NTSB says videos of Ohio train derailment include one showing wheel bearing in ‘final stage of overheat failure’
Portions of the Norfolk Southern freight train that derailed are seen in this photo taken a day after the derailment.
By Greg Wallace and Laura Ly, CNN
Investigators probing the toxic train disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, are reviewing multiple videos of the train prior to it derailing.
One video shows “what appears to be a wheel bearing in the final stage of overheat failure moments before the derailment,” the National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement Tuesday.
“The suspected overheated wheel bearing has been collected and will be examined by engineers from the NTSB Materials Laboratory in Washington, D.C,” the statement said.
The wheelset will undergo a metallurgical examination as part of the overall investigation. The NTSB also said investigators will return to complete an examination of the tank cars once they are fully decontaminated.
Investigators have not yet determined what they believe caused the disaster. Such a determination typically takes many months.
The NTSB said it is reviewing other videos, too, including footage from two local businesses reported by local media to show glowing or flames from the train prior to the derailment.
The agency is also reviewing recording data from the train’s so-called black boxes, including an event recorder and image recorders.
The train carrying hazardous materials, including the toxic chemical vinyl chloride, derailed February 3, prompting evacuation orders for residents in the village of 5,000 people near the Pennsylvania border.
The wreckage burned for days as authorities worried about the possibility of a widespread, deadly explosion. But crews managed controlled detonations to release the chemical, which can kill quickly at high levels and increase cancer risk.
In an update Tuesday, investigators said no vinyl chloride has been detected in any of the down-gradient waterways near the train derailment, and environmental teams are aerating waterways near the site.
While there are some waterways that remain contaminated, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is confident that the contaminants are contained, said Tiffany Kavalec, chief of the division of surface water at the agency.
What Kavalec described as “fire combustion chemicals” did flow to the Ohio River, “but the Ohio River is very large, and it’s a water body that’s able to dilute the pollutants pretty quickly,” she said.
The chemicals are a “contaminant plume” that the Ohio EPA and other agencies have been tracking in real time. It’s believed to be moving about a mile an hour, Kavalec said.
The “tracking allows for potential closing of drinking water intakes to allow the majority of the chemicals to pass. This strategy, along with drinking water treatment…are both effective at addressing these contaminants and helps ensure the safety of the drinking water supplies,” Kavalec said, adding that they’re pretty confident that the “low levels” of contaminants that remain are not getting passed onto customers.
About 3,500 fish across 12 different species have died in Ohio’s waterways following the spill, Mary Mertz, the director of Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources, said.
None of the 12 species affected are endangered or threatened, but it’s “still a loss of life, all the same,” she said.
The estimation of the dead fish came after initial testing and sampling by the state agency, Mertz said. There does not appear to have been an increase in the number of fish killed since the first couple of days following the derailment.
There has been no evidence of non-aquatic species suffering from the derailment, she said, and they haven’t had any concerns about that.
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CNN’s Theresa Waldrop, Nouran Salahieh, Holly Yan and Joe Sutton contributed to this report.
