Norfolk Southern Conductor Killed In Third Ohio Incident This Year—Weeks After Massive Chemical Spill

Topline

A Norfolk Southern conductor was fatally struck by a dump truck in Cleveland Tuesday morning, the third incident involving a Norfolk Southern train in Ohio in just over a month, including a devastating derailment in East Palestine that led to a massive chemical leak—as the company comes under increased scrutiny and its CEO prepares to testify before the Senate on railway safety.

Key Facts

Louis Shuster, a 46-year-old conductor with the rail line, was killed when a dump truck struck him as a Norfolk Southern train moved through a railway crossing at a Cleveland-Cliffs steel plant, the company confirmed in a statement Tuesday morning.

The incident is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, while Norfolk Southern said it is working with local police and representatives from the Cleveland-Cliffs company to look into the details of the collision.

It comes just three days after a Norfolk Southern train derailed Saturday afternoon in the city of Springfield, Ohio—northeast of Dayton—causing 20 of the train’s 212 cars to become dislodged from the track in the rail line’s second major derailment in a month (officials said there were no injuries and no toxic material was onboard the train).

What To Watch For

Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw is set to testify before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Thursday. This week, the rail line announced a new plan to “immediately enhance the safety of its operations,” including initiatives to detect overheated wheel bearings. A National Transportation Safety Board preliminary report found the East Palestine train’s wheel bearings had entered the “final stage of overheat failure” as the train caught fire and came off the tracks.

Key Background

Norfolk Southern’s train derailment on February 3 in the rural town of East Palestine, near the border of Pennsylvania, has caused outrage from local residents and politicians from both sides of the aisle over the release of toxic chemicals like vinyl chloride into the air and water. In the month since the derailment, Republicans have harshly criticized the Biden Administration and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, arguing top administration officials like Buttigieg should have visited the site of the disaster earlier—Buttigieg admitted his visit three weeks after the incident should have come “sooner” but was the “norm.” White House officials then called on former President Donald Trump, who had visited East Palestine, to apologize for decisions he made during his term to block railway safety regulations, including an Obama-era proposal to require more advanced brakes on trains carrying hazardous materials (many of those regulations likely wouldn’t have applied to the train that derailed, the Washington Post found).

What We Don’t Know

Whether a bipartisan railway safety bill proposed by a group of Democratic and Republican senators will make it through Congress. The bill, called the Railway Safety Act, would enhance safety procedures for trains that carry hazardous material, increase fines on rail lines for safety violations and require trains to operate with two-person crews (the East Palestine train had three crew members onboard, including a trainee). The bill has the support of President Joe Biden, who urged lawmakers to “move quickly” to pass the legislation, though it faces opposition from some Republican lawmakers who argue Congress should wait for additional reviews into the derailment, including Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), who told Politico he did not want to see “more burdensome regulations” as a result of the incident.

Further Reading

EPA Orders Norfolk Southern To Pay For Cleanup After Disastrous Ohio Train Derailment (Forbes)

House Republicans Launch Probe Into Buttigieg’s East Palestine Derailment Response (Forbes)

Norfolk Southern Announces New Safety Plan To Help Prevent Future Train Derailments (Forbes)