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(Editor's note: This is the second installment of a four-story series focused on the National Transportation Safety Board's investigative hearing that took place in East Palestine Thursday and Friday.)
EAST PALESTINE -- The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) held a rare in-field investigative hearing over two-days in East Palestine as the agency's inquiry into the cause of February's Norfolk Southern train derailment continued Thursday and Friday in the high school gymnasium. The investigation also considered what needs to be done to prevent a similar derailment from occurring.
The two-day probe was divided into four sessions -- with two being held each day -- zeroing in on what emergency responders faced that night, the details behind the decision to perform a controlled burn of vinyl chloride in the days following the accident, the role the integrity of wheel bearings and functionality of wayside detectors played and overall tank car safety.
After opening with an examination of the initial response, the second session turned attention to the events that followed and was titled "Circumstances that Led to the Decision to Vent and Burn Five Vinyl Chloride Tank Cars."
East Palestine Fire Chief Keith Drabick gave the NTSB and those who attended the second session insight into how little time he was given to make that decision as daylight was dwindling, weather patterns were shifting and temperatures were changing. After being told of the rising threat, Drabick met with Gov. Mike DeWine.
"Thirteen minutes, that's how much time we had," Drabick said. "When we got taken down to that room, we were told we had 13 minutes to make that decision."
The decision to vent five tank cars and burn over a million pounds of vinyl chloride was made to prevent what was being described as a "potentially catastrophic explosion" as experts on the ground became concerned with temperature readings on the tankers and the pressure relief valves on the cars, seemingly stopped working. Fears began to grow that pressure was building up in the cars and polymerization -- a chemical reaction through which a large number of monomer molecules react together to form a polymer -- was occurring or could occur. Experts on scene were concerned polymerization would trigger a BLEVE -- a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion.
That was what Drabick was told on Feb. 6 and that is what he believed when he, as incident commander, officially okayed the vent and burn
"It got to the point when they (Norfolk Southern) felt that was the option left. It was portrayed to us and expressed to us that the cars were going through polymerization based on the signs they were showing and the material we had to reference," he said. "The final yes was given by me, based on the consensus by everybody in the unified command that there were no other options."
Those on the ground, including Drew McCarty and Charles "Chip" Day of Specialized Professional Services (a Norfolk Southern contractor) and Robert Wood, system manager hazardous materials at Norfolk Southern, all testified that their concerns grew as the temperature inside one tank car continued to rise and that the increase in temperature suggested that the vinyl chloride was undergoing polymerization reaction and could explode.
Paul Stancil of NTSB challenged that during his questioning.
"Would you agree, that with the exception of the one spike in temperature during the middle of the night, the temperature was on a downward or decreasing trend?" Stancil asked. "Why was this tank car still a concern when the temperature of the tank car was decreasing?"
McCarty said he wasn't sure if the readings were accurate and testified that he felt the pressure relief valves were malfunctioning.
"Something either gummed it up or mechanically messed it up, and either way, it was incredibly dangerous," McCarty testified.
He went on to say that "the moment the car behaved the way it did Saturday, we made an absolute safety decision for the good of the community and the good of our people that we were not going to commit people welding on those cars."
Paul Thomas of OxyVinyls, which owned more than 700,000 pounds of vinyl chloride on the derailed train, offered conflicting testimony. He testified that no data indicated that polymerization was happening or would happen and said that information was relayed to Norfolk Southern more than once.
"On three different occasions, we expressed the belief that it wasn't occurring," Thomas said. "We expressed we didn't believe it was, but, more important, here is how you know to protect your folks. If you could get a temperature, it will tell if polymerization is happening."
Thomas testified his company did not recommend the vent and burn and insisted he communicated to Norfolk Southern that the vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) would not likely cause an explosion.
"We made it clear, based on our expertise of the chemical properties of our product, that stabilized VCM would be unlikely to spontaneously polymerize," he said.
That opinion was never passed on to Drabick, who testified that he was unaware of Oxy Vinyl's stance before making the decision.
Despite Oxy Vinyl's assertion that polymerization wasn't likely, Norfolk Southern still advocated to perform the vent and burn as a matter of public safety. According to Wood's testimony, the railroad's "concern grew quickly, because an uncontrolled explosion of a tank car would be catastrophic."
The vent and burn of five vinyl chloride cars was ordered and the evacuation zone was expanded to a 1- by 2-mile area. Trenches were dug to contain the released vinyl chloride liquid while it vaporized and burned. The controlled venting began about 4:40 p.m. on Feb. 6 and continued for several hours.
selverd@mojonews.com