A couple weeks ago a freight train from the Norfolk Southern Railway passed through the small Ohio town of East Palestine. According to different news outlets the train derailed and some of its freight cars caught fire. The chemical load started to leak and at the request of state officials emergency crews initiated a “controlled burn” with runoff chemicals, which released phosgene and hydrogen chloride. One of the gasses coming from the fire is Phosgene, which is the same gas that was used in WWI. Having contact with hydrogen chloride is, I believe, not by any means healthier since both of those gasses are described to be highly toxic and dangerous to life. The time reported …
Train collision – Greece
Another tragic train accident happened in Greece last week. Two trains, one passenger and one freight train collided at high speed between Athens and Thessaloniki. According to several news outlets the reason for the incident was human error – a station master declared a blocked, red lit track for a delayed passenger train as passable, which at the end led to a tragic head on collision of two trains, killing close to about 60 people. The accident has led to demonstrations and a public outcry that the government is not doing enough for that particular sector. North America and Europe are almost at par with annual train accidents – 1700 in the US and 1400 annually in Europe; numbers that are quite surprising. In light of these high numbers it is even more surprising what certain internet sources now state as the reasoning for the lately many (?) occurring train accidents. Some of these online expressed “conspiracy” theories are quite elaborate and require even for my taste a quite high acceptance threshold for the abnormal. I know that …