[HN Gopher] CDC team studying East Palestine train derailment fe...
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CDC team studying East Palestine train derailment fell ill during
investigation
Author : hammock
Score : 111 points
Date : 2023-03-31 20:50 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbsnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbsnews.com)
| jollyllama wrote:
| Wow, why do bad things happen to all the investigators sent to
| look into mishaps in Ohio?
|
| https://katv.com/news/local/authorities-responding-to-plane-...
| draw_down wrote:
| Probably just a coincidence
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| asynchronous wrote:
| Hmm. How about that. Might be a bigger deal then originally
| thought.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Or the investigators need to go closer to the disaster than the
| public?
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| The article says the people that got sick were only going
| door to door to interview people in the town...
| munk-a wrote:
| If you clear folks to return to their homes they'll be
| passing by that site every days.
|
| Yes - most folks probably aren't going to shove their noses
| in the train wreck but the people with the weakest resistance
| to poisons (kids) absolutely will be all over the site. If
| adults are getting significant side effects then children
| will likely have very severe reactions.
| [deleted]
| hristov wrote:
| "Because the investigators' symptoms improved soon after they
| left the area, the incident was not reported to the public" ....
| This is a rather Orwellian statement. Don't worry everyone, the
| CDC workers symptoms improved as soon as they got the hell out of
| East Palestine, therefore East Palestine must be completely
| healthy.
| dmix wrote:
| People were evacuated for a reason?
| darth_avocado wrote:
| And cleared to return? These people got sick doing door to
| door surveys, meaning people were back at home.
|
| This is ridiculous. Even with the above, they are "unsure" if
| it was related to anything else like "fatigue". Like come on.
| mc32 wrote:
| That whole disaster was terribly handled. From The sec of
| transportation dragging his feel by weeks, to the president being
| dismissive and the train company saying no big deal... go back
| home, it's safe!
|
| I hope Erin can help to bring the attention and justice this
| disaster deserves.
|
| At least GWB, though a contemptible fellow otherwise, took his
| frat attitude up in a chopper to survey Katrina.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| What's the last solely environmental catastrophe a president
| has visited?
|
| People died in Katrina. There were no immediate deaths from
| this environmental catastrophe.
| serf wrote:
| How was Katrina _not_ an environmental catastrophe -- the
| casual definition that I find repeatedly is "An
| environmental disaster or ecological disaster is defined as a
| catastrophic event regarding the natural environment that is
| due to human activity."
|
| Given that criteria, Katrina was most definitely an
| environmental catastrophe.
|
| Now, if you mean "When was the last time a president visited
| a catastrophe that involved chemical/biological/radiological
| factors?" -- well, that's a bit more rare; but I presume that
| it's done not as a matter of appearing placid by the society
| at large, but as a form of damage mitigation before all the
| facts are presumed known.
|
| it's essentially a rite of passage for the president to hug
| people in some tornado ravaged state for photos. I presume
| the risks outweigh the positive P.R. in _actual_ danger
| zones.
|
| tl;dr : it's easier to declare a hurricane or flood site to
| be safe enough for presidential passage, so it represents a
| fairly easy to coordinate photo-op. Things are shakier when
| the facts about the danger present are not done rolling in.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| You read what I wrote too fast and missed, or
| misunderstood, at least one word ("solely").
| drewda wrote:
| USDOT does have an important role to play. But the link (which
| I admittedly didn't follow) has a headline about the CDC. EPA
| is also an important agency, maybe the most important one for
| this clean-up. All that to say I'm somewhat skeptical when
| criticism focuses on Pete Buttigieg in particular...
| mc32 wrote:
| I dunno, he's the face of the Feds. He sets the tone --this
| is his purview. He needed to go over there, check it out,
| figure out the magnitude on the ground and call in the
| cavalry (EPA, FEMA, etc.) as he saw necessary. But no, it
| took him two weeks to show his face.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I wish we, as people, would pay less attention to
| figureheads and more attention to what's happening behind
| the curtain. I also wish said figureheads, and the media
| that comment on them, would report more of what does,
| doesn't, and should goes on behind the curtain.
| willcipriano wrote:
| The media is the curtain.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| No. They're the munchkins.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think it's honestly quite fair. He was a presidential
| candidate and looks likely to run again in the next election
| - as a consolation prize he was appointed to the department
| that handles these things and absolutely failed to step up
| when a disaster directly in his domain happened.
