EuclidI agree. They never did say it was definite. I never said it was definite. I never said they said it was definite.
Sorry, when you asked why assume that the explosion would have happend, I thought you were implying they assumed it would happen. Regardless, he still did not imply it could happen "at any moment."
Euclid CSX Robert "could continue to" - means it's not definite, but there is a possiblity. I've never seen anywhere that they said or implied it was definite, but you certainly cannot ignore the possibility. I agree. They never did say it was definite. I never said it was definite. I never said they said it was definite.
CSX Robert "could continue to" - means it's not definite, but there is a possiblity. I've never seen anywhere that they said or implied it was definite, but you certainly cannot ignore the possibility.
I agree. They never did say it was definite. I never said it was definite. I never said they said it was definite.
You have led a charmed life if all the decisions you have made in your life were based upon nominally known outcomes of making those decisions.
At wreck scenes with HAZMAT - of multiple varieties - with a existing fire - a multiplicity of 'presumed experts' each with their own POV and motivations for their argued viewpoints - ULTIMATELY someONE has to make a decision and defend that decision. Remember, the decision can be either active or passive - they are both decisions THAT CAN have 'unfavorable' outcomes.
It appears that at East Palestine, once the decision was made and implemented, everyone that 'made' the decision decided not to defend the decision. COWARDS whom ever they are.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
CSX Robert"could continue to" - means it's not definite, but there is a possiblity. I've never seen anywhere that they said or implied it was definite, but you certainly cannot ignore the possibility.
It's those dreaded shades of gray...
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
https://dayton247now.com/news/local/officials-will-control-release-of-chemicals-from-cars-involved-in-train-derailment
Scott Deutsch, regional manager of hazardous materials at Norfolk Southern, talking before the controlled burn:
"“If we don’t do that, the car could continue to polymerize and the entire car will break apart. We can’t control where that goes.”
“So, that’s the reason for getting moving on this, so we don’t have to run into that – letting the car do it itself. We want to be able to control that situation."
"could continue to" - means it's not definite, but there is a possiblity. I've never seen anywhere that they said or implied it was definite, but you certainly cannot ignore the possibility.
"the reason for getting moving on this, so we don’t have to run into that" - doesn't sound to me like he thought it could explode "at any moment," but that if they moved quickly they had time to eliminate the possibility.
Overmod Euclid In checking, it is the sixth post from the top of this page, second paragraph in blue, the report by the NS Ry., as follows: Here is what the NS report says: “…tank cars (railcars 28–31 and 55) carrying 115,580 gallons of vinyl chloride continued to concern authorities because the temperature inside one tank car was still rising. This increase in temperature suggested that the vinyl chloride was undergoing a polymerization reaction, which could pose an explosion hazard.” That's nice, but it DOES NOT ANSWER THE QUESTION. Where is the specific reference for that quote of yours, a very direct and unambiguous quote, "They said that an explosion could happen at any moment..." I'll wait.
Euclid In checking, it is the sixth post from the top of this page, second paragraph in blue, the report by the NS Ry., as follows: Here is what the NS report says: “…tank cars (railcars 28–31 and 55) carrying 115,580 gallons of vinyl chloride continued to concern authorities because the temperature inside one tank car was still rising. This increase in temperature suggested that the vinyl chloride was undergoing a polymerization reaction, which could pose an explosion hazard.”
That's nice, but it DOES NOT ANSWER THE QUESTION.
Where is the specific reference for that quote of yours, a very direct and unambiguous quote, "They said that an explosion could happen at any moment..."
I'll wait.
EuclidNo, that's not what I had in mind.
Clearly. Sounds like you should have been there, as you are better qualified than the people who were actually there (EPA, Ohio National Guard, etc).
We should all be humbled to be in the presence of such greatness.
BTW, the "white" area is outlined by the black line.
