EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — It has now been more than a month since the toxic Ohio train derailment in East Palestine.
As the National Transportation Safety Board continues its investigation of the Feb. 3 incident, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy joined Heather Long of the Washington Post to provide an update on the matter.
You can watch the entirety of Homendy's conversation with Long at the bottom of this story.
Over the course of the conversation, Homendy was asked for a timeline regarding the ongoing investigation into the derailment. Homendy said that she is hopeful that the investigation can wrap up within the next 12 months, but also noted that the investigation doesn't need to be finalized in order for NTSB to make recommendations.
"We are not prohibited from making urgent safety recommendations. In fact, we do and we are considering in this case issuing urgent safety recommendations," she said. "What that means is we don't wait until the end. If we see something urgent, we will issue a safety recommendation right away so that action can be taken not just by Norfolk Southern, but the entire railroad industry."
The NTSB released their preliminary report regarding the East Palestine derailment investigation late last month, which you can read in full HERE.
"This was 100% preventable," Homendy said upon the report’s initial release back on Feb. 23. "We call things accidents; there is no accident. Every single event that we investigate is preventable."
Earlier Monday, Norfolk Southern announced a six-point plan “to immediately enhance the safety of its operations.” You can read that plan HERE.
One of the points of the plan for Norfolk Southern will be to examine every location on its core network where the distance is more than 15 miles and develop a plan to deploy additional detectors where practical due to terrain and operating conditions.
“I think it’s a good first start," Homendy said on Monday. "One thing I will mention is that these decisions about the placement of these hot bearing detectors and the threshold really vary railroad by railroad. There needs to be good decision making, some policy and practices put in place and possibly, definitely be more conservative.”
The company's announcement comes just days after another Norfolk Southern train derailment happened Saturday in Springfield, Ohio.
"The numbers are trending upwards on accidents overall and also for Norfolk Southern. With that said, we're going to look at Norfolk Southern's overall accident history. We're going to look at culture in the company, safety culture. We will look at management practices and policies. We'll really dig in," Homendy added.