Train Derailments - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 2/17/23

Who are the biggest players that keep us unsafe that we have to have safety wars? Well, this is no I get this plush and asked all the time, what what are we doing here? Well, we on one side, you have us rightful, however you want to define that victims put right right? Yeah. On the other hand, and is everything else that we have to deal with. It could be a workplace situation where you have no employers not following OSHA regulations, environmental regulations, things of that nature.

You can have government bureaucrats on the other hand. My opinion, my personal opinion is that this whole thing with sovereign immunity has to be revisited. Here, tell me what that means. What does that mean? Well, that means that they're not responsible for any of the decisions that they make on that after government, which allows a lot of people to make decisions that in private industry. If I made the same decision, I'd probably be in a federal prison somewhere. Okay,

But who's making who gets sovereign immunity? Basically emergency managers? Police officers are another one that we've heard a lot about that lately. Politicians, hands of agencies, government appointees, things of that nature. Unless it's specifically a loss, one says that there's they could be convicted of something. There is really nothing that that could happen, and when they do,

guess one as slap on the wrist. For example, in Michigan, Flint, Michigan with a lead in the water situation, there were criminal convictions there with that and a couple of them and they were just slaps on the wrists and they're

being appealed on everything else. Another one, you know, that's a serious one with environmental but we just had one here in the last couple of years in our neighborhood I live right now in southern New York, in the southern up state New York, but I grew up in central New Jersey where we had allegedly members of the Chris Christy administration a couple of years back, caused a huge traffic jam. Right, They eventually got convicted of stuff,

and then they got overturned. That was a whole community. It could be anything. The bridge kate think, all right, so right, okay, well this is super cool, So let me ask you then. The implication is, then, is somebody who's in charge of our safety could flagrantly make a bad call, right and and and know that they would never be held accountable for it, except maybe they might lose their gig. Other people could lose much more than that, Right, Okay,

that's essentially correct. And it's not only that when we're talking about the safety war, it's no. One of the things that I do with my program, and I get hire to do this my clients, is to coach their employees on how to be safe and to train them and also how to address a lot of the safety issues in their own workplace, their own environment, and everything else. Because a lot of times worthy barrier that to our own safety. A lot of times there's incentence in the

workplace and things of that nature. So and sometowed us being advocates for ourselves. OSHA has a huge program called the Outreach Training Program where there's four different areas that you could go into. I have credentials in all four areas, one of them being disaster to response and when they've tried to educate the public, and it's been a very successful program over the years, but still needs some improvement and things of that nature. So it's us sometimes too.

On the other side, our attitudes are lack of awareness. Sometimes again, like my wife points out to me, not everybody is into this, Jimmy. You know, yeah, now I'm into it, And I think this is what's really interesting is so when you brought up Flint, Michigan, that's what I'm thinking about these power Palestine. I don't care. I'm just gonna tell you what I mean. I'm I'm I'm not even in the bleachers, right, I'm not in the stadium.

I'm a million miles away. But I don't. Part of me just says I don't care that they're testing five hundred houses clean right now. That wasn't the story in Flint. It was an accumulative problem, and then when it got worse and worse and worse, then it's like then the iceberg flips, right. And so that's what I'm a little bit worried about with the people, the good people of East Palestine, is they're gonna get written off as well.

We did the testing, All is good. Now. I heard somebody just told me on Twitter, thank you Jeff, that FEMA has finally agreed to come down and take a look at it. Okay, great, But even they can just go, well, that's enough, we've done. We've done the testing, We've satisfied even Jim posles four questions, and now we're done. But

five years from now is when the problem starts. I see a situation here, and by the way, everything is said is one hundred percent relevant here, all right, I see what's going What if this is handled, No, especially with some of the statements from the EPA administrator, this is going to be alike similar to another Love canal situation right into that. There's going to be ongoing monitoring here.

I think the only the final resolution here, and it maybe ten twenty years down the line, is that this whole town gets condemned up to a certain point, and from there are going to be property buyouts because I tell you what, even with the testing in the homes, all right, No, I'll give at a little bit technical here. So you have this snake controlled demolition here, this controlled explosion here and fire what probably was the right thing to do with when you look at the nature of

the chemicals here? Well, now what do you do in the houses? There's residues left behind possibly, right, and now you're going to be sampling for those, whatever those are. The question is now comes out what's safe? Like I said previously, that's a legal definition. So for example, in air, for example, I'll give you a couple of statistics here. Can't do too many because I got too many questions,

were good? Give me one, good one? Okay? So right now, for air contamination in the workplace, there are five hundred official exposure limits from the government, right, i'll call permissible exposure limits. All right, how many chemicals do you think are in the workplace? Possibly? Yeah, eighty thousand I've heard,