EuclidIn checking, it is the sixth post from the top of this page, second paragraph in blue, the report by the NS Ry., as follows: Here is what the NS report says: “…tank cars (railcars 28–31 and 55) carrying 115,580 gallons of vinyl chloride continued to concern authorities because the temperature inside one tank car was still rising. This increase in temperature suggested that the vinyl chloride was undergoing a polymerization reaction, which could pose an explosion hazard.”
EuclidIf you don't assume anything, why assume that the explosion would have happend at all? Their warning was only that an explosion could happen. They can't have it both ways.
You asked me what I would assume given their description. Again, I would not assume anything. I don't think they assumed an explosion would happen either, but they knew it could, so they had to weight the risk of allowing a possible explosion versus doing the burn off.
You seem to think the explosion was either definitely giong to happen or definitely not going to happen, but that doesn't appear to be the case; however, even if it's not definitely going to happen, if it can you have to consider the consequences if it does.
Euclid Overmod Euclid They said that an explosion could happen at any moment and so that mandated the controlled burn. They said it was necessary in order to save lives and buildings from flying shrapnel if the explosion occurred. OK, that does it. I want a SPECIFIC reference as to who this "they" was, and precise times it was said. Links will do, but they have to contain the indicated information as stated. "They" is NS Ry., and they said it in their accident report as I quoted in some posts up where it is highlighted in blue. I will check on the date of that report, but it had to be after the wreck and prior to the burn off. In checking, it is the sixth post from the top of this page, second paragraph in blue, the report by the NS Ry., as follows: Here is what the NS report says: “…tank cars (railcars 28–31 and 55) carrying 115,580 gallons of vinyl chloride continued to concern authorities because the temperature inside one tank car was still rising. This increase in temperature suggested that the vinyl chloride was undergoing a polymerization reaction, which could pose an explosion hazard.”
Overmod Euclid They said that an explosion could happen at any moment and so that mandated the controlled burn. They said it was necessary in order to save lives and buildings from flying shrapnel if the explosion occurred. OK, that does it. I want a SPECIFIC reference as to who this "they" was, and precise times it was said. Links will do, but they have to contain the indicated information as stated.
Euclid They said that an explosion could happen at any moment and so that mandated the controlled burn. They said it was necessary in order to save lives and buildings from flying shrapnel if the explosion occurred.
OK, that does it.
I want a SPECIFIC reference as to who this "they" was, and precise times it was said. Links will do, but they have to contain the indicated information as stated.
"They" is NS Ry., and they said it in their accident report as I quoted in some posts up where it is highlighted in blue. I will check on the date of that report, but it had to be after the wreck and prior to the burn off.
In checking, it is the sixth post from the top of this page, second paragraph in blue, the report by the NS Ry., as follows:
Actually, they is the NTSB. That quote is from the NTSB preliminary report and not a Norfolk Southern description of the situation but an after the fact description of what happened.
CSX Robert Euclid They said: “…the temperature inside one tank car was still rising. This increase in temperature suggested that the vinyl chloride was undergoing a polymerization reaction, which could pose an explosion hazard.” When they said that, it had to follow that the possible explosion could happen any time in the future. So it is perfectly logical to say (according to them) an explosion could happen any moment following their announcement. From "which could pose an explosion hazard" to "an explosion could happen any moment"? That's quite a leap there. If I'm explaining a situation and I think an explosin could happen "at any moment," then I'm going to say it could happen at any moment. Euclid If it is not “could happen any moment” how much time would you assume you had before it did happen? What time increment of safety would you assume if you had to set up the breech and burn details near those tank cars? I would not assume anything, but again, since they proceeded with the burn off it certainly appears they thought they had time for that.
Euclid They said: “…the temperature inside one tank car was still rising. This increase in temperature suggested that the vinyl chloride was undergoing a polymerization reaction, which could pose an explosion hazard.” When they said that, it had to follow that the possible explosion could happen any time in the future. So it is perfectly logical to say (according to them) an explosion could happen any moment following their announcement.
From "which could pose an explosion hazard" to "an explosion could happen any moment"? That's quite a leap there. If I'm explaining a situation and I think an explosin could happen "at any moment," then I'm going to say it could happen at any moment.
