Rumbling Risks: Unveiling the Layers of Industrial Calamities and Railways

Unveiling Industrial Calamities

Big calamities like derailing of the Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, OH create shock waves. They are spectacular—toxic spills, fires, explosions, billowing smoke, fish kills, community evacuations. But rather than unpredictable, they’re more what my dad used to call “accidents waiting to happen.” Yet government agencies wait to react till afterward. Department of Justice and EPA now sue NS. National Transportation Safety Board now investigates. The State of Ohio also now sues NS for projected years-long cleanup, health, and environmental monitoring costs. And I ponder the intersection of corporate decision making and risk tolerance. And why it always seems to take a stunning failure to finally spark action. And whether the impulse can last long enough to lead to meaningful change.

Childhood in the “Asbestos Capital”

My first experience of industrial risk came early, only age 8, and on the receiving end, though I didn’t know then. I mix memory with research here. Thetford Mines, QE, Canada, not even a city, but as per Wikipedia crowned with booster titles “Asbestos Capital of the World,” aka “City of White Gold.” A grainy old b & w photo depicts the reality of miserable work: miners chip away in an open pit. They blasted too. Back then, nobody mentioned the environment, let alone public health. I don’t remember air thick with floating fibers but do recall dust clogging mesh of screen doors. Not a long enough stay to damage family lungs, but I still carry embedded the French public-address spiel circulated to promote games. “Baseball, baseball ce soir. League Provincial.” And culture shock when volatile fans threw things if they disagreed with umpires. They probably needed relief and release. Language differences and neo-colonialism can sour labor relations: mining companies mostly American like Johns Manville, miners Francophone. A few years earlier, they’d struck for a modest raise and elimination of asbestos dust in mines and processing plants. So, they already understood the threats—asbestosis, chronic lung disease. They lost, stonewalled by companies with a vested interest in denying and delaying. Safety costs money, though this was after what had to be boom years, fire-retardant asbestos installed in every “Liberty Ship” the US built during WWII. Later came the pile on of lawsuits over mesothelioma and lung cancer among sailors and shipyard workers that forced JM into bankruptcy. So, there was a kind of limited justice after the fact, but not for the place now tagged by Canadian Mortgages, Inc. as the country’s worst place to live. Residents though live in denial common to areas reliant on extractive industries.

Family and Railroad Memories

Thoughts of trains summon memories of my grandfather, a line crew foreman for the B&O Railroad. Two photos bracket his career. Early 20th century, young, in company uniform with cap at a jaunty angle, he and a partner ride a pump car to check track. In the 1940s, over 50 and in charge, in overalls and slouch hat, he stands with his team. I imagine him in the rail yard I observe across a chain link fence from the park where I walk, though it’s a late machine-age, rather than steam punk, scene. Engines darkened by diesel fumes hulk like panting beasts. Uncoupled tank cars marked with colorful, but undecipherable, graffiti skim along tracks, as if on their own power or by magic. But it’s gravity, choreographed by dwarfed humans like those inserted to give photos a sense of scale. Nonchalant pros, they hang off the sides, stand what strikes me as far too close. I wonder how long it takes to ease nerves. I spot some NS engines. Is it my imagination or are they dirtier, more neglected, than others? An electronic sign shows the number of days without incident. But no details, so not sure I feel reassured.

Statistics on Train Derailments and Hazardous Materials

Every era has dominant industries, with pop cultures, language, metaphors. Grandpa theme song: “I’ve been working on the railroad?” On a less sunny note, “train wreck” means a chaotic or disastrous situation. Data show real thing(s) are not uncommon. The Federal Railroad Administration reports an average 3 trains a day jump the tracks, a total of 1,164 in 2022. Most happen in rail yards and aren’t classed “serious.” I haven’t witnessed so far, but wonder what criteria apply. Neither is derailing while hauling hazardous materials rare. The industry’s American Association of Railroads reports “trains move about 2.2M cars of hazardous chemicals a year.” That’s around 6% of annual traffic. USA Today (February 23, 2023) reports release of “hazardous materials….in 172 train derailments over the last decade, or roughly 17 each year.”

Warren Buffet’s Involvement and Asbestos Legacy

Warren Buffet, who owns BNSF railroad, criticized NS’s handling of the situation. (Noah Sheidlower. Warren Buffett says Norfolk Southern handled train derailment ‘terribly.’ CNBC. April 12, 2023). But only the following month, two of “his” trains derailed, one with diesel fuel, the other with ethanol, on a “section of track with…a history of defects that led to employee complaints, million-dollar lawsuits, and federal safety violations.” Nearly 2,000 “red tag defects” (the most serious) were reported on that section from 2000 to 2011. (Ryan Raiche. ‘That’s a lot of defects’: BNSF safety record under scrutiny after derailment in Minnesota. ABC KTSB-TV. May 15, 2023). And in circular “follow the money” and “everything connects” logic, Buffet now also owns what’s left of JM. And Canada has banned new products containing asbestos, but still ships raw material out of country, including to the US. My state of Louisiana is a major user—in oil refineries, offshore rigs, power plants—with a legal industry actively recruiting mesothelioma and lung cancer plaintiffs.

