An electric car fire is like 'a trick birthday candle' — and a nightmare for firefighters

Cyrus Farivar

Sun, June 20, 2021, 4:06 AM·11 min read

It’s the kind of blaze that veteran Chief Palmer Buck of The Woodlands Township Fire Department in suburban Houston compared to “a trick birthday candle.”

On April 17, when firefighters responded to a 911 call at around 9:30 p.m., they came upon a Tesla Model S that had crashed, killing two people, and was now on fire.

They extinguished it, but then a small flare shot out of the bottom of the charred hulk. Firefighters quickly put out those flames. Not long after, the car reignited for a third time.

“What the heck? How do we make this stop?’” Buck asked his team. They quickly consulted Tesla’s first responder guide and realized that it would take far more personnel and water than they could have imagined. Eight firefighters ultimately spent seven hours putting out the fire. They also used up 28,000 gallons of water — an amount the department normally uses in a month. That same volume of water serves an average American home for nearly two years.

By comparison, a typical fire involving an internal combustion car can often be quickly put out with approximately 300 gallons of water, well within the capacity of a single fire engine.

As the popularity of electric vehicles grows, firefighters nationwide are realizing that they are not fully equipped to deal with them. So they have been banding together, largely informally, to share information to help one another out. In fact, Buck recently spoke on Zoom about the incident before a group of Colorado firefighters.

That’s because the way that electric vehicles are powered triggers longer-burning fires when they crash and get into serious accidents. Electric cars rely on a bank of lithium-ion batteries, similar to batteries found in a cellphone or computer. But unlike a small phone battery, the large batteries found in the Tesla Model X, for instance, contain enough energy to power an average American home for more than two days.

The remains of a Tesla vehicle are seen after it crashed in The Woodlands, Texas (Scott J. Enlge / via Reuters)

So when an electric vehicle gets in a high-speed accident and catches on fire, damaged energy cells cause temperatures to rise out of control, and the resulting blaze can require a significant amount of water to put out. Such vehicles, given their large electrical energy storage capacity, can be a considerable hazard, known as “stranded energy,” to first responders.

But training to put out these fires can’t come fast enough as more electric vehicles arrive on U.S. roads every day. According to IHS Insight, an industry analysis firm, the number of registered electric vehicles reached a record market share in the United States of 1.8 percent and is forecast to double to 3.5 percent by the end of this year. But IHS notes that 1 in 10 cars are expected to be electric by 2025.

Still, most firefighters across America have not been adequately trained in the key differences between putting fires out in gas and electric cars. Some counterparts in Europe have developed a different approach, sometimes even putting a burning electric vehicle into a converted shipping container or dumpster -- essentially giving it a bath -- so that it cannot do further harm. Tesla says in its publicly available first responders guide that this method is not advisable and that departments should just use lots of water to put fires out.

Tesla S Car Crash in The Netherlands (Caspar Huurdeman / Hollandse Hoogt via Redux)

The problem has become widespread enough that late last year the National Transportation Safety Board published a report noting the “inadequacy” of all car manufacturers’ first responder guides. The agency further noted that while there are electric disconnection mechanisms, known as “cut loops,” they are often damaged in serious crashes. Finally, the NTSB also said that first responders generally lack an understanding of how to put out fires that can result from such crashes.

“The instructions in most manufacturers’ emergency response guides for fighting high-voltage lithium-ion battery fires lack necessary, vehicle-specific details on suppressing the fires,” the NTSB said

But there’s little that the board can do to fix the problem.

“We do not have any regulatory power, we do not have any enforcement power,” said NTSB spokesperson Eric Weiss, pointing out that such authority sits with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA.

In an email, Lucia Sanchez, a spokesperson for the safety administration, said that this topic remains important for the agency, one that it is “actively engaged in with our stakeholders including members of the first responder community.” In recent correspondence with the NTSB, the regulatory agency said that it continues to conduct research on “developing practical strategies for responders.”

Tesla, the largest electric-vehicle seller in the United States, did not respond to requests for comment about the NTSB report. But Capt. Cory Wilson, a 14-year veteran of the fire department in Fremont, California, where all U.S.-made Teslas are manufactured, said that Tesla has worked directly with his department for the past eight years. Still the best advice that Wilson gave was to advise firefighters to print out and keep Tesla safety guides in their trucks.

“Tesla has done a good job trying to get first responders educated,” he said.

Benedikt Griffig, a Volkswagen spokesperson, said in an email that German firefighting authorities have largely reached the same conclusion as their American counterparts, noting that they, too, may need considerable volumes of water to put out such a fire. Nissan spokesperson Ashli Bobo declined to respond to questions, but pointed to the company’s publicly available first responder guide. David McAlpine, a General Motors spokesman, said the company has actively worked on providing guidance for first responders working with electric vehicles and that "General Motors is committed to developing products that are safe and enjoyable for all our customers." Ford did not respond to requests for comment.

Recent discovery

While the first Tesla vehicles hit American streets in 2008, the National Transportation Safety Board did not investigate its first electric-vehicle battery fires until after an Aug. 25, 2017, crash of a Tesla Model X. That car was driving an estimated 70 mph or more down a residential street in Lake Forest, California, about an hour’s drive southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

According to the NTSB, the driver lost control of the car, crossed a sidewalk, traveled down a drainage ditch, hit a culvert and a property wall, and finally zoomed into an open garage and collided with a parked BMW, narrowly missing a man inside.

The Tesla caught fire, which spread to the BMW, then the garage and the house itself.

