TRAIN DERAILMENT LEADS TO EVACUATION

On Friday, February 3, 2023, several cars on the Norfolk Southern Railroad line derailed in East Palestine, a small village along the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. The cars were transporting the hazardous chemical vinyl chloride. Breathing high levels of vinyl chloride can make someone pass out or die if they don’t get fresh air, the Ohio Department of Health said. The man-made chemical used to make PVC burns easily at room temperature; can cause dizziness, sleepiness and headaches; and has been linked to an increased risk of cancer in the liver, brain, lungs and blood. “If a water supply is contaminated, vinyl chloride can enter household air when the water is used for showering, cooking, or laundry,” the National Cancer Institute says. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that liquid vinyl chloride that touches skin will numb it and produce redness and blisters.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro ordered evacuations in a 1-mile zone around the area of derailment. An operation to drain the vinyl chloride – a chemical that officials said was unstable and could explode – from five Norfolk Southern rail cars was executed. Prior to the controlled release, officials worried the five derailed cars carrying vinyl chloride might hurl toxic fumes into the air and shoot “deadly shrapnel” as far as a mile away. Fortunately, no explosion occurred during the controlled release, and the fires are dying out on their own. Environmental regulators are monitoring air and water quality near East Palestine, Ohio. Most residents have returned to their homes, but many are expressing concerns about lingering toxic chemicals in air, water and soil.

CAUSES OF TRAIN DERAILMENTS

Derailments can sometimes be caused by operator error or equipment malfunction —the derailment in East Palestine appears to have been caused by a broken axle—but more often, they're due to track problems. Regarding the former, engineers could break speed limits, fail to account for sharp turns, not slow down at necessary locations, or several other factors stemming from bad judgment. Even if the derailment was caused by a machine malfunctioning and not an engineers's negligence, the train company could still be held liable.

In a typical year, U.S. freight railroads move around 1.7 billion tons across nearly 140,000-miles of track. In 2020, rail accounted for approximately 28% of the total U.S. freight movement by ton-miles. In 2018, 1.7 trillion ton-miles of freight (calculated by multiplying shipment weight in tons by the number of miles that it is transported) was shipped by rail, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. According to 2019 data from DOT, 52% of rail traffic consists of bulk commodities, including agriculture and energy products, automobiles and components, construction materials, chemicals, equipment, food, metals, minerals, paper and pulp. The remaining 48% of rail traffic is generally intermodal shipments (moving by both rail and truck) generally consisting of consumer goods and other products.

From 1990, the first year the Bureau of Transportation Statistics began tracking derailments and injuries on a yearly basis, to 2021, there have been 54,539 accidents in which a train derailed. That’s an average of 1,704 derailments per year. Still, despite the semi-regularity of derailments, passenger trains are a vastly safer mode of transportation compared to vehicles. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration estimates 42,915 died in vehicle accidents in 2021 alone, and those numbers appear to only be going up with each passing year.

LIABILITY FOR INJURIES FROM TRAIN DERAILMENTS

In the case of employee negligence or machine malfunction, the railroad company is implicated. In the former, the company has liability for a derailment caused by employee misconduct or negligence because the company is the employer and therefore responsible for the employees’ conduct if part of his/her employment (through a legal theory known as “respondeat superior”). In the latter case of a machine malfunction (as appears to be the case in the initial phase of the investigation into the East Palestine derailment), the company is also liable since maintenance of the train and the safe transportation of cargo are the responsibility of the railroad company.  

INJURED PARTIES

In cases like the one above, there can be multiple injured parties, or plaintiffs. If the toxic chemicals being transported in the railcars are released and cause harm, then East Palestine residents and any other people who were exposed could have a claim against the railroad. In addition, railroad employees who were injured can also sue. Even the engineers, first respondents and town officials who worked on ensuring the safety of the town would have claims if they were exposed to and harmed by the release of the toxic chemicals.  

In accidents involving derailment of passenger cars, as happened in Philadelphia on May 13, 2015, injury occurs directly from the derailment. When a passenger train derails due to a collision with a vehicle at a crossing, injuries can occur from both the collision and the derailment, as happened in an accident on June 27, 2022, near Mendon, Missouri. In both incidences, fatalities occurred.

CONTACT YOUR ATTORNEY

If you or someone you know was injured due to a train derailment, whether from the derailed train cars themselves or from the spillage of their cargo, contact Dave Thomas at The Thomas Law Firm for a free consultation regarding your claim.