Euclid If it is not “could happen any moment” how much time would you assume you had before it did happen? What time increment of safety would you assume if you had to set up the breech and burn details near those tank cars?
I would not assume anything, but again, since they proceeded with the burn off it certainly appears they thought they had time for that.
If you don't assume anything, why assume that the explosion would have happend at all? Their warning was only that an explosion could happen. They can't have it both ways.
Without a specific start point for their warning, the start point had to have begun the moment they issued the warning. You are willing to assume that was not the case, and yet you say you don't want to assume anything.
EuclidThey said: “…the temperature inside one tank car was still rising. This increase in temperature suggested that the vinyl chloride was undergoing a polymerization reaction, which could pose an explosion hazard.” When they said that, it had to follow that the possible explosion could happen any time in the future. So it is perfectly logical to say (according to them) an explosion could happen any moment following their announcement.
EuclidIf it is not “could happen any moment” how much time would you assume you had before it did happen? What time increment of safety would you assume if you had to set up the breech and burn details near those tank cars?
CSX Robert Euclid They said that an explosion could happen at any moment... Did they? I haven't seen that anywhere. I've seen where they said if they didn't do the burn off it would lead to an explosion, but nowhere have I seen that they said it could happen "at any moment." It appears that they felt they had enough time to get in there and do the burn off before it got to the point of exploding.
Euclid They said that an explosion could happen at any moment...
Did they? I haven't seen that anywhere. I've seen where they said if they didn't do the burn off it would lead to an explosion, but nowhere have I seen that they said it could happen "at any moment." It appears that they felt they had enough time to get in there and do the burn off before it got to the point of exploding.
EuclidThey said that an explosion could happen at any moment and so that mandated the controlled burn. They said it was necessary in order to save lives and buildings from flying shrapnel if the explosion occurred.
EuclidThey said that an explosion could happen at any moment...
tree68 Euclid Yes I know there was already an evacuation in place but, that was a limited range evacuation. I am referring to an evacuation to get everyone out of the range of possible shrapnel and the fallout of dangerous chemicals. Like this? From a press release by the state of Ohio... (EAST PALESTINE, Ohio)— Following new modeling information conducted this morning by the Ohio National Guard and U.S. Department of Defense, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro are ordering an immediate evacuation in a one-mile by two-mile area surrounding East Palestine which includes parts of both Ohio and Pennsylvania. https://governor.ohio.gov/media/news-and-media/east-palestine-update-evacuation-area-extended-controlled-release-of-rail-car-contents-planned-for-3-30-pm-02062023 Is this what you had in mind? I think they had it handled.
Euclid Yes I know there was already an evacuation in place but, that was a limited range evacuation. I am referring to an evacuation to get everyone out of the range of possible shrapnel and the fallout of dangerous chemicals.
Like this? From a press release by the state of Ohio...
(EAST PALESTINE, Ohio)— Following new modeling information conducted this morning by the Ohio National Guard and U.S. Department of Defense, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro are ordering an immediate evacuation in a one-mile by two-mile area surrounding East Palestine which includes parts of both Ohio and Pennsylvania.
https://governor.ohio.gov/media/news-and-media/east-palestine-update-evacuation-area-extended-controlled-release-of-rail-car-contents-planned-for-3-30-pm-02062023
Is this what you had in mind? I think they had it handled.
EuclidYes I know there was already an evacuation in place but, that was a limited range evacuation. I am referring to an evacuation to get everyone out of the range of possible shrapnel and the fallout of dangerous chemicals.
Euclid Is there any way that polymerization can start without heating the vinyl chloride?
You don't need heat for polymerization to occur, the reaction occurs much more slowly at low temperatures. Heating is done mainly to speed up reactions and getting the last ~2% of the monomers to link can take several times that it takes to go from 0% linked (unpolymerized) to ~98% linked (almost fully polymerized).
