https://apnews.com/article/derailment-fire-cpkc-north-dakota-114c86ea4b5058ea26440ba7ecd6e5be
The flames from derailed train cars carrying hazardous material are mostly extinguished a day after the incident in a remote area of North Dakota.
Exposure to high concentrations of ammonia in the air can cause burning of the eyes, nose, throat and respiratory tract, and can result in blindness, lung damage or death, health officials say. Exposure to lower amounts can result in coughing and irritation of the nose and throat.
It was a mistake to hand America's rail system off to private companies and then de-regulate them
And it continues to be a mistake everyday we ignore the problem.
It was always private companies. Givt gave tgem lots of land and money, looked the other way at incidents like this, and let them merge like rabbits in the 80s-90s.
And took passenger off their backs in the 70s, forming Amtrak.
We need to establish National Trackage Rights for true competition and improved safety.
Selling off Conrail is still an inexplicably stupid decision to me, even looking at it from the full neoliberal brainrot angle.
I worked for them at the end. We called it Clownrail. Former CEO has a Harley dealership.
Managers got wads of cash, union people got fired by NS if they were union officials.
Don't we still give them money? They won't do maintenance on the track unless we do is my understanding.
Or like the shipping company that destroyed the bridge and Biden offered to have the feds pay for it totally unprompted....
Why are people always wanting to hold these poor billion dollar corporations accountable for their actions?
Won't anyone think of the stock prices?!
I haven't been following the bridge situation, but I thought the idea was that the company would ideally pay eventually, but by having the government pay now they get a bridge much sooner than waiting for years as the shipping company drags it though the courts? Assuming the shipping company doesn't pull some "we aren't American, you can't make us pay shit" move.
Biden could just seize their assets and auction them off till it pays the debts. It's a multi-billion dollar international shipping company with probably more assets just in that one port than it would cost to replace the bridge...
And before you say "that would be wrong".
Reminder that civil asset forfeiture is still a thing. If a cop finds $5k in cash on you he can just fucking take it.
American railroads are going to have their Boeing days. They richly deserve them, even if genpop doesn't.
Don't live near an active track if possible.
Honestly? I really doubt that, unless you consider the events that lead up to Conrail as already having had their Boeing days. The American rail industry is an absolute disaster, and has been for decades. Derailments happen quite frequently (on average 3 a day in the US), you just actually hear about them now due to East Palestine. None of this is new.
The derailment statistics are a bit misleading. A single car slipping a single wheel on the rail is considered a derailment.
There's a book on the fall of the penn central. It was wall street. Pennsylvania paid dividends through the depression, then wall street/bankers made the merger and it went bankrupt.
Conrail was 5 bankrupt railroads melded by the govt about the same time it also took on passenger service, big time corporate socialism.
First thing the railroad companies did was lobby to cut passenger-amtrak funding for more airport funding, see also John McCain.
While the dividend certainly played one of the biggest roles, it's far from the only one. Penn Central was doomed to fail from the start.
The Pennsylvania Railroad especially was just an absolute mess. Extreme amounts of embezzlement, an outright refusal to ever upgrade tracks, and the outright criminality of people like David Bevan were all just as, if not more to blame for it's death.
It's a GOOD THING we gave our Tax Dollars to these Companies for Stock Buybacks instead of feed STARVING AMERICAN CHILDREN!
But giving money to starving children would be communism!
Giving it to corporations is, uh, well, you see, a good thing. Surely.