Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

AFD_0 t1_j7jtv11 wrote

Seems strange that this has been going on all weekend and I'm just now hearing about it on Reddit. People are reporting that they can smell the chemicals from 20 to 30 miles away and one of the routes out of the town is shutdown for 10 miles into Darlington. And 16 miles away, Boardman officials are now advising residents to "shelter in place" because of the fumes.

Someone in New Castle posted a video they took of the mushroom cloud that was seen from nearly 20 miles away. What a mess..

https://twitter.com/NicoleCassano/status/1622721917839974400

21

heili t1_j7m71v4 wrote

Wind directions have shifted significantly in the last 48 hours.

1

heili t1_j7km5gh wrote

Reddit has been incredibly silent about this, but it's absolutely huge deal over here in western PA. I've been obsessively checking wind direction watching to see if I'm downwind of the shit show that keeps getting shittier.

19

Mijbr090490 t1_j7m4th8 wrote

I didn't know about it until yesterday. Saw that Shapiro was talking about evacuation. Then I saw it derailed Friday. How the hell isn't this bigger news. I'm in Harrisburg area, but that shit can travel pretty far.

7

heili t1_j7m6qnl wrote

So my concerns are less about the actual release of chemicals and the burn off from this particular derailment affecting me (I live ~30 miles from the site) because although vinyl chloride and the results of burning it are dangerous the dissipation into atmosphere and duration of exposure at this distance aren't likely to cause me any effect at all. Interest in wind directions and the constant checking is like "should I be able to smell funk?" rather than "Oh fuck I just got cancer from this."

My real issue here is that this is a result most likely of rail companies that are cutting staff, increasing hours, foregoing maintenance and building longer and more dangerous trains in the name of profit above all, and government backing the rail companies over unions that are fighting for safety of themselves and the communities the trains go through.

Preliminary reports are that this is the result of a mechanical failure, and it was found by a wayside defect detector. The problems here though are that the train couldn't be brought safely to a stop after the defect was detected. Why? And after derailment, all of the safety measures designed into these tankers couldn't properly function to prevent the risk of an imminent BLEVE. Those are issues that I think government needs to stop allowing rail companies to ignore.

7

Mijbr090490 t1_j7msg04 wrote

That's a good point. The idea of privatized infastructure just baffles me. The strikes really opened my eyes to what these guys go through and what these railroad companies want to get away with. Ideally, they want one engineer per train and as little workforce as possible. Instances like this really don't help their cause.

3