For a quick and dirty example of runaway polyemerization, take a full syringe set of Devcon 2 ton epoxy, put it in a small heat resistant disposable container and mix well. The stuff will "kick-off" (undergo very rapid polymerization) in 5 to 10 minutes, getting very hot in the process.
tree68 Euclid I don’t see how anyone can conclude that there was not massive exposure of the public to the fallout from the fireball cloud of chunky black smoke. They were aware. Air monitoring was already taking place - remember, there was already a fire before the planned controlled venting. The likely question was which was worse - putting the smoke in the air and letting it dissipate that way, or taking a chance on the mechanical damage from an explosion and the uncontrolled spreading of the product should an explosion occur. If they were really convinced that an explosion was imminent, I would expect them to have immediately focused on getting all people as far away as possible. That evacuation was already in place as the result of the original incident.
Euclid I don’t see how anyone can conclude that there was not massive exposure of the public to the fallout from the fireball cloud of chunky black smoke.
They were aware. Air monitoring was already taking place - remember, there was already a fire before the planned controlled venting. The likely question was which was worse - putting the smoke in the air and letting it dissipate that way, or taking a chance on the mechanical damage from an explosion and the uncontrolled spreading of the product should an explosion occur.
If they were really convinced that an explosion was imminent, I would expect them to have immediately focused on getting all people as far away as possible.
That evacuation was already in place as the result of the original incident.
EuclidI don’t see how anyone can conclude that there was not massive exposure of the public to the fallout from the fireball cloud of chunky black smoke.
My company carries monomers on a fairly regular basis and in 25 ton lots in tank trailers. Our standard practice demanded by our insurance provider is instead of breaching and burning off in any serious accident where fire gets involved is blanket extinguishing with either CO2 or water fogging or firefighting foam. The last thing you ever want to do is release a flammable liquid into a active fire especially something that tends to react exothermoic in how it reacts with itself. Someone failed firefighting 101 in this case and if it was someone at NS then Even King Kong hands aren't big enough for the pain they are about to go through.
Someone with a better Internet connection can download the molecular diagram of vinyl chloride, and how it polymerizes to polyvinyl chloride (aka PVC plastic).
Energy has to be put into vinyl chloride molecules before they will react with each other. (This would be pretty obvious from first Euclidean principles because otherwise you couldn't transport the bulk monomer in a tank car in the first place.) This is similar to the 'activation energy' in combustion, where you have to heat something with a match before it sustains combustion.
As it happens, when the two vinyl chloride molecules above actually polymerize, the new bonds are lower-energy (more stable) and the surplus energy is released as heat.
If enough molecules of vinyl chloride are polymerizing at the same time, the net heat released starts heating the bulk mass of unreacted vinyl chloride. Here a different characteristic of vinyl chloride becomes relevant -- a little heat results in a great deal of pressure increase. And pressure increase makes polymerization more likely.
This doesn't start as a runaway 'chain reaction' -- but if the temperature is observed to be rising, it won't be at a 'steady' rate, and there will come a point where the combination of temperature and pressure results in the latter exceeding the rupture strength of the car, if the car's relief safeties aren't effective. And vapor will form very promptly in all the unreacted volume of monomer when the car ruptures, so the breach will constitute a boiling-liquid expanding-vapor explosion. There will almost certainly be some ignition source within the expanding vapor cloud, and combustion will greatly increase the expansion of the developing BLEVE.
Now, one of the points of a 'controlled release' -- properly implemented -- is that bot the force and the expanding stream of material can be somewhat directed, away from populated areas or other cars of hazmat or whatever. Note that a command decision has to be made as to what happens to that expanding liquid cloud -- do you ignite it, or not? Vinyl chloride is a liquid at the ambient outside temperature during the accident, so if you don't ignite the BLEVE you'll have plenty of blobs of vinyl chloride falling out... into the ballast, into any nearby yards, into rivers and streams... and the water in the latter weighs less than the vinyl chloride, so the blobs sink to the bottom until the water temperature rises in the spring, or somebody stirs them up (and you get a sheen on the surface while most of the blob sinks back to the bottom). Meanwhile if some part of the BLEVE cloud is still a critical mixture or better and encounters a flame source, you'll still get the bang and the black smoke, but unexpectedly and now uncontrollably.
