EuclidWhy didn’t that hearing ask about the risk of unburned vinyl chloride falling back down from the cloud? He asked a lot of other questions about the cloud, but not that one.
Perhaps they did not think there was a realistic possibility of that happening.
EuclidSo, I say just get the people and pets out of the range of danger. Cool the tank cars with external spray.
How will you know if the tanks are leaking anyway? What happens when VC mixes with the water mist?
EuclidBut the plus side is that no giant chemical mushroom cloud goes up and spreads uncertainty about its potential health risk. And the cleanup goes forward in a workman like manner with the proper tools. Create a system that can deal with the problem with no excuses, even if there are some shades of gray.
Explosion may still happen. As far as cleaning up in a workman like manner, you me like dealing with all the contaminated water created from spraying, and all the contaminated soil, groundwater and surface water also created as a consequence of that spraying? Who says your solution has no unintended consequences, or gray area?
EuclidCreate a system that can deal with the problem with no excuses, even if there are some shades of gray.
Have you ever commanded an incident? Of any sort?
Didn't think so. And it shows.
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...
Manager: "writes you up for manual control"
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
BaltACD zugmann Euclid Create a system that can deal with the problem with no excuses, even if there are some shades of gray. All problems would be easy to solve if we could just create a system that solves them! "Why didn't I think of that?!!" Isn't that what AI is supposed to do?
zugmann Euclid Create a system that can deal with the problem with no excuses, even if there are some shades of gray. All problems would be easy to solve if we could just create a system that solves them! "Why didn't I think of that?!!"
Euclid Create a system that can deal with the problem with no excuses, even if there are some shades of gray.
All problems would be easy to solve if we could just create a system that solves them!
"Why didn't I think of that?!!"
Isn't that what AI is supposed to do?
Train: derails
Trip Op: "manual control needed!"
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACDHindsight is always 20/20. Foresight is a different matter.
And rarely is it a "black and white" situation. There are those darned shades of gray.
Hindsight is always 20/20. Foresight is a different matter.
EuclidDid anything happen in the derailment and overall cleanup that could have exposed either residents or workers to inhalation or direct contact with vinyl chloride? That’s a yes or no question.
Initially 'fortunately', none of the five cars of monomer was breached, or had piping initially leaking dangerous amounts of the material. The NS contractors noted that the piping on the cars that might have been used or adapted to drain the contents was inaccessible or damaged beyond practical use. They also noted that at least some of the cars were affected by serious nearby 'pool fires' and as a result the cars with functioning PRDs ran a continuous, reigniting low-grade fire within the valve housing, which may have burned adjacent to the seals and spool of the valves for what might have been days. Conversely the low-level burn torched or pyrolyzed any vinyl chloride expelled from the cars, preventing environmental or 'downwind' contamination while the venting was going on with flameholding.
As Tree noted, 'standard procedure' for vinyl chloride is to treat it as a potential explosion hazard until fully established otherwise. OxyVinyls established early that the monomer in the cars was stabilized and that they thought this precluded the chance of progress of polymerization, certainly to the point of rupture or explosion. On the other hand, there were what seemed like clear indications of overheat conditions not related to fire (and presumably any radiation heating of the tank metal by pool fires would have decreased in the 20-degree ambient temperature). The recorded temperature graph reveals not only that the temperature spiked to 138 degrees at the time the decision was apparently reached to schedule the breach-and-burn, but that it decreased and then sharply spiked even higher a little later. At this point you will notice not that the temperature was 'going down' but that there is a fairly extended gap in the data -- how this could possibly occur when it was one of the most critical things to track and record, I have no idea, but perhaps something in the hearing can explain it away. But do not be placated into thinking that because the graph then drops and becomes a horizontal 'continuous-temperature' line, it's evidence against polymerization. Look at the vertical scale: the line stabilizes at about 127 degrees, two degrees higher than the danger point for process polymerization. If the graph had been drawn relative to 0 degrees, this would have been established more clearly.
Is it really necessary for a worker to go crawling around in the mud and chemicals in order to hot tap a tank car?
There is certainly a rich "field for the development of new tools" for this sort of thing. But who would pay for their development, construction, and maintenance, and how would you arrange to get them on the necessary short notice to where they were needed, and stage them with appropriate recovery equipment?
If tank car temperature is an all-important factor, why is there no way to read the entire temperature distribution in a tank car?
The problem discussed in the testimony was that, by the time this sort of work might have been undertaken (just as it would for hot-tapping) the valve excursion pictured in exhibit D-53 went off and scared the hell out of the contracting crew working adjacent to it. Supposedly that valve was blowing at high rate for 60 to 70 minutes, if I understood the discussion properly. This with no pool fire or other obvious source to produce that level of mass flow at valve-activation pressure.
I cannot imagine getting it there next to those tank cars with so many unanswered questions about what was going on.
