Shapiro said Norfolk Southern put people at risk in the following three ways:

He said there was no “unified command,” creating confusion and a lack of awareness.

The railway provided inaccurate information about the impact, making decisions hard to determine.

There was an "unwillingness" to explore alternate actions.

There are three separate town halls scheduled on Wednesday to discuss the impact of the train derailment.

His attorney general instincts are kicking in.

Let's hope so

Everyone should be critical of this whole thing. There's so much fucked up about this, how this happened, how this was handled, and the long term consequences that are going to be fumbled.

Well, understaffing and overworking employees, avoiding safety upgrades to protect record profits and burning hazardous chemicals to avoid cleanup costs is rather sussy IMO

100%

Then fucking do something about it. The Conway Yard is one of the largest in the country, owned and operated by NS. This shit is just gonna keep happening in that area since a lot of their trains have to go through there.

Remember, that train was heading here. Worse, there is likely air and water contamination throughout Pennsylvania.

There's a lot for Shapiro to run on here. And the Republicans in the legislature are going to have a time trying to block any investigation or lawsuits from the state.

Good.

DeWine sure isn't going to do anything.

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Don’t forget lobbying to be able to self regulate , because those damn liberals want to impede profits over people

critical! oh no! /s

he should be FUCKING LIVID! calling these mfers out every chance he gets. go get em.

Good, SOMEONE in an elected position has to say this, even if people in Ohio don't want to ffffkn put them in office.

They voted him in to not do anything. I hate repeating this but almost 50% of voters screeched against regulations for decades and I'm tired of them indirectly causing preventable disasters.

Who are the republicans trying to block investigations or lawsuits?

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. Being critical doesn’t mean dick if you don’t do anything to 1. Help those affected and 2. Prevent it next time. This isn’t a situation you can take your time with.

He could really make his name on this crisis

This happened in Ohio and he is the governor of PA. What are his options? Not trying to gotcha you or anything, but is there much he has the power to do besides use his mini bully pulpit?

Unfuck the regulatory agencies, give the workers a good contract, nationalize the railroad company's holdings, yeet the executives

Pennsylvania used to have environmental regulation with real teeth, until Corbett rolled it bs k to appease the gas industry.

Conservation and environmental protection used to be something even PA republicans cared about and advocated for.

Hopefully Shapiro can ramp up the DEP to be like it used to be.

And Norfolk Southern runs trains all though PA.

Well since there aren't any lawsuits or investigations yet, there aren't any. But you know that the GOP isn't going to sit idly by when Dems can get an easy win, saying they forced Norfolk to pick up the tab, nor allow a corporation of all things be held accountable and maybe heavier regulations be enacted.

This exact one was going to Conway, PA.

I’m not really sure what kind of powers a gov has when a “disaster” directly affects their state. But if all he can do is be critical then this article is useless haha

Obama set regulations for safety but the lobbyists got it watered down to not include this type of train and cargo to NOT be considered hazardous and dangerous.

Trump repealed the regulations on safety after big donations from that industry to his PAC.

Biden has yet to restore the damages done by Trump and his Sec. Of Transportation is absolutely useless and too cozy with corporate America to address and attack this violence against the American people.

We need a Shapiro to put the screws to evil (yes, they knowingly and willingly harm others to boost their profits so they are evil) corporate ghouls and hold them accountable not just financially but with criminal and long term laiability for the inevitable cancer clusters that appear in this region down the road for the people who have to move back.

As much as this might be the case, I'm not sure what all he can do beyond complain a bunch. The railroads have worked really hard to make it so that they only answer to the federal government and then neuter the limited oversight that exists there. And as long as at least 50% of the members of the federal legislatures are made up of some combination of republicans and a handful relatively conservative democrats, this isn't going to change barring a much larger catastrophe than this one.

GOP voters love the line of Regulations are bad and handcuff the free market blah blah blah.

Then when they repeal them we start to see more and more why we NEED them to begin with... Because every corporate board room would vote to slowly kill and harm their own workers and citizens if it means increasing their stock by a few points and cushioning their bonuses.

Not very many, since the GOP gimped those powers following covid

Mayo Pete can't really do anything that isn't run CIA ops or fix bread prices

Who made the decision to allow Norfolk Southern to burn hazardous chemicals?