and there's not an exact number. So now we have not a lot of exposure limits versus all of these contaminants, and who's going to determine what's safe and what's not all quick example for uh no, uh for lead for example, for lead based paint issues and things in that nature. They have standards for that for what's allowable in the house. Well,

that's a good example. But that's good for But that's a good example because at one point, lead paint, asbestos, you know, asbis tile, all these things, at one point had been deemed safe and it really takes decades to prove that they aren't. So let me just back back to the explosion thing. So here it was East Palestine. By the way, do we know the cause of the

crash yet? Do I? Did I miss? There are a couple of us theories here on this where apparently twenty miles prior to this happening, Uh, there were there was a probably a security camera or some type of closed circuit camera system picked up the train and apparently one of allegedly right, I haven't seen the footage. Allegedly one

of the wheels was starting to fail. Um one of these cars, all right, And what happens is the way things are set up when they hit the brakes, not all the brakes go off at one time, and this often causes a derailment. This is one of the leading causes from what I've read and from what I've heard inside the industry, of a derailment. So one of the solutions that they're going to be looking at is electronically controlled pneumatic breaks where everything's able to break at relatively

the same time a minimum lag. Right, that's one thing. And also an acoustic detector is uh no, because these things make noises. If you're at go on it, it makes a noise. But the thing is this train was like two miles long, right, one hundred and forty some cars, one hundred and fifty cars and uh no. And there's been other arguments that things are undermanned, which is part

of what the almost was last year. That was one of the issues right as a results, So the big thing is this therek going the NTSP is going to be doing an investigation here and hopefully they're going to get to the bottom of this, and hopefully we're going to have good policy recommendations and changes. The worst thing that we could that could happen is a knee jerk reaction or a political a Look, I didn't writing about this and guess no, the twenty twenty four elections are

coming up. Yeah, we call it like a like a hasty piece or you know, a hasty resolution. All right, So so here here's what. First of all, I mean, I think the average car has more idiot lights that are going off on sensors, on wheels. Right. I got one going off on my tire right now because in the change of weather, I had a slight change in my PSI and one of my tires, right, So it's showing up like if they if they can do that

for a Volkswagon, for God's sake, for a trade. There are something like three to four thousand different safety features in a car thanks to Ralph Nader who was a right an advocate, sure advocate and Coast to Coast guests, right, yeah, uh what so Yeah, I think adding more things getting the human element out of this and adding more and more automated things to eliminate out to eliminate human error, and the human factor is probably where this is going well,

where it needs especially we're talking about a wobbly wheel for God's sakes, all right. So anyway to hang on to that thought, if we are at a point we're blowing something up is the safest response, but something is primal is exploding, it is what we think will be the safest response moving forward. I think that represents you may be right, maybe the best solution, But it seems really silly that they're like, yep, better dynamiter, you know. I mean, like that's if that's really what it comes

down to, then we haven't progressed much. But even the even on the air and the chemical part, it's not just the town that might be affected. But again, if it gets into the water supply, or it gets down river, how many other towns are we talking about that are going to be affected by that? You know, that that slick that came down the river that was killing all

the fish. I mean this, how many parts per billion does it take to make people ill and to start affecting you know, say reproduction or women who are pregnant or whatever. That's that that varies. And then they have what are called LV fifties and LC fifties that stands or legal does fifty percent or lethal concentration and uh those are done on animals and how they equate to humans. Again, that's not really ethical to try to figure out what sure to kill someone, So they try to do different

calculations and strapolated. Yeah, right with that, So that's another question. The other thing is this, like we found that with COVID and other things, we could kill me, may not kill you. Right. So it's very difficult for them to come up with these numbers, is can they Yeah, they can come up with I can come up with the numbers. But no, what No, I don't think that's going to sell good right the public? And I think what I think, that's what we're looking at when we're looking at it

East Palestine. And then when they say there's a thousand a year of these is people will start thinking, Okay, wait what and if it's a thousand, even if you divided it by you know, as you said, it's like let's go three a day, you know, I mean there's a lot of direct I was in a train derail New Ones. I was in a passenger train derailment that a train got derailed because it was so cold it was it was well below zero about three days in

a row. It was like fifteen twenty below zero. And I'm taking a commuter train back from college and one of the either the ties I don't know. I think it was actually the rail itself cracked and it meant that the train just kind of tipped over gently, fortunately because we were going so slowly through South Chicago. We were coming up from the Southern and Chicago, and it just it just like the train was moving five to ten miles an hour whatever it was, it cracked and

then it just fell over. And everybody was fine, which was good, and not every train car fell over, but most of them did as a result of that derailment. And you think, well, okay, that's a weather element. You can't couldn't really predict that, and I don't think that

that was necessarily human error. But I'm really worried about some of the train crashes that we've talked about where there was drugs involved, cell phone involved, people who are calling you, like the famous commuter the you know, the Amtrak train crash that happened because somebody who's on a cell phone. Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one am Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am dot com for more