DeWine, NFS stand by controlled burn

Dec 17, 2023

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Stephanie Elverd | May 11, 2023

EAST PALESTINE — It's been over three months since a Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine leading to the vent and controlled burn of vinyl chloride over the village days later, and while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro are distancing themselves from that decision, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Norfolk Southern are standing by it.

During a phone conversation on Tuesday, DeWine's press secretary Dan Tierney said the governor was faced with two bad choices but chose the one that was "least dangerous" as five derailed tank cars of vinyl chloride grew unstable as temperatures inside the tanks began to change and the integrity of pressure relief valves were called into question. DeWine believed at the time and still believes that an explosion was imminent.

"The options were to wait and allow the tankers to explode or perform the vent and controlled burn," Teirney said. "Gov. DeWine, along with those on the ground and federal and state agencies, including environmental agencies, agreed that venting the tankers and performing a burn of those chemicals was the best of two bad options."

Norfolk Southern echoed that sentiment on Wednesday.

"Norfolk Southern alerted incident command of the potential for a catastrophic explosion, and advised a controlled release as the safest option," the company said in a written response on Wednesday. "The final decision to execute that plan was made Monday morning by the incident commander after discussions and consultation with Gov. DeWine, Gov. Shapiro, Ohio state agencies, Pennsylvania state agencies, US EPA, us, and of course those local first responders. We have been clear since then that it was the right decision to make."

According to news reports three weeks after the derailment and again this week, the EPA claims it did not authorize the controlled burn, going as far to claim the agency wasn't even consulted in the decision to do so and Shapiro has claimed he was "misled." While the current stance of the EPA on the vent and burn paints the picture that the agency was somewhat blindsided by that decision, an EPA pollution/ incident report obtained by the Columbiana County Newspapers through a source close to the deliberations, contradicts that picture.

The EPA document, dated Feb. 6, 2023, states the agency was made aware of Norfolk Southern's concern that a BLEVE (boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion) was likely — so likely in fact that the "command post was relocated to the East Palestine Elementary School" and "air monitoring locations were planned in coordination with IMAAC models of a BLEVE occurring from the vinyl chloride tank car." IMACC stands for Interagency Modeling and Atmospheric Assessment Center, which coordinates and disseminates federal atmospheric dispersion modeling and hazard prediction products. The document goes on to state that "Due to a potential BLEVE situation, Norfolk Southern prepared to perform a vent and burn of the affected rail car. Norfolk Southern then determined that they would conduct a vent and burn of all five vinyl chloride tanks. Air monitoring locations were adjusted to address this change and additional areas were evacuated."

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan confirmed that the EPA was consulted in the decision to vent and burn during his first trip to East Palestine following the derailment.

"The controlled burn decision was made by both the governors of Pennsylvania and Ohio, in consultation with how EPA could respond to that in terms of monitoring the air and the impact, and so the state made a decision, and we were prepared for that," Regan said at a press conference in the village on Feb. 16.

During testimony given in hearings held by lawmakers at the federal and state levels in the wake of the rail disaster, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw has been adamant that the decision was made "by the unified command led by the incident commander at the site, East Palestine Chief Keith Drabick" and that unified command was established by a structure "established by the Department of Homeland Security."

In the hours leading up to the vent and burn, "unified command" was identified as local, state and federal agencies, including the federal and state EPA along with the Ohio National Guard, U.S. Department of Defense, Ohio Emergency Management Agency, local EMA, local Pennsylvania emergency services, DeWine, Shapiro and Norfolk Southern.

On Feb. 6, DeWine held a press conference where he announced the impending vent and burn and his order to evacuate which preceded it. He was joined by U.S. EPA's James Justice. Also present during the press conference was Ohio EPA's Kurt Kollar, who said "knocking down the smoke with water was ruled against" by the EPA because it would introduce more contamination into a larger area resulting in larger risks, further evidence that the agency's input was given and followed before the burn was conducted.

The decision to vent and burn was ultimately made when the risk of the tankers exploding rapidly increased. Tierney said no other recourse was plausible or possible when conditions on the ground began to change. Three months after the event, he said no other feasible resolution has been presented to DeWine. The tankers couldn't be drained because the vinyl chloride would have transformed into a gas as soon as the chemical was released from the tank cars. The tankers couldn't be moved because they were too unstable and would likely have detonated.

While the term "controlled burn" has been scrutinized, Tierney explained that by burning off the released chemical the toxicity of the vinyl chloride was reduced and the smoke more manageable because it would be directed vertically. The burn would also be performed at a precise time under precise weather conditions to make the path of the plume easier to predict.

The vent and burn didn't set precedence. It followed protocol created by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).

"The controlled burn followed a procedure that the Federal Railroad Administration established in 1994 for these types of circumstances. I can't talk to you about a hypothetical," Shaw said during Pennsylvania's Senate Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness Committee on March 20. "What I can tell you is that the concern at the time, the very real concern, was there would have been an uncontrolled, catastrophic explosion which would have shot vinyl chloride gas, which as you know is denser than air, throughout the community along with shrapnel. So all the relevant parties got together and modeled the dispersion."

The FRA procedure was born from earlier tragedies involving BLEVEs and derailments. In 1978, a BLEVE rocked Waverly, Tenn. — a town of 4,297 — two days after nearly half of a 92-car train derailed. Two of those cars contained liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). At first, the LPG-filled tankers did not appear compromised. A hazmat crew inspected the tankers and vouched for their stability, assuming they were double-walled tank cars, and the town was not evacuated. When a crane operator slipped a cable sling on the end of one of the tankers during cleanup, an ominous hiss of vapors escaped. No one had time to react and at 2:58 p.m on Feb. 24, the tanker exploded in a blue flash. Killed instantly, along with three others, were Waverly's fire chief Wilbur York, police chief Guy Barnett and state investigator Mark Belyew. Ten more victims, including four residents, later succumbed to severe burns, bringing the death toll to 16. Forty-three others were transported to burn centers in Kentucky, Ohio and Alabama. If the other tank car had exploded, the number of dead and injured would have been staggering. The disaster spurred then-President Jimmy Carter to follow through on the establishment of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1979 — an irony that is not lost on East Palestine as the village's derailment did not qualify for FEMA aid under the agency's current guidelines.

Waverly was not the first rail-related BLEVE and it wasn't the last. On Oct. 17, 1971, sixteen of a Missouri Pacific train's 82 cars derailed outside of Houston after running over a portion of a track that was being repaired. One of the derailed tank cars contained vinyl chloride which exploded moments after derailment. The Houston Fire Department arrived on the scene 20 minutes later with no idea of the danger hidden in the jumbled mess of box cars. Another 20 minutes would pass before a tanker of butadiene — a flammable gas used to make synthetic rubber which is extremely volatile when it contacts air — erupted in a thunderous roar. One firefighter was killed and 37 injured. Two years later, on July 5, 1973, a tank car filled with 33,500 gallons of propane, exploded in Kingsman, Ariz. Eleven firefighters and one civilian were killed while over 100 people sustained burns. In 1974, a BLEVE at the DeCatur Railyard in Illinois, killed seven people and injured 140. Over 600 additional buildings in a 1-square-mile radius were damaged from shrapnel and 80 homes were completely destroyed.