Expect to see them pilloried for that attitude. I expect to see it claimed that they should have been selfless or 'thought of all the others' and worked as a sort of UXB squad until all the vinyl chloride had been safely extracted. It is difficult to conclude... in hindsight... that they shouldn't have persevered with hot-tapping rather than detonating all five cars simultaneously. But that's easy to see after the fact while sitting in a comfortable chair hundreds of miles away.
It seems to me that two things are needed: 1 A plan and procedure for the immediate evacuation of all people and pets living in the dangerous proximity...
2 A wide range of specialist workers and all of the technical equipment to do the cleanup/containment/recovery job safely as quickly as possible.
Euclid1 A plan and procedure for the immediate evacuation of all people and pets living in the dangerous proximity.
Excerpt from ERG Guide 116(P) [Gases - Flammable (Unstable); polymerization hazard]: IMMEDIATE PRECAUTIONARY MEASURE: Isolate spill or leak area for at least 100 meters (330 feet) in all directions. LARGE SPILL: Consider initial downwind evacuation for at least 800 meters (1/2 mile).
Given that every location is different, a specific plan is virtually impossible to create. You draw your circle on a map and set out to deal with it.
Most areas have at least a rudimentary plan, and will execute it given the resources - ie, people. Given a population of about 5,000, I'm willing to bet they have exactly one police officer on duty at a given time. EPFD has 20-30 members - who are going to busy trying to sort out and mitigate the incident.
Some areas now have the ability to do a "reverse 9-1-1" call to people in the affected area wherein landline numbers in the designated area are called with necessary information. Likewise, the appropriate media is generally notified.
For some interesting reading, go to the East Palestine Fire Department's FB page.
OM:
1. You nicely nailed the commander's use of passive voice as a dead giveaway. People use it to either sound objective when they are not or to avoid responsibility.
2. You have more patience than I in listening to that hearing.
charlie hebdoA lot of finger pointing and dodging of responsibility. Typical.
I haven't gotten to the 'expert witness' yet, but an adjunct professor would be at the same level of education as a tenured professor. In short, any 'lacunae' of his understanding of the organic chemistry of monomers could be easily remedied with the professional discipline he will have had. While it is possible that he's describing things based only on his status as a degree'd person, I doubt that anyone interested in "teaching" would voluntarily claim expertise without review.
Wood of NS was interesting in not blaming the hired consultants or the people from Oxy for contributing to the decision. For some reason he seems to have been briefed to keep making statements about NS 'accepting responsibility for the incident' which do not really jibe with his testimony, especially when he starts describing things and almost forgets he's in a formal hearing.
In my opinion, the incident commander has almost hanged himself in his initial testimony. Anyone who uses the passive voice about blame who was the named incident commander at the time... let's just say I see avoidance and an intent to throw other people under the bus.
An interesting repeated detail was that the contractor's testimony involves repeated invocation of the idea that their personnel's safety was paramount. This became particularly evident with respect to hot-tapping the cars as an alternative to breach.
An interesting detail that may take on more importance as the hearing progresses is something Wood noted: in the 'unified command' meeting in which apparently the decision to breach was decided upon, he as NS representative was only present at the beginning, and had to leave for a NTSB meeting before any decisive action was decided upon.
Something had to produce the PRD release that scared experienced wreck consultants (you can see the result in the aforementioned exhibit D-53, and apparently the release was this violent for a protracted time). Note also the discussion, whether an 'excuse' or not, that the PRDs on the cars had been wreathed in flame for the duration of the pool fires, and had shown visible flame around the housing after the pool fires were said to have gone out. Mehtion of cooked O-ring seals allowing vapor bypass has been made at a couple of points so far; it remains to be established how much this influenced the decisions not to approach the cars closely or attempt to remove some of the jacketing and insulation to get a more effective temperature reading.
When looking at the graph of time vs. temperature, note the ordinate on the graph. In 20-degree ambient temperature the scanned temperature of the most 'involved' car spikes twice, then enters a period of 'no data', then is observed to seemingly stabilize for a while before the controlled breach is executed. But note the ordinate on the graph: the car temperature never falls below 127, while polymerization is noted as a risk above the 125 degree level.
A lot of finger pointing and dodging of responsibility. Typical.
Folks, the NTSB hearing is online for anyone to view.
Day 1:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N-nBIg516b0&t=24s&pp=2AEYkAIB
Day 2:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x-QON0Tel1Q&t=4s
The panel discussing the decision to vent & burn, consisting of witnesses from incident command, NS, NS's contractors, OxyVinyl, and a chemical expert* starts about 5:34 (that's 5 hours and 34 minutes) into Day 1.
How about watching it before libeling people and promoting conspiracy theories on the Trains forums. If you don't want to put in the time, then wait until the full NTSB report comes out in a couple years.
