On February 3, 2023, a freight train carrying highly toxic chemicals from the Norfolk Southern Railway derailed on the border between Ohio and Pennsylvania, USA, near the village of East Palestine. East Palestine with a population of 4700 people. As a result of the damage to the railroad cars, highly toxic chemicals were released into the air, water, and land.

The train that derailed was a Norfolk Southern freight train consisting of three locomotives with the leading number ES44AC #8152, nine empty cars and 141 loaded cars. The train was traveling from the St. Louis Railway Association terminal in Madison, Illinois, to Norfolk Southern’s Conway Yard in Conway, Pennsylvania. A driver, a conductor and a conductor trainee were aboard the 2.8 km long train.

Around 8:55 pm local time on February 3, 2023, about 50 cars derailed. Of the 141 cars on the train, 20 were carrying hazardous materials – vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, ethyl hexyl acrylate, ethylene glycol, monobutyl ether, isobutylene, flammable liquids and benzene derivatives, with butyl acrylate, vinyl chloride and ethyl hexyl acrylate in 14 cars.

Train collision in South Carolina

The South Carolina train collision is an accident that occurred on February 4, 2018, as a result of a collision between an Amtrak passenger train and a CSX freight train.

On February 4, 2018, at 2:35 a.m. local time, an Amtrak train traveling from New York to Miami collided with a CSX freight train.
The impact caused the locomotive and several passenger cars to derail.
The accident occurred near the city of Cayce outside of the District of Columbia.

Causes of the accident
According to the preliminary version, the accident occurred as a result of an Amtrak train going on the wrong track.

According to South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, the freight train was standing on the tracks near the main railroad line and was empty, while the passenger train was moving on the wrong tracks.

There is also an opinion in the media that the switches on the railroad track may have been set incorrectly, which caused the passenger train to leave the main track and collide with the freight train.

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Even experienced foremen of a Texas port were not aware that ammonium nitrate is not a safe substance. Hence the carelessness that led to the dire consequences.

On April 16, 1947, at 8 a.m., a fire was discovered and more than half of the city’s firefighters and reporters came to the scene. No one felt particularly threatened. To make matters worse, the captain at first made no attempt to flood the fire with water, he was sorry to spoil the valuable cargo. Intuition failed, and that’s what killed them.

At 9:12 a.m. it burst into flames. Eyewitnesses say that the “Grankan” and everyone who was near it went up in flames. The shock wave traveled onward, demolishing capital buildings, cars, oil rigs and ships in its path. Of those who were in the port at the time of the explosion, miraculously survived a few.

Explosion of the very first atomic bomb (restored video)
To do anything at this point was useless. Hell had broken loose. And that was just the beginning. Immediately, numerous oil refineries caught fire, covering the city in black smoke and flames. Almost the entire city blazed stinkingly into the night. And when all seemed to have subsided, two more ships, the Highflyer and the Wilson Keene, burst into flames at 1:00 a.m. The Highflyer and the Wilson Keene. On board was sulphur and the same saltpeter. It took three days to put out the countless deadly fires.

It didn’t take long to find out the cause of the explosion. It turned out that the blatant illiteracy of personnel and management led to the fact that the workers were quietly smoking at the loading of ammonium nitrate. And the saltpeter was packed in trivial paper bags instead of fireproof boxes.

A dropped cigarette butt sent 1,500 people to heaven, more than a third of whom died in the first explosion. The city was two-thirds destroyed, the port entirely. Three kilometers from the point of explosion were found multi-ton cast-iron machines and ship engines. The debris was demolished by cars and passing small airplanes. A disaster on an unprecedented scale for America.

It is noteworthy that a year before, a similar accident almost destroyed the Soviet port of Nakhodka: the cargo of the steamship Dalstroy detonated, killing more than a hundred people on July 24, 1946.

