HELENA, Mont. — A federal jury on Monday said Warren Buffett’s BNSF Railway contributed to the deaths of two people who were exposed to asbestos decades ago when tainted mining material was shipped through a Montana town where thousands have been sickened. The jury awarded $4 million each in compensatory damages to the estates of … Read more
HELENA, Mont. — BNSF Railway attorneys told a Montana jury Friday that the railroad should not be held liable for the lung cancer deaths of two former residents of an asbestos-contaminated Montana town, one of the deadliest sites in the federal Superfund pollution program. Attorneys for the company say the corporate predecessors of the railroad, … Read more
LIBBY, Mont. — Paul Resch remembers playing baseball as a kid on a field constructed from asbestos-tainted vermiculite, mere yards from railroad tracks where trains kicked up clouds of dust as they hauled the contaminated material from a mountaintop mine through the northwestern Montana town of Libby. He liked to sneak into vermiculite-filled storage bins … Read more
The aftermath of last year’s fiery train derailment in eastern Ohio doesn’t qualify as a public health emergency because widespread health problems and ongoing chemical exposures haven’t been documented, federal officials said. The Environmental Protection Agency never approved that designation after the February 2023 Norfolk Southern derailment even though the disaster forced the evacuation of … Read more
The decision to blow open five tank cars and burn the toxic chemical inside them after a freight train derailed in Eastern Ohio last year wasn’t justified, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board told Congress Wednesday. But she said the key decision-makers who feared those tank cars were going to explode three days … Read more
Residents of eastern Ohio can now get an up-close view in newly released videos of the twin toxic towers of fire that forced them from their homes last February after officials decided to blow open five tank cars filled with vinyl chloride they worried might explode days after a Norfolk Southern train derailed. The National … Read more
EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — Daily life largely returned to normal for most of the nearly 5,000 residents of East Palestine, Ohio, months after a Norfolk Southern train derailed and spilled a cocktail of hazardous chemicals that caught fire a year ago, but the worries and fears are always there. Some people still report respiratory problems, … Read more
