[HN Gopher] CDC team studying East Palestine train derailment fe... ___________________________________________________________________ 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? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-03-31 23:00 UTC)