East Palestine Ohio Train Crash & Poison Gas Plume Megathread

[Wargamer08]

Fire everyone, start over. At this point if the federal government was run like it was jury duty it would be an improvement. Random chance would certainly get some total fuck ups into service, but it would presumably not be 100% fuck ups like it is now.

 

[PsihoKekec]

yeah that's going to haunt him for awhile.

Fuckups and malice haunting members of alphabet soup agencies? That would be a novelty indeed.

 

[f1onagher]

So blowing up the chemical tanks and contaminating the entire area might have been completely unnecessary. Oops.

I'm still piecing the story together but from all appearance, it looks like the shipping company knew the containers were safe, but no one asked them because the railroads wanted to get the rail opened again as soon as possible.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

Going to repeat a joke that I found amusing.
The government read 'Palestine' and decided to blow the place up, unfortunately Biden can't read directions.

 

[DarthOne]

EPA ‘failed to protect’ East Palestine residents after Ohio train derailment: Whistleblower​

EPA ‘failed to protect’ East Palestine residents after Ohio train derailment: Whistleblower

The scientists said the agency didn’t collect the usual amount of data when testing for contaminated air.

www.wkrn.com

The plane should have been collecting data while the toxic plume was in the air, Kroutil said.

“We only were deployed for two missions on Feb. 7. By that time the plumes were out, the fire was out. It was after the event and burn, so that was not the time to actually use this particular aircraft,” he said. “The aircraft only collected data, eight minutes worth of data with the targets.”

Usually, the plane would collect 100 minutes of data, Kroutil told NewsNation. He said scientists looked at the data and determined it was inconclusive, but the final posted EPA report did not reflect that assessment of the data.

Even more troubling, he said the plane turned off the chemical sensors over the creeks in East Palestine.

“The program manager informed the operator, to turn those sensors off when we’re flying up a couple of creeks,” he said.

That’s not normal protocol, according to Kroutil, and there was no reason given as to why the sensors would be turned off.

“I’ve done 180 different responses,” Kroutil said. “I’ve never heard the program manager tell us to turn the sensor off when collecting data.”

Meanwhile, back in the only Palestine that I and any other American should really be giving a damn about...

 

[Free-Stater 101]

Bad news everyone, they have learned nothing...
Norfolk Southern urges shareholders to reject activist investor's takeover plan at the railroad
So, to explain why this is bad does anybody here know how railroads in this age operate on an economic level?

To explain, railroads in the U.S. are owned by stockholders like many businesses, but unlike many other businesses railroads are not growing, new tracks, and massive expansions are a thing of the past unlikely to make a reappearance.

Do you see the problem? All revue in the model is generated by providing services and moving large volume, so stock prices on railroads tend to be slow fluctuating, they are a safe stock but not one to get rich on.

How is that relevant? it means that the investors get desperate to drive up revenue generation by any means to get a return, chiefly by cutting the Operating Ratio.

Operating ratio - Wikipedia

This is a term used almost exclusively by the railroads stockholders and is very important to them, for you see they like having a low ratio and to get that low ratio they want cost cut and to cut cost little things like safety expenses and 'useless' employees must be cut.

It's a stupid metric and causes issues because stockholders tend to hold the belief that if one railroad can achieve a lower ratio than their own, they should be able as well, even if they are already generating the most money in their company's history for that yeR and there is a mass of different circumstances which allowed their competitor to make theirs lower.

Now that you have a brief summary you can see what my statement is about through the first link. Long story short, after Palestine NS CEO Alan Shaw decided to reverse course on cutting the Operating Ratio to protect his rear from the public, but that decision has caused a stink with the investors led by Ancora holdings who are attempting to stage a hostile takeover to reimplement cost cutting measures.