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On April 20, an explosion caused the platform to catch fire, which lasted 26 hours. After unsuccessful attempts to extinguish it from firefighting vessels, the platform sank. As a result of the explosion, 11 people went missing and 115 people were evacuated. The oil spill lasted for 152 days and by September 19, 5 million barrels (795 thousand cubic meters) of oil had leaked into the Gulf of Mexico. As of April 29, 2010, an oil slick with a diameter of 190 kilometers reached the mouth of the Mississippi River, on June 4 – the state of Florida; on July 6, oil slicks were found off the coast of Texas and Louisiana. As of August 2010, the size of the underwater oil plume at a depth of 1,100 meters reached 35 kilometers in length.

Attempts to stop the oil leak from the damaged well began almost immediately, but they did not yield the desired result. On May 7, a 100-ton steel dome was installed over the well to cover the pipe damaged in the explosion on the drilling platform and prevent further oil from entering the water, but it proved ineffective. On July 13, a special 75-ton plug was installed and on September 17, the oil leak was stopped by pumping a special cement mortar into the well.

As a result of the oil spill, nearly 2,000 kilometers of coastline were contaminated – all US states with access to the Gulf of Mexico were affected by the oil spill. As of November 2, 2010, 6814 dead animals were collected, including 6104 birds, 609 sea turtles, 100 dolphins and other mammals.

The economy of the coastal states suffered great damage – due to the ban on fishing in a third of the Gulf of Mexico, more than 150,000 fishermen and restaurant workers lost their jobs; a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling was also imposed, resulting in the loss of 13,000 jobs. Losses to the tourism industry were estimated at $23 billion over a three-year period.

The subsequent investigation showed that the accident was caused by human error, including personnel’s wrong decisions, technical malfunctions and design flaws of the oil platform; the explosion itself was caused by a methane leak that spread through the ventilation system on the drilling platform, and after the explosion, an emergency safety device that was supposed to automatically plug the well and prevent oil leakage in the event of an accident failed.

Under the US law, the holder of an oil production license is liable for environmental damage – as of the beginning of 2012, more than 100,000 lawsuits were filed against BP, Transocean Ltd., Halliburton and Cameron International (co-owners of the licenses) by private individuals; lawsuits for compensation of financial losses related to the oil spill were also filed against BP by the companies’ shareholders, with the main plaintiffs being pension funds of the states of New York and Ohio. In early March 2012, it was announced that BP and 100,000 plaintiffs had entered into a pre-trial agreement under which BP is to pay compensation to the victims in the amount of USD 7,800,000,000.

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The accident occurred at the second power unit of the NPP due to the late detection of a leakage of coolant in the first reactor circuit and, accordingly, the loss of nuclear fuel cooling. The accident resulted in a meltdown of about 50% of the reactor core, after which the power unit was never restored. The NPP premises were heavily contaminated, but the radiation consequences for the public and the environment were insignificant. The accident was assigned level 5 on the INES scale.

The accident exacerbated the existing crisis in the US nuclear power industry and caused a surge in anti-nuclear sentiment in society. Although all this did not lead to an immediate cessation of the growth of the US nuclear power industry, its historical development was halted. From 1979 to 2012, no new nuclear power plant construction licenses were issued, and the commissioning of the 71st previously planned plant was canceled.

Prior to the Chernobyl accident that occurred seven years later, the Three Mile Island accident was considered the largest in the history of global nuclear power and is still considered the worst nuclear accident in the United States, which severely damaged the reactor core and melted some of the nuclear fuel.

Consequences

Although the nuclear fuel partially melted, it did not burn through the reactor vessel. Therefore, the radioactive substances mostly remained inside. According to various estimates, the radioactivity of noble gases released into the atmosphere ranged from 2.5 to 13 million Ci (480.1015 Bq). However, the release of hazardous nuclides, such as 131I, was insignificant. The territory of the station was also contaminated by radioactive water leaking from the first circuit. It was decided that there was no need to evacuate the population living near the plant, but the governor of Pennsylvania advised that pregnant women and preschool children leave the eight-kilometer zone around the plant. The average equivalent radiation dose for people living in the 16-kilometer zone was 8 millirems (80 μSv) and did not exceed 100 millirems (1 mSv) for any of the residents. For comparison, 8 millirems is approximately the same as the dose received during a fluoroscopy, and 100 millirems is ⅓ of the average dose received by a US resident in a year due to background radiation.