So you'll find very little consensus that the incident car, with the runaway temperature rise due to polymerization, both needed to have its pressure relieved and the release cloud 'flared'.
One 'real' issue is whether all five cars needed to be breached and flared simultaneously; a follow-on issue -- one which I personally think is going to get extensive attention -- is why the flaring took such a long time after breach, going by the drone video. You can clearly see extensive BLEVE-like expansion of the white unreacted material before the cloud turns black -- in my opinion proper flameholding ignition shouldn't have allowed that.
What's it's looking like more and more on a daily basis for everyone is this. NS instead of letting a certified hazmat contractor and firefighting combined attack on the fire get involved and put out the fire then remove the chemicals involved decided that blowing up 55k gallons of some of the nastiest crap used to burn. All so they could reopen the tracks faster.
EuclidThis source says that heat causes polymerization. Other sources say that polymerization causes heat.
This isn't an either/or, both are true. If it gets hot enough, it will trigger the polymerization and once the polymerization starts it will generate even more heat.
EuclidIf it was polymerization that was causing the heat to build in the one tank car, why was the polymerization only affecting one out of the five tank cars?
It's possible that the other cars didn't get hot enough to trigger the polymerization. Maybe they wern't as close to the fire? I've also read that the pressure relief valves on some cars failed, which would allow the pressure to build up and possibly allow the polymerization to initiate at a lower temperature.
Look here, it doesn't take more than 20 minutes actually googling industrial sources to figure out what polymerization is, and why for vinyl chloride it's exothermic.
The temperature in the tank car could be easily read by a laser-designated IR spot thermometer -- multiple readings over a space of several minutes would tell you the temperature, and there is a simple relationship for vinyl chloride (likewise easily found on the Web) that relates temperature to pressure.
If the temperature of a tankcar full of vinyl chloride is rising, it's either because it's heated externally or polymerization has been initiated. The formation of peroxides is not relevant here.
If the temperature is rising and the pressure is not actively venting, the rate of polymerization will continue increasing. That is going to result in additional heating of the unpolymerized monomer, and when you look at the temperature-pressure diagram for vinyl chloride monomer you will get some idea of the pressure this will develop inside the tank.
Some reports indicated there was an issue with the pressure relief valve on that particular car -- whether it was damaged or its relief capability inadequate, I don't know and will be waiting for the NTSB to confirm. Presumably there is one or more rupture disks on the car that will go before the internal pressure reaches tens of thousands of psi, and when that happens, you have the equivalent area of a controlled breach in... whatever direction the rupture disk happened to be pointing on a wrecked car. Again I expect the NTSB report to contain this information based on data obtained before the controlled breach.
The concern I have is with the controlled breach of all five cars together, which assumes that if the 'polymerizing' car exploded or was breached it would cause explosions in the others. Since I do not yet know how close the polymerizing car was to the others -- I see groups of TILX cars all the time, so it's possible this was such a block -- this again needs to wait for the NTSB report before we can assess it properly.
rdamonThe complaint seems pretty complete. It doesn't look like the cut and paste job from the Amtrak grade crossing incident in Missouri.
The complaint asks for reimbursement, and says why. Pretty plain vanilla.
There are certainly implications that NS's safety culture is lacking.
One bullet point says that a railcar was on fire 20 miles before the derailment. I think that's an overstatement, as it was the bearing, not the railcar itself.
The suit is hardly a surprise. It probably lays the groundwork for lesser parties to file similar suits.
There would probably be calls for his resignation if he didn't file.
The complaint seems pretty complete. It doesn't look like the cut and paste job from the Amtrak grade crossing incident in Missouri.
https://ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Files/Briefing-Room/News-Releases/2023-03-14-Norfolk-Southern-Complaint-FILED.aspx
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