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The Norfolk Southern freight train derailment Feb. 3 in East Palestine, Ohio triggered much-needed scrutiny throughout the railroad industry regarding the issue of transporting dangerous cargoes.
Such cargoes always will be a reality within that industry; that is part of the basic nature of rail transportation. What is concerning, however, is that there always should be a quick way to determine what a train is hauling, in the event of a derailment or other emergency.
The ability to make such an expedited cargo determination was not available Feb. 3, at least in part due to the seemingly snail's-pace efforts up to then within the industry to implement such a capability.
Commendably, it appears that establishing such a capability industrywide might now be moving at a faster pace.
On Feb. 3, it took approximately 45 minutes for firefighters to learn exactly which chemicals were aboard the train.
At East Palestine, the chemicals transported made it too dangerous for firefighters to attack all aspects of the blaze directly; they had to pull back and contain some of the fire while the chemicals continued to burn.
The usual options that were available for firefighters to access that night involved physically tracking down the train crew to obtain a copy of the cargo list or reaching out directly to Norfolk Southern.
Regardless of how getting the information was accomplished after the derailment, precious time was lost. In today's information society, there's no excuse for not having systems in place to help make a disaster such as this more manageable.
New systems are in the works for enhanced communication between the railroads and emergency responders. That's good. But it shouldn't take a disaster for such things to get moving.