Norfolk Southern railroad CEO, Alan Shaw, testifies to U.S. Senate Commerce Committee
Washington’s Junior U.S. Senator led some stern questioning of railroad officials about whether they sacrifice safety for profit.
Among the issues raised by Senate Commerce Committee Chair, Washington Democrat Maria Cantwell, was Norfolk Southern Railroad’s policy of limiting inspections of train car parts to 30 seconds, asking the railroad’s president, Alan Shaw, point blank if that’s true. “Senator, I’m not familiar with a minimum or a maximum on rail car inspection duration,” Shaw says, “We do support (an) evidence-based approach to enhanced safety and improved outcomes.”
Also testifying was Clyde Whitaker with the SMART TD rail worker union, who told Cantwell worker training has been deeply scaled back, and trains with hazardous chemicals, like the one that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, are being run by inexperienced crews. Whitaker says, “We could be so much more efficient and do so much better if railroad management would just listen to labor. We could move trains without incident. We could make things more safe.”
A mother from East Palestine, Misti Allison, told the committee that despite the EPA saying the air and water are safe, people and animals are sick and that independent tests still find dangerous chemicals. She said if they wanted to move, they couldn’t because property values have plummeted and it would be a struggle to find buyers for their homes. People in the East Palestine community say they want their lives back, but Allison indicated that not only is the help Norfolk Southern has offered insufficient, but she says people who go to the company’s “assistance center” are often questioned like an interrogation about why they need the help.
National Transportation Safety Board chair, Jennifer Homendy, told the committee clearly that the disaster in East Palestine was completely avoidable.
Cantwell and members on both sides of the aisle expressed their support for the bipartisan Railway Safety Act, which aims to prevent another East Palestine disaster. Members of both parties also made it clear that rail operators, like Norfolk Southern, won’t be allowed to continue cutbacks on safety in order to boost their profits.
You can watch the entire Senate Commerce Committee hearing here. It begins at approximately the 1:05:00 mark in the video following the committee’s executive session.