Dan
* To be a little bit pedantic, the expert witness is not exactly a "professor" as some have said. He is a retired industry researcher who is an "adjunct professor", which usually means someone who has a Ph. D and teaches a class at a university on a semester-to-semester contract. Doesn't make him any less of an expert, just not necessarily an academic.
For a possible test of the Vinal Choloride the NTSB, FRA. and others will have to go to the receiver of the Product(s) and take enough samples of exatly same product. Then in independent labatories subject the samples to various tests that will verify actual charasteristics of the VC at various temperatures and pressures. Then compare results with manufacturer published lab results.
If results same good. If not then who knows what/?
tree68 Overmod Note that this can and perhaps should be conducted in parallel without going through 'incident command'... Unified incident command means all the players are essentially in the same room. If OxyVinyls was on scene, they should have had a rep in the command post. If EPA didn't have anything resembling realtime information, and OxyVinyls didn't have any realtime information, who did? Anyone? Bueller? ICS shouldn't be a bureaucratic impediment. The idea behind unified ICS is that everyone is on the same sheet of music. I'm not sure that was the case here. At the risk of sounding like I'm slamming someone here - the incident commander may have run square into the Peter Principle. The incident may well have been beyond his level of expertise. Running your run-of-the-mill third alarm structure fire is far removed from what was going on in East Palestine. Kind of like taking your average branch manager and telling him he is now running the entire corporation.
Overmod Note that this can and perhaps should be conducted in parallel without going through 'incident command'...
Unified incident command means all the players are essentially in the same room. If OxyVinyls was on scene, they should have had a rep in the command post.
If EPA didn't have anything resembling realtime information, and OxyVinyls didn't have any realtime information, who did? Anyone? Bueller?
ICS shouldn't be a bureaucratic impediment. The idea behind unified ICS is that everyone is on the same sheet of music. I'm not sure that was the case here.
At the risk of sounding like I'm slamming someone here - the incident commander may have run square into the Peter Principle. The incident may well have been beyond his level of expertise. Running your run-of-the-mill third alarm structure fire is far removed from what was going on in East Palestine.
Kind of like taking your average branch manager and telling him he is now running the entire corporation.
HAZMAT incidents from their start are well beyond the training of 99% of the first responders of ALL responding elements - Fire & Rescue, Railroad, State & Local governmental responders.
No one responding 'wants to admit' that what they are facing is beyond their training and abilities - that is until they make a wrong decision and they have to answer for the decision they made - then you get into circular finger pointing.
OvermodNote that this can and perhaps should be conducted in parallel without going through 'incident command'...
In this context, 'access to real-time information' largely means that no one at OxyVinyls was being provided with periodically-updated readings of temperature or other information about the state of that car, or the other four.
Perhaps a clear recommendation the NTSB might make, or a NPRM include, is that a manufacturer, owner, or even a clearinghouse like CHEMTREC be provided in "as near realtime as possible" with all the information first responders are capturing and using in their incident response. Note that this can and perhaps should be conducted in parallel without going through 'incident command' or any political or other watchdogging that might delay or censor it.
MidlandMike Euclid ... The EPA also confirmed that there was no danger of explosion. So where did this dire warning come from? Nobody seems to know. No verification was sought or executed. Once the original consensus was achieved, no further listening, skepticism, or verification was needed or wanted because a decision had been made. EPA said they had no real time information, so how could they have affected the incident commands decision. As part of my hazmet training, regarding unified incident command procedures, as I recall they do a review afterward to see if it was appropriate and if procedures need adjustment in furure incidents.
Euclid ... The EPA also confirmed that there was no danger of explosion. So where did this dire warning come from? Nobody seems to know. No verification was sought or executed. Once the original consensus was achieved, no further listening, skepticism, or verification was needed or wanted because a decision had been made.
EPA said they had no real time information, so how could they have affected the incident commands decision. As part of my hazmet training, regarding unified incident command procedures, as I recall they do a review afterward to see if it was appropriate and if procedures need adjustment in furure incidents.
Euclid... The EPA also confirmed that there was no danger of explosion. So where did this dire warning come from? Nobody seems to know. No verification was sought or executed. Once the original consensus was achieved, no further listening, skepticism, or verification was needed or wanted because a decision had been made.
blue streak 1 blue streak 1 Why should we trust this manufacturer of Vinyl Chloride? As said by others . Listen , be skeptical and verify. I have buried more than one person who believed the mis information by cigarette makers.
blue streak 1 Why should we trust this manufacturer of Vinyl Chloride?
blue streak 1
Why should we trust this manufacturer of Vinyl Chloride?
blue streak 1Why should we trust this manufacturer of Vinyl Cloride?
Remember, they added a pleasant scent to carbon tetrachloride so the workers would be less offended by it.
