U.S. Senator JD Vance (R-OH) questioned National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy on the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine last year during a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing entitled, “National Transportation Safety Board Investigations Report” on Wednesday.
On February 3, 2023, 50 train carriages, 10 of which were carrying hazardous materials, derailed in East Palestine. Hundreds of residents evacuated as a result of a controlled burn of noxious vinyl chloride that Norfolk Southern carried out on February 6 to stop an explosion.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Vance pressed Homendy on the vent and burn conducted on five vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) tank cars involved in the derailment.
Homendy agreed with Vance when he said “Norfolk Southern’s contractors lacked scientific basis to support their conclusion that polymerization was occurring in the derailed VCM tank cars.”
“That’s correct,” Homendy said. “In order for polymerization to occur, which was Norfolk Southern and their contractors’ justification for the vent and burn, you would have to have rapidly increasing temperatures and some sort of infusion of oxygen, neither of which occurred.”
Homendy also testified that Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, despite him refusing to answer questions regarding the controlled burn when it happened, and the East Palestine incident commander were “provided incomplete information to make a decision” on the controlled burn.
“Rightfully, Norfolk Southern’s contractors had ruled out hot tapping and transloading because it would have been a potential safety issue for their employees, but there was another option: let it cool down,” Homendy said. “So Oxy Vinyls was on scene providing information to Norfolk Southern’s contractor who was in the room when the decision was made, and when advice was given to the governor of Ohio, to the incident commander, they were not given full information because no one was told Oxy Vinyls was on scene.”
“They were left out of the room. The incident commander didn’t even know they existed. Neither did the governor. So, they were provided incomplete information to make a decision,” Homendy said.
Vance, closing out his questioning, said, “This town very well may have been poisoned to facilitate the rapid movement of freight, or at the very least, it was poisoned for reasons that we can’t identify. That should really concern every single person on this committee.”
Homendy’s testimony comes after William Carroll, a chemistry professor at Indiana University, testified during a fact-finding hearing that the controlled burn may not have been necessary as the “feared chemical reaction polymerization likely was not happening inside the rail cars.”
Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency has maintained there is a “low probability” that dioxins were released from the controlled burn based on its sampling for “indicator chemicals,” however, a retired chemist told The Ohio Star that dioxins “were produced” during the burn and “it’s not a question of ‘maybe.’”
While the East Palestine disaster took place more than one year ago, Vance continues to renew his calls to pass his Railway Safety Act, which has passed the Senate Commerce Committee and is awaiting a vote on the Senate floor.
The bill has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump, Governor DeWine, a group of bipartisan U.S. senators, and many conservative organizations.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Ohio Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