A thorough investigation of the accident was conducted. It was recognized that the operators made a number of mistakes that seriously aggravated the situation. These mistakes were caused by the fact that the operators were overloaded with information, some of which was not relevant to the situation, and some of which was simply incorrect. After the accident, changes were made to the operator training system. While before the accident the main focus was on the operator’s ability to analyze the situation and determine what caused the problem, after the accident the training was focused on the operator’s ability to follow predefined technological procedures. Control panels and other plant equipment were also improved. All U.S. NPPs have developed emergency action plans that provide for rapid notification of residents within a 10-mile zone.

Work to eliminate the consequences of the accident began in August 1979 and was officially completed in December 1993. They cost $975 million. The territory of the NPP was decontaminated and the fuel was unloaded from the reactor. However, part of the radioactive water was absorbed into the concrete of the containment, and this radioactivity is almost impossible to remove.

The operation of another reactor (TMI-1) was resumed in 1985.

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The Great Chicago Fire was a fire in the city of Chicago, USA, that lasted from October 8 to 10, 1871. The fire killed about 300 people and destroyed thousands of buildings. The reconstruction of the fire-damaged areas began quickly and contributed to the city’s extremely rapid economic growth.

Historical data

The year 1871 was marked by unusually dry weather in Chicago, and the city’s numerous wooden structures made it vulnerable to natural disasters such as fires. The Great Chicago Fire broke out on the night of October 8 in the southwestern part of the city, near the home of Irish immigrants Patrick and Catherine O’Leary. According to one version, the fire was started when the O’Learys’ cow knocked over a lighted kerosene lamp. The O’Learys denied this version, and the real cause of the fire was never established. After the fire broke out around the O’Leary estate, it quickly got out of control and spread to wooden houses to the north and east and spread toward the city center.

After two days of firefighting, it was only on October 10 that the flames were extinguished when firefighting equipment was brought to the city and rain began to fall, which helped firefighters. The fire killed about 300 people and left another 100,000 homeless. More than 17,000 different buildings were destroyed, with total damage estimated at $200 million.

To stop the wave of lawlessness and crime that swept the city after the fire, martial law was introduced on October 11 and lasted for several weeks. A month after the fire, the city elected a new mayor, Joseph Medill, who promised to introduce new fire safety measures and begin reconstruction of the city.

Despite the extensive damage, much of Chicago’s physical infrastructure, including transportation systems, remained intact. The city’s reconstruction began quickly and vigorously, which stimulated its economic development and led to population growth. Thanks to new, efficient planning, Chicago’s landscape changed, and the world’s first skyscrapers appeared. Before the fire, the population of Chicago was approximately 324 thousand people, and over the next nine years it grew to half a million. Only twenty years later, Chicago became a major economic and transportation center with a population of over 1 million people.

Nowadays, the former O’Leary estate is the site of the Chicago Fire Training School. Although Catherine O’Leary died in 1895, in 1997 the city council passed a symbolic resolution that cleared O’Leary and her cow of any blame for the fire.

Yellowstone fire of 1988

The Yellowstone Fire of 1988 is the largest fire in the history of the US Yellowstone National Park. Starting as a series of small individual fires, the fire quickly got out of control due to high winds and drought and turned into one large fire that burned for several months. The fire virtually destroyed the park’s two main visitor routes, and on September 8, 1988, for the first time in history, the entire park was closed to all visitors who were not rescue workers. Only the arrival of cool and wet weather in late fall allowed the fire to be extinguished. In total, 793,880 acres (3,213 km2), or 36% of the park’s area, were affected by the wildfires.

Thousands of firefighters fought the fire, supported by dozens of helicopters and airplanes that supplied water and fire retardant. At its peak, more than 9,000 firefighters were dispatched to the park. The fire, which raged through the ecosystem of the entire Greater Yellowstone and other areas in the western United States, put all levels of the National Park Service and other land management agencies in an emergency situation. Soon, more than 4,000 U.S. Army personnel were involved in firefighting. The firefighting efforts cost $120 million at the time. None of the firefighters were killed during the firefighting in Yellowstone, but two people died from the effects of the fire outside the park.

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