Risk Perception and Decision Making

No life without risk, but I still feel a slight “what if” frisson hearing train whistles blow at night. “How, then, do people decide which risks to take and which to ignore?” And “Can we know the risks we face, now or in the future? No, we cannot; but yes, we must act as if we do.” Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky raised those questions way back in the 1980s. (Risk and Culture. University of California Press. c1982). Decision making in large corporations is typically “path dependent,” another kind of “follow the money” risk aversion that tends to “base expected outcomes on prior habits, decisions, and actions rather than current circumstances, even when better options are available.” So apt with rail lines that only allow for limited routes and options. OSHA defines accidents as “unplanned events that result in personal injury or property damage.” Consulting online legal dictionaries, I find “…calling something an ‘accident’ implies that it happened randomly, by chance and there’s nothing anyone could have done to prevent it.” And the action that causes “…is not typically deemed dangerous and is usually done without serious consequences.” The bolded words and phrases seem like weasel attempts to distance and separate outcomes from decisions that sometimes prove short-sighted. And that raises questions: Who decides? Who takes the risk?

Rail Reality: Worker Challenges and Advocacy

Managers operate in command-and-control fiction that it’s possible to “reduce…chaotic phenomena… to a system of essentials sufficiently few for an ordered mind to bend to its purpose….” (John Keegan. The Mask of Command. Viking. 1987). Big and messy failures like toxic train derailments and oil rig explosions (33 from 2007 to 2018) debunk myths of infallibility. But willingness to accept human limits often lags. Douglas and Wildavsky cited “A Harris survey [which] showed that “….In regard to danger from the chemicals in use….almost 3 times as many executives (38%) as the general public and the regulators (13%) think there is less risk today than 20 years before.” Another 40 years on, the gap has probably widened in this era of superhero/celebrity CEOs, given to very public, performative, risk taking and buying into their own PR. Can we call theirs “ordered minds?” Buffet, “sage of Omaha,” seems a closer approximation. But even he goes passive, rationalizes, treats train wrecks like disembodied “forces of nature.” Can’t guarantee no derailments, he says. And railroads would rather not carry hazmat, but as “common carriers,” they have no choice. So, is anybody responsible? Do “accidents just happen?”

Rail workers and their union live with physical reality, up close every day to huge machines and systems they barely tame. Any labor action would call down sanctions for threatening national supply chains. But they continuously raise concerns over practices like deferred rail maintenance and upkeep. Wonder if my grandfather had to splice together lines long past expected useful life? He wouldn’t have encountered “precision scheduled railroading,” only standard after his time. A long train makes in one trip what a short one would in two or more, and with fewer employees. So, trains keep growing longer and run on lines often in chancy condition. The one in East Palestine stretched 150 tankers, the fire “three or four city blocks!” (Jesse Marx and Nicolas Niarchos. Testing the Toxic Train. The Nation. May 29-June 5, 2023). Experts agree length increases risk of going off track on curves and/or losing control and brakes on downgrades. But till now, railroads and regulators claimed evidence was inconclusive. (Dan Schwartz, et al. The True Dangers of Long Trains. ProPublica. April 3, 2023). The current failure has stirred government action, so expect movement toward regulation, though what emerges will likely be watered down through industry lobbying, negotiating, lawsuits.

Proposed Solutions: Management Engagement and Union Action

A classic question asks, “Is this any way to run a railroad?” Updates: “Is this any way to keep running railroads?” Or to let railroads keep running? John Kay said irrationality “…lies in persisting with methods and actions that plainly do not work—including the methods and actions that commonly masquerade as rationality.” (Obliquity: Why our goals are best achieved indirectly. Penguin Books. C2010). And yet, old habits die hard. And any change seen as likely to reduce profits would be perceived as “going off the rails.” So, is there a way to move toward more truly reasonable decision making? Looking from outside and without direct experience, I offer options from the corporate and labor sides I’m thinking these might merit consideration—and might even meet somewhere in the middle.

1) “Management by walking [or riding] around:” Given their distance and mobility, railroads seem well suited to having managers “actively get out into the trenches [in yards like the one I observe, on trains] and listen to and engage with… employees…[as] a way of keeping [an] ear to the ground to understand what’s really going on.” Over three years ago (April 6, 2020), Joe McKendrick wrote a Forbes article titled Is ‘Management by Walking Around’ Still Possible When Everything Is Digital and Remote? He answered yes, with adjustments. But has anyone listened yet? Taken preventive measures? Like, say, fixing busted tracks, shortening tank trains?

2) Continued union action: The rail union, already leading on safety and public health, could keep pushing and borrow and adapt models from other sectors of the reenergizing labor movement. The Amalgamated Transit Union local in Louisville, KY recently used a new “open and transparent collective bargaining” framework “to fully involve rank-and-file members in negotiations.” (Jane McAlevey. Framing the Choice: A Win Against All Odds. The Nation. May 1-8, 2023).

My grandfather again comes to mind. Don’t know if he was a union man, but I know three of his sons were, one a shop steward. So, I’m suspect he’d be on board. And why shouldn’t workers have seats at decision tables? Don’t “They understand the job [and the risks] better than anyone?”