Is Trump to Blame for Ohio Train Derailment? Is Buttigieg?

Trump deregulations to blame?

• On February 3, 2023, a Norfolk Southern Railway freight train derailed and caught fire near East Palestine, Ohio, leaking a deluge of toxic chemicals into the air and water. Now, an industry insider is claiming the derailment was likely worsened because the Trump administration repealed a key safety rule.

• Steven Ditmeyer, a former top official at the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), said the "severity" of the accident was probably enhanced because of the lack of Electronically Controlled Pneumatic (ECP) brakes.
• In 2018, Trump’s Department of Transportation repealed a 2015 Obama-era rule requiring that trains hauling highly flammable crude oil be equipped with the ECP brakes that stop all rail cars simultaneously.
• Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday partly blamed the former president, though the current DOT has nor proposed reinstating the safety rule in question
• “We’re constrained by law on some areas of rail regulation (like the braking rule withdrawn by the Trump administration in 2018 because of a law passed by Congress in 2015), but we are using the powers we do have to keep people safe,” Buttigieg said.

“And of course, I’m always ready to work with Congress on furthering (or in some cases, restoring) our capacity to address rail safety issues.”

Obama regulations and Trump deregulations

• Obama passed a rule that made ECP brakes a requirement for all trains carrying hazardous flammable materials like oil and ethanol but this rule was rolled back in 2017 by the Trump administration.
•  
• Trump's Department of Transportation’s Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) said at that the time that they had:

“[D]etermined that the expected benefits, including safety benefits, of implementing ECP brake system requirements do not exceed the associated costs of equipping tank cars with ECP brake systems, and therefore are not economically justified."

• Under Obama, the FRA estimated that the implementation of the brakes would cost half a billion dollars, but the industry pushed back and said it would cost closer to $3 billion.
• Former FRA official Ditmeyer said:

 "[O]nce they are told they have to do it ... they don't want to spend the money."

What people are memeing

Frustrated with the response - and coverage - to the disaster, people have turned to memes:

— Emma Kansiz & Josh Herman

(Photo Credits: Twitter/Reddit)