|
| I think it's fair that he's held to a higher standard than
| Ellen Chao who was pretty much just a nepotism appointment
| and, as far as I've seen at least, has no real desire to get
| into serious election competitions.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Lol.
|
| So we're supposed to show deference to an appointee whose a
| member of a family controlling a Chinese maritime shipping
| company who happens to be the wife of the Senate Majority
| leader, because she's just a patronage appointee?
|
| So many regulatory changes were made during the Trump
| administration that directly benefited shipping interests.
| Chao isn't some Washington DC housewife!
| noah_buddy wrote:
| This is a rose tinted look at how GWB handled Katrina. He so
| bungled the response that people's opinions of him dropped
| precipitously afterwards. The excuse for why he didn't act
| sooner was that he was on a month long vacation. He was
| disconnected and praised FEMA which was universally considered
| to have bungled the recovery.
|
| I mean, knowing nothing else, one of the most memorable pieces
| of pop culture in the last twenty years was "George Bush
| doesn't care about black people"
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Also transportation sec Buttigieg just casually saying not to
| worry we have over 1,000 train derailments a year:
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11760173/There-roug...
|
| Over 1,000 derailments! Maybe we should work on getting those
| down before patting ourselves on the back for job well done.
| dboreham wrote:
| Never mind derailments: trains can be a serious source of
| pollution when just being trains, because: money, of course.
|
| We have coal trains rumbling through town every day. They
| have nothing covering the coal. It's often windy. Result: the
| entire town is blanketed in a pall of black dust. It gets
| everywhere. Comes around the windows, even modern well sealed
| double glazing units. On patio furniture. In our lungs, one
| assumes too.
| hooverd wrote:
| Hey, I'm sure the majority of those are trains popping off
| the track at low speeds.
| newsclues wrote:
| Most of it is non-issues in rail yards. The definition of
| derailment, isn't a big crash, it's when a wheel doesn't
| touch the rail (or something simple but not indicative of
| serious problems).
| mc32 wrote:
| Exactly! If he's blase about 1000 derailments it better not
| be 1000 derailments of the East Palestine type per year.
|
| In any event. it's really tone deaf to say, hey, no big
| deal we have approx three accidents like this every day of
| the year, deal with it! What a wanker.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| And? The system shouldn't be in a steady state of expected
| failures. These are enormous machines that sometimes carry
| hazardous materials. Failure cannot be tolerated. It's
| indicative of a rotten culture of safety and mismanagement
| that ignores the problems.
| [deleted]
| tzs wrote:
| I expect in most of them there is no serious damage and
| most of the train is still on the rails.
|
| That's how the derailment I was in worked. This was an
| Amtrak going from the Seattle area to Los Angeles. We
| pulled onto a siding to let a freight train by. When our
| train started again it went a few feet and then there was a
| thud and it abruptly stopped.
|
| What happened was that the rails had separated a bit just
| ahead of where we had stopped on the siding, and so when
| the train resumed it fell off the rails.
|
| Amtrak sent a couple engines to help. One went to the back
| or our train, and one went to the main track in front of
| where the siding started. The back one was connected to the
| back of our train, and the derailed engine was
| disconnected. The back engine then pulled the rest of our
| train backwards onto the main track. The other engine was
| coupled to the front of our train, the back engine
| decoupled, and we were back on our way.
|
| It took around 6 hours or so from the engine derailing to
| the rest of the train resuming with the new engine. That
| was pretty annoying because we were without power most of
| that time, which apparently caused issues with food storage
| resulting in dinner being cancelled. Many of us who got on
| in the Seattle area had not had lunch either. The train was
| supposed to leave Seattle about an hour before lunch so we
| had planned on lunch on the train, but it actually got to
| Seattle after lunch.
| reactspa wrote:
| [flagged]
| kevingadd wrote:
| The secretary of transportation is from Indiana
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Wow thanks for the link - such incredible pressure for large
| depositors in small banks to move their funds somewhere "safer"
| - and people have the audacity to say crypto has no intrinsic
| value.
| blobbers wrote:
| This sounds like CDC workers will have a big lawsuit against the
| CDC. Their employment contract can't possibly be so bullet proof
| as to fully waive their right to this?
|
| They should have sufficient protective equipment when
| investigating these types of disasters.
| bitL wrote:
| Is there any antidote for phosgene that can be manufactured
| quickly at home?
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(page generated 2023-03-31 23:00 UTC)