OMAHA, Neb. — Federal investigators have announced a special investigation into railroad Norfolk Southern.
The move follows a fiery derailment on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border in February and several other accidents, including one in Clark County on Saturday and another in Cleveland early Tuesday that led to a train conductor’s death.
The National Transportation Safety Board says it will begin a broad look at the railroad’s safety culture.
It says it has sent investigation teams to look into five significant accidents involving Norfolk Southern since December 2021. The agency also says it was urging the company to take immediate action to review and assess its safety practices.
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In response to the East Palestine derailment, the railroad on Monday announced plans to improve the use of detectors placed along railroad tracks to spot overheating bearings and other problems.
Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board said the crew operating the train that derailed Feb. 3 outside East Palestine got a warning from such detectors but couldn’t stop the train before more than three dozen cars came off the tracks and caught fire.
Half of the town of about 5,000 people had to evacuate for days when responders intentionally burned toxic chemicals in some of the derailed cars to prevent an uncontrolled explosion, leaving residents with lingering health concerns.
No one was hurt when a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed near Springfield on Saturday but a conductor who was standing on the outside of a railcar was killed when the train collided with a dump truck at a steel plant in Cleveland. The company said the cause of that accident was not yet known.
Within the industry, Norfolk Southern has had a strong reputation for being a safe railroad over the years, said Christopher Barkan, director of the Rail Transportation and Engineering Center at the University of Illinois.
Federal Railroad Administration statistics show accidents involving Norfolk Southern is down since 2019, but the rate of accidents is up over the past decade and pressure has been mounting on the railroad in the aftermath of the East Palestine disaster.