EAST PALESTINE — The National Transportation Safety Board’s in-field investigative hearing over two days in the village was a rarity.

Also unique are the circumstances that are being investigated.

The agency brought to town its inquiry into the cause of the Feb. 3 Norfolk Southern train derailment. The investigation also considered what needs to be done to prevent a similar derailment from occurring.

The sessions in the high school gymnasium zeroed in on what emergency responders faced that night, the details behind the decision to perform a controlled burn of vinyl chloride in the days following the accident, the role the integrity of wheel bearings and functionality of wayside detectors played and overall tank car safety.

Regarding the circumstances that led to the decision to vent and burn five vinyl chloride tank cars, East Palestine Fire Chief Keith Drabick gave the NTSB insight into how little time he was given to make that decision. Daylight was dwindling, weather patterns were shifting and temperatures were changing.

After being told of the rising threat, Drabick met with Gov. Mike DeWine.

“Thirteen minutes, that’s how much time we had,” Drabick said. “When we got taken down to that room, we were told we had 13 minutes to make that decision.”

THE DERAILMENT

The train flew off the tracks between East Clark and East Taggart streets at 9:55 p.m. Feb. 3. The first 911 call came in to Columbiana County dispatch minutes after an overheated wheel bearing on the 23rd car on the 150-car train ignited a fiery derailment of 50 cars.

It would take first responders an hour to get notification of what exactly was in the engulfed railcars as the flames melted the identifying placards on them. East Palestine dispatch placed calls to Norfolk Southern’s Atlanta-based headquarters twice that night — the first at 9:04 p.m. and the other at 9:30 p.m. — but were unable to obtain a detailed account of every car and every car’s cargo.

At the same time dispatchers were making their first call to Atlanta, Norfolk Southern was providing CTEH — its contractor that conducts air quality monitoring for the railroad — the notification of contents that emergency crews on the scene were requesting.

The crucial information finally reached the Columbiana County Emergency Management Agency via an email from Norfolk Southern at 9:56 p.m.

It was 10 p.m. before Drabick was notified of the train’s chemical cargo and it was 10:23 p.m. before East Liverpool HazMat Chief William Jones knew.

AVOIDING

CATASTROPHE

The decision to vent the five tank cars and burn more than 1 million pounds of vinyl chloride was made to prevent what was being described as a “potentially catastrophic explosion” as experts on the ground became concerned with temperature readings on the tankers and the pressure relief valves on the cars that seemingly stopped working.

Fears began to grow that pressure was building up in the cars and polymerization — a chemical reaction through which a large number of monomer molecules react together to form a polymer — was occurring or could occur. Experts at the scene were concerned polymerization would trigger a BLEVE — a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion.

That was what Drabick was told on Feb. 6 and that is what he believed when he, as incident commander, officially approved the vent and burn.

“It got to the point when they (Norfolk Southern) felt that was the option left. It was portrayed to us and expressed to us that the cars were going through polymerization based on the signs they were showing and the material we had to reference,” he said. “The final yes was given by me, based on the consensus by everybody in the unified command that there were no other options.”

Those on the ground, including Drew McCarty and Charles “Chip” Day of Specialized Professional Services, a Norfolk Southern contractor; and Robert Wood, system manager hazardous materials at Norfolk Southern; all testified that their concerns grew as the temperature inside one tank car continued to rise and that the increase in temperature suggested that the vinyl chloride was undergoing polymerization reaction and could explode.

DECISION

CHALLENGED

Paul Stancil of NTSB challenged that during his questioning.

“Would you agree, that with the exception of the one spike in temperature during the middle of the night, the temperature was on a downward or decreasing trend?” Stancil asked. “Why was this tank car still a concern when the temperature of the tank car was decreasing?”

McCarty said he wasn’t sure if the readings were accurate and testified that he felt the pressure relief valves were malfunctioning.

“Something either gummed it up or mechanically messed it up, and either way, it was incredibly dangerous,” McCarty testified.

He added that “the moment the car behaved the way it did Saturday, we made an absolute safety decision for the good of the community and the good of our people that we were not going to commit people welding on those cars.”

Paul Thomas of OxyVinyls, which owned more than 700,000 pounds of vinyl chloride on the derailed train, offered conflicting testimony. He testified that no data indicated that polymerization was happening or would happen — and said that information was relayed to Norfolk Southern more than once.

“On three different occasions, we expressed the belief that it wasn’t occurring,” Thomas said. “We expressed we didn’t believe it was, but, more important, here is how you know to protect your folks. If you could get a temperature, it will tell if polymerization is happening.”

Thomas testified his company did not recommend the vent and burn and insisted he communicated to Norfolk Southern that the vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) would not likely cause an explosion.

FIRE CHIEF NOT TOLD

“We made it clear, based on our expertise of the chemical properties of our product, that stabilized VCM would be unlikely to spontaneously polymerize,” Thomas said.

That opinion was never passed on to Drabick, who testified that he was unaware of Oxy Vinyl’s stance before making the decision.

Despite Oxy Vinyl’s assertion that polymerization wasn’t likely, Norfolk Southern still advocated to perform the vent and burn as a matter of public safety.

According to Wood’s testimony, the railroad’s “concern grew quickly, because an uncontrolled explosion of a tank car would be catastrophic.”

The vent and burn of five vinyl chloride cars was ordered and the evacuation zone was expanded to a 1- by 2-mile area. Trenches were dug to contain the released vinyl chloride liquid while it vaporized and burned.

The controlled venting began about 4:40 p.m. Feb. 6 and continued for several hours.