The "pro derailment" camp is starting to look pretty sparse.

The accident was so close to the border that it may have caused air and water pollution in PA.

Indeed. The headline gave me a chuckle. Did anyone expect the PA gov to "applaud" or be "ambivalent about" the train derailment?

I don’t know that the GOP will try to do any of that…

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Come on gov, we need more big dick energy here. Time to show them the results when people fuck around.

He's already made quite a name for himself for similar causes, i'm just hoping he hasn't lost a sense of clarity since his roots. He's vocally pro-fracking lately, so i'm interested in seeing how aggressively he pursues this.

Ok cool

IIRC there was a meeting with state officials, railroad execs, and chemical experts.

No one from EPA or FEMA?

I mean a lot of government officials have been ambivalent about this

And yet nothing will happen to the company or the members of the board. In a just world the individual members of the board would be fined into poverty and then jailed or hanged.

I am also critical of the Norfolk Southern train derailment.

500 total people - including support staff - in the DOT look over 50,000+ daily trains.

I'm hoping he can exam our rail operations critically also and examine who he can talk to. God I fucking wish Conrail was still a thing.

Good. This is a great response by him.

very unlikely anything comes of this, and if something does happen, it will probably be something along the lines of “hurr durr trains are outdated technology so we’re banning them for this” which is fucking insane

Is the a pipeline vs train comment?

I don’t know much about either side of the argument, but just guessing here… I imagine maintaining a rail system is cheaper, easier, and less disruptive than maintaining a pipeline.

I have doubts about either method being maintained though.

I honestly don't know all the details, i watched a local news segment this morning that included an Ohio state rep who said he was in the situation room when they made the call, and answered from memory

>As much as this might be the case, I'm not sure what all he can do beyond complain a bunch.

There are federal and NS dollars to be spent in PA in terms of monitoring and remediation. DEP is part of his admin, so he can do much more than merely complain.

Anyone reporting on these town halls that you know of?

Not that I know of, but will respond to this thread if I see anything

Ok, thanks. Hopefully there is an investigation on this.

Those entities will be active in the remediation and they will certainly be trying to bill NS for their time and resources. But what teeth do they have? What authority do they have to compel NS to do much of anything?

One thing to add, Biden got big donations from that industry as well. Slightly more reported than Trump, in fact.

https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/industry-totals?highlight=n&ind=M04&src=a

100% correct. That would require a strong federal response. Biden and Pete have been useless. We knew this was coming when Biden screwed the rail unions a few months ago.

Wish I could give you an award for this assessment of Pete, i've been getting sick of the attacks for pointing this out.

as a Shapiro supporter i give the universal "wanking and rolling my eyes" to this. left or right, politicians in this country are all a bunch of (insert insult) when it comes to standing up to corporations

I think it's more a comment on the headline. Who isn't critical of a train derailment causing a chemical spill?

Rail system uses existing rails whereas the pipelines are essentially put in nilly-willy and in too large a number. Scarring up Penn's Woods.

And sometimes both go boom.

So much teeth gnashing, so little thought put into the words.

It amazes me the cleanup crew are in hazmat suits yet they say its safe? I can smell it in NEPA. The regular air should not smell like new car plastic.

We sure did. Should've been a wildcat strike, not too late

I don't really agree there because people would have been put in jail. Maybe if it was nearly perfectly and seamlessly executed it could have been successful but I don't want to see people in jail.

So I don't have a solid source for this but a friend of mine told me that Norfolk Southern officials bailed on at least one town hall meeting because of "safety concerns."

Edit: The following link confirms that they didn't go. https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/east-palestine-resident-questions-derailment-chemicals/

I have such a distaste for Mayor Pete. He gets praise from normies because they see him with snappy retorts on Fox News shutting down jackasses. They ignore his absolute incompetence from day 1 in this job. He is a corporate puppet and uses identity politics to make it seem like he is the next big thing. I don't know if it is worse that he is such an empty suit or that people are so gullible and if orant that they buy into his BS.

You might be right. But I don't see the labor movement, the environmental movement, or the movement to radically reform democracy succeeding until a lot more people are willing to risk jail. And the prevailing system is very, very good at making us hesitate to do that.

