Buttigieg tours East Palestine derailment site

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio -- U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spent about an hour touring the site of the East Palestine train derailment this morning.

As trains continued to pass by on the reopened tracks nearby, Buttigieg met with National Transportation Safety Board staff, as well as U.S. Department of Transportation staff from the Federal Railroad Administration and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

Moving through mud and wreckage, NTSB and USDOT staff showed Buttigieg the site of the Feb. 3 derailment of about 50 cars from a Norfolk Southern Train east of East Palestine. They gave Buttigieg an overview of the cars involved in the derailment, including 11 cars carrying hazardous materials, and showed him a car that had been carrying butyl acrylate, a chemical that was likely the cause of a foul smell that hung over East Palestine in the days following the derailment, as well as a car that been carrying ethylhexyl acrylate.

Nearby were the remnants of five cars that had been transporting vinyl chloride, which was burned and released in a controlled effort after the possibility of a rapid increase in temperature in those cars threatened to cause an explosion. NTSB and USDOT staff explained to Buttigieg the factors that lead to the decision to perform that controlled burn and how two charges were used simultaneously on each of the five cars during the burn.

Buttigieg is expected to spend the rest of the morning in East Palestine, where he will stress that the railroad must fulfill its commitment to take care of residents affected by the derailment, now and in the future.

NTSB is slated to release a factual report on its initial findings from the accident later today. The derailment remains under investigation, said Randy Keltz, manager of the tank car safety programs with FRA.