the best course of action here. Anyone know why? Or was it damned if do, super f*cked if you don't, kind of a situation?

In terms of deregulation and government leaders' incompetence, and what led to this: I'm also wondering what incompetence was happening with the railroad company itself. It seems to me that the companies, regardless of what safety regulations they need to follow, shouldn't be boneheaded simpletons about the decisions that caused this disaster. But what do I know.

Praying for the immediate and long-term victims. This really is sickening, and honestly a huge injustice that more focus isn't being put on this (especially from certain people at the top "who are really into trains").

 

[HawkeyeLinus]

Just found out by reading this thread right now. It's horrible and those actually affected will have a lot of challenges, can only hope for the best and do.

Beyond that, I don't really have enough info or expertise to get involved, so to speak.

 

[MarcosEZLN]

Campaign all you want. Feel all you want. Be outraged and pissed off all you want. None of those things will change the fundamental situation, which is that humans are hardwired to grab short term personal profit/gain/advantage without regard for any long term consequences that may come about from doing so.

Yes, I agree that people are generally not great. I'm not really a big fan of us, on the whole. I still don't really understand why you're making that point, though.

You seem to be refuting an argument that no one is making. Again, Jay is not just suggesting we all feel harder until human nature changes. He's advocating for a change of laws and regulations, which are some of the primary means we have to curtail the selfish actions of the individual which harm the society at large. Your argument might as well be that it's pointless to develop medicine while the human body remains prone to disease. Greed is the pathology for which those laws are the treatment.

Yes, things like this will continue to happen, but isn't it worthwhile to do anything we can to reduce the frequency and severity?

 

[Arthur Frayn]

I'm sure the secretary of transportation is on top of this no problem.

I saw what you did there. but I believe I read that he is a bottom.