Local news out of Youngstown has been solid.

https://www.wkbn.com/news/local-news/east-palestine-train-derailment/townhall-answers-legal-questions-from-east-palestine-residents/

https://www.wkbn.com/news/local-news/east-palestine-train-derailment/town-hall-planned-to-discuss-east-palestine-train-derailment/

https://www.wkbn.com/news/local-news/east-palestine-train-derailment/report-norfolk-southern-employees-concerned-by-size-of-derailed-train/

Just because you don’t like what he has to say doesn’t mean he’s wrong.

At the end of the day there is very little a state governor can do to increase rail safety and it’s by design. Fines and remediation fees aren’t going to force a company to increase safety measures when cutting those corners makes them more money in the long run.

Which sounds a lot like the conditions that lead to the deepwater horizon disaster.

Lol, Louisiana as a whole and the off the coast of Louisiana are ticking time bombs. Thankfully only poor people live there, according to the Louisiana state government. They can apply for the 12,000$ grant and just move right?

No one with half a brain. The correct method of dealing with these chemicals is liquid nitrogen and then dig it up and store it in a container.

Biden is partially to blame but let’s not forget the rollback of Obama rail safety policies and additional deregulation by the previous admin. There’s a whole lot of blame to spread around on this and it doesn’t fall squarely on one side of the political divide or the other.

Most people seem to engage with politics the way pro wrestling fans engage with wrestlers. 'I like Sergeant Slaughter bc I love America and he waves a flag around; 'I like George W Bush because he seems like a good dude i'd have a beer with,' or, 'I don't like Elizabeth Warren because she seems like an angry librarian.' Like over 90% of people who vote conceptualize politicians this way, completely ignoring that candidate's platform, their competency, anything. I'd rather have a root canal than try to explain to one more person that their priorities and opinions line up with Bernie Sanders' platform at like 95%, vs 20% for Pete, or 5% with DeSantis, or whatever lousy candidate they're fooled by. George Santos is the penultimate example of this. Anyway, yeah, Pete is a thoroughly useless, centrist, corporate, neoliberal, who branded himself as smart early on, so it's extra infuriating to me that his fanbase don't understand the first thing about how anything political works, yet view themselves as super smart, and therefore like Pete, 'bEcAuSe hE's sMart LiKe mE!' And they're equally smug about their ignorant opinions, on some Dunning Kreuger level. Rant over.

They weren't attending anyway. And, as long as they keep signing the checks and cleaning the mess up, not really necessary. It will all come out in the EPA/NTSB/NRA report.

$1000 per resident seems a bit low. Does not say on average which makes it even less appropriate. Those who lived nearby should get relocation expenses. Those further away, less, but certainly more than just $1000.

A state is never without avenues.

I'd love to see the headline "PA Governor says that Norfolk Southern Railroad executives should be disgorged of wealth to compenstate the victims of their negligence"

Absolutely! It is interesting to see when a bad decision directly leads to a horrible outcome. And of course, Democrats and Republicans both love to screw over workers especially when it comes to the rail workers.

Yeah cool. Everyone speaking out after the plume already went over western PA. I am pissed. There is no hope. What's he gonna do? Say he is mad about it now. Too late dude. He and fetterman were my last hopes. This is bullshit. Republicans are fucking scum but they are correct when they say "do nothing democrats".

And you are going to say other people arent putting thought into their comments?

smh

Given how close this is to the border, I'm surprised no Disaster Declaration.

At this point I am convinced most of our government agencies are a single landline phone to an 86 year old woman named Janice who is half deaf and only answers the phone from 10-2.

Thanks for the info. Why has this post been removed?

Update: Strange, not sure if this post has been removed or not.

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>What authority do they have to compel NS to do much of anything?

This is akin to throwing the hands up in the air and saying nothing can be done. Things can be done. Not thinking makes it seem otherwise.

This is not the first derailment in the US. Or in Ohio. Or near a state border.

Events are investigated by state and federal agencies. Reports are written. I've read more than a few of them. Indeed, I posted at least a couple in this sub for folks to read. Read a few and then come back with the "nothing can be done" line of non-thinking.

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Can’t wait to see the movie with Julia Roberts about this in 10 years

Gotta prioritize growth every quarter or the shareholders will get cranky...

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Hey buddy, say what you want but don't you ever dare try to denigrate Sgt Slaughter.... That man was a childhood hero!