Problems with the standard narrative — many tremendously experienced people do not understand these unprecedented elements to the scenario. The question goes to, WHY?
— never been a dump and burn in railroad history. There is always dump and remove, or decant. These incidents happen every two weeks — the burn part is totally unprecedented and there is rarely a need to dump...
— SCUBA (fully enclosed hazmat) tanker truck driver recovery operation (entirely routine when there are damaged tanker cars) initiated Friday Feb. 3, and then called off within 24 hours (on Friday night). who called it off? I have this from two reliable sources
— no samples of soot or wipe samples from inside the tanker cars — missing
— point source soot samples are missing
— decision to breach, dump and burn totally irrational and nobody understands it. EPA was involved.
— no state or federal emergencies declared, depriving governments of emergency powers and agencies of certain kinds of authority (we now from “covid” how much power a state of emergency grants; in this case, that was never done).
— analysis of samples from PTRMS lab (high end mobile chemistry analysis lab) are bogged at Carnegie Mellon, in custody of Albert Presto, who is not releasing them.
— Pressure release valves (PRVs) were working fine, per NTSB report; the tanker cars were not in jeopardy. Other reports say the VCM was not in jeopardy of exploding and besides, they can easily decanter it into tanker trucks as is done regularly.
— five dead CTEH guys in airplane crash, eyewitnesses, who were at the scene on behalf of the railroad and took samples…they died en route to the next mission.
— people are still sick in Palestine a way they should not be based on every other incident she’s worked on for 30 years. The other explanations are not very plausible, such as offgassing from stream aeration.
— there is only one illegal to transport chemical, banned by law — PCBs (and chemical weapons, which violate treaties). Even DDT is legal to ship via train.
Much respect for your process and diligent research and documentation in this space, which ultimately is key to assigning accountability. Rare to have both the detail orientation and big picture orientation so as to know what details are important to zero in on.
I have an important fact you will find useful, which I transcribed from a radio interview as I was listening because it’d be near impossible to find later (it’s nowhere in print):
The state Senator from that area (Michael Rulli) was interviewed today [2/18/23] on XM. He watched live feeds at the command center of robots going up to the 5 cars to take readings & leave temperature gauges. One of the tanks was causing anxiety. Day 1 read 139, Day 2 it was 154, Day 3 it was 146. They blew it up day 3.
I found it notable because the temperature was going down, and also because they blew all 5 cars despite those other temps being fine.
Problems with the standard narrative — many tremendously experienced people do not understand these unprecedented elements to the scenario. The question goes to, WHY?
— never been a dump and burn in railroad history. There is always dump and remove, or decant. These incidents happen every two weeks — the burn part is totally unprecedented and there is rarely a need to dump...
— SCUBA (fully enclosed hazmat) tanker truck driver recovery operation (entirely routine when there are damaged tanker cars) initiated Friday Feb. 3, and then called off within 24 hours (on Friday night). who called it off? I have this from two reliable sources
— no samples of soot or wipe samples from inside the tanker cars — missing
— point source soot samples are missing
— decision to breach, dump and burn totally irrational and nobody understands it. EPA was involved.
— no state or federal emergencies declared, depriving governments of emergency powers and agencies of certain kinds of authority (we now from “covid” how much power a state of emergency grants; in this case, that was never done).
— analysis of samples from PTRMS lab (high end mobile chemistry analysis lab) are bogged at Carnegie Mellon, in custody of Albert Presto, who is not releasing them.
— Pressure release valves (PRVs) were working fine, per NTSB report; the tanker cars were not in jeopardy. Other reports say the VCM was not in jeopardy of exploding and besides, they can easily decanter it into tanker trucks as is done regularly.
— five dead CTEH guys in airplane crash, eyewitnesses, who were at the scene on behalf of the railroad and took samples…they died en route to the next mission.
— people are still sick in Palestine a way they should not be based on every other incident she’s worked on for 30 years. The other explanations are not very plausible, such as offgassing from stream aeration.
— there is only one illegal to transport chemical, banned by law — PCBs (and chemical weapons, which violate treaties). Even DDT is legal to ship via train.
Much respect for your process and diligent research and documentation in this space, which ultimately is key to assigning accountability. Rare to have both the detail orientation and big picture orientation so as to know what details are important to zero in on.
I think of it as getting very close with a wide-angle lens. My favorite is 16mm :-)
I have an important fact you will find useful, which I transcribed from a radio interview as I was listening because it’d be near impossible to find later (it’s nowhere in print):
The state Senator from that area (Michael Rulli) was interviewed today [2/18/23] on XM. He watched live feeds at the command center of robots going up to the 5 cars to take readings & leave temperature gauges. One of the tanks was causing anxiety. Day 1 read 139, Day 2 it was 154, Day 3 it was 146. They blew it up day 3.
I found it notable because the temperature was going down, and also because they blew all 5 cars despite those other temps being fine.