Euclid blue streak 1 Why should we trust this manufacturer of Vinyl Chloride?
Euclid What do they have to gain by saying their product will not explode if the truth is that is can explode?
What do they have to gain by saying their product will not explode if the truth is that is can explode?
As an example, ammonium nitrate was thought to quite safe and was/is relatively safe in small quantities. Then came Texas City.
What do they have to gain by saying their product will not explode if the truth is that is can explode? If they say it cannot explode and it does explode, wouldn't they be increasing their liability by saying it can't explode? I look for the motive, and in this case, I see no motive for them to lie, and a strong motive to tell the truth.
Euclid MidlandMike Euclid The core issue in East Palestine and the greater region of Ohio and Pennsylvania is the degree and effect of residents’ exposure to vinyl chloride due to the open burn of five tank car loads of the chemical for the purpose of disposing of it. ... The purpose of the burn was so that people wouldn't be exposed to vinyl chloride. In addition to reducing the chance of explosion, burning it would convert it into other products (HCl, phosgene) while also bad, but at least combustion heats the products causing them to rise into the atmosphere and disperse to a lower concentration. Vinyl chloride is a heaver-than-air gas that could have been a disaster if it escaped unburned. That is definitely the consensus view of the group of officials that decided on the burn-off. But the manufacturer of the vinyl chloride and the EPA disagree with that consensus conclusion. I see no reason to believe that the consensus members had any expertise that would qualify their conclusion. Clearly, they were put into a position of panic in which there was only the burn-off option. The manufacturer of the vinyl chloride disagreed and told them there was no chance of polymerization and no indication of a pressure rise trend. The NTSB provided the temperature logs that showed no rising trend. Was there any consultation with a contractor who could come on site and offer to off-load the product and remove it from the site in an orderly and safe manner? If not, why not? And why was the advice of the vinyl chloride manufacturer rejected by the consensus? For that matter, why was the consensus not informed of the decision to add four more carloads to the one carload that was originally thought to be the only problem? Who made that decision to add four more carloads without any approval? If you read/listen to the two links I posted at the start of this thread, it is not hard to conclude that there is another explanation for the rush to do an open burn-off.
MidlandMike Euclid The core issue in East Palestine and the greater region of Ohio and Pennsylvania is the degree and effect of residents’ exposure to vinyl chloride due to the open burn of five tank car loads of the chemical for the purpose of disposing of it. ... The purpose of the burn was so that people wouldn't be exposed to vinyl chloride. In addition to reducing the chance of explosion, burning it would convert it into other products (HCl, phosgene) while also bad, but at least combustion heats the products causing them to rise into the atmosphere and disperse to a lower concentration. Vinyl chloride is a heaver-than-air gas that could have been a disaster if it escaped unburned.
Euclid The core issue in East Palestine and the greater region of Ohio and Pennsylvania is the degree and effect of residents’ exposure to vinyl chloride due to the open burn of five tank car loads of the chemical for the purpose of disposing of it. ...
The purpose of the burn was so that people wouldn't be exposed to vinyl chloride. In addition to reducing the chance of explosion, burning it would convert it into other products (HCl, phosgene) while also bad, but at least combustion heats the products causing them to rise into the atmosphere and disperse to a lower concentration. Vinyl chloride is a heaver-than-air gas that could have been a disaster if it escaped unburned.
I went back and read the two links you provided.
EuclidI see no reason to believe that the consensus members had any expertise that would qualify their conclusion. ...
From your Politico link:
The unified command consisting of first responders, railroad officials and hazardous materials experts on the scene faced with burning the chemicals or risking an explosion that could have sent shrapnel knifing into the surrounding neighborhood, painted a picture of a difficult decision that had to be made in less than the amount of time it takes to cook a frozen pizza — just 13 minutes.
As far as the link from Status Coup, that EPA member didn't know he was being recorded and may have been spouting off and embellishing. The EPA said they had no real-time information on the situation.
While the first responders might not be experts on stabilized vinyl chloride, they have extensive hazmet training, and are experts in public safety, which they base their decisions on. I worked in the oil fields for 35 years, where there are lots of things that burn, explode, and otherwise cause you to stop breathing, and I have worked with first responders on some of those situations. I give them the benifit of the doubt.
Euclid I have seen quotes by others such as the Governor of Pennsylvania that makes that same allegation.
In my opinion, since this thread is nothing more than a series of opinions:
The only things that change more than the winds that blow the burning chemicals are the political winds. I think there's a lot of backtracking, amnesia, maybe some outright untruthfulness regarding of what really happened and who wanted what before what was decided became unpopular a few days later. (in simpler terms, a lot of covering of posteriors after the fact). "I was for it before I was against it", etc.
Drawing conclusions from a few articles seems pretty pointless. I don't think we'll ever know what really went down.
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