While Orange County Fire Authority’s firefighters put out most of the fire within 20 minutes, they found that a fire continued to burn in the attic above the fire, fueled by the burning Tesla. It took another 30 minutes for them to get the Tesla out of the garage, after which it reignited.

Firefighters battle a blaze sparked by a Tesla in Lake Forest, Calif., on Aug. 25, 2017. (Orange County Fire Authority)

But 45 minutes after the flames on the Tesla were extinguished, it reignited again. Firefighters began hosing it down with copious amounts of water, up to 200 gallons per minute, but “that did not extinguish the flames,” according to the NTSB. At approximately 9:13 p.m., nearly three hours after the first alarm was received, firefighters had to pour out more than 600 gallons of water per minute. In the end, two firefighters sustained minor smoke inhalation-related injuries, and the agency used 20,000 gallons of water.

Capt. Sean Doran, the spokesperson for the Orange County Fire Authority, said that electric vehicle-related fires are a “game changer,” given that they require such huge amounts of water, and incidents can last hours longer than what most departments may be used to.

“One of the concepts in firefighting is don’t start what you can’t finish,” he said. “We don’t want to start applying water before we have a water source.”

It’s also often difficult for firefighters to get that volume of water outside of a mid-size city with adequate hydrants or other natural sources. That’s also what The Woodlands Township Fire Department, which responded to the Tesla crash in April, concluded.

“On a highway, to figure out how you’re going to get 20,000 gallons is a planning and logistics nightmare,” Buck, the fire chief, said.

Seeking help

Fire department officials say one of the biggest problems they face is that Tesla and other major car manufacturers often don’t include enough detail in their model guides for first responders as some fire agencies would like.On May 8, 2018, a 2014 Tesla Model S took a curve at 116 mph in a 30-mph zone in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The car hit a wall in a residential area before it erupted in flames, then continued down the road and hit a light pole, finally stopping in a driveway. The driver and front passenger were both killed, while the rear passenger was seriously injured.

Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue arrived four minutes after a 911 call was placed and began hosing down the car.

According to Asst. Fire Marshal Stephen Gollan, his agency had “minimal training” before this incident, but he knew enough to consult the Tesla online emergency response guide, which describes the “cut loops” that shut down the high voltage system. But firefighters couldn’t reach the loops.

The instructions for this model also includes the warning: “use large amounts of water to cool the battery. DO NOT extinguish fire with a small amount of water,” according to Tesla.

But Gollan said that not only does Tesla's manual lack a definition of “large amounts” of water, it also provides little detail about what firefighters should do with the remaining damaged batteries that may still contain dangerous stranded energy. In the end, Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue used a combination of water and firefighting foam, even though Tesla does not recommend using foam.

“The Tesla manuals only say to use copious amounts of water,” he said. “They don't provide any direction as to how to remove that energy.”

In the end, the Tesla was loaded onto a tow truck for removal from the crash site. But the battery reignited twice during that process.

Like Buck in The Woodlands case, Gollan found himself quickly fielding calls from numerous agencies trying to learn more about how to put out electrical vehicle fires from someone who had done it firsthand.

“Following the incident we did substantial debriefings with NTSB and other municipal fire departments,” he said. “And since that time I've had multiple calls with other agencies from across the U.S.”

Support groups

While some firefighters are now turning to one another for help, like Buck speaking to his counterparts in Colorado, other groups like the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), a lobbying and research arm for the fire insurance and firefighting community, are also trying to address the growing demand for their firefighter courses.

While the NFPA has trained approximately 250,000 firefighters and emergency responders in the last 12 years on this issue, that leaves nearly 80 percent of the more than 1.1 million firefighters nationwide left to train, according to the organization. Of those, approximately two-thirds are volunteers and may be harder to reach.

The scene where an Oregon man crashed a Tesla while going about 100 mph, destroying the vehicle, a power pole and starting a fire when some of the hundreds of batteries from the vehicle broke windows and landed in residences in Corvallis, Ore., in November 2020. (Corvallis Police Dept. via AP)

“With EVs (electric vehicles), especially for the fire service, it’s a new paradigm,” said Andrew Klock, the group’s emerging issues lead manager.

Robert Swaim, who retired nearly two years ago, spent more than 30 years at the NTSB. He began digging into the issue with lithium-ion batteries after a Boeing 787 caught fire in Boston in 2013.

Swaim has been offering his own training, comparable to ones offered by NFPA, except his classes are live -- and he brings his own Chevy Volt to class. He points out that his in-person and hands-on training is considerably more helpful than the myriad of PDFs that various manufacturers put out. He said that after recently posting some of his presentation slides, traffic to his website has jumped by more than a factor of 10.

“You’re going to tell me that a volunteer firefighter is going to go to the Ford website and learn about Ford’s emergency response guide?” he said. “That’s not going to happen.”

Continuing problems

In the meantime, fire departments are facing far more time-intensive fires. In the past, most car fires were put out in well under an hour. Then the scene was turned over to local law enforcement, and a tow company moved the car.

“Then we are going to have to sit on scene usually for 45 minutes to an hour with our [thermal imaging camera] to make sure the battery is not continuing to heat up,” said Wilson, the Fremont Fire captain.

Later this summer, Buck is set to give another presentation to his former agency, the Austin Fire Department, where he worked for 27 years. The Texas capital is set to become Tesla’s new manufacturing hub, known as Gigafactory Texas, where the company’s new all-electric Cybertruck is expected to be produced.

Buck fears that as electric cars become larger, they’re going to need bigger batteries, which could mean even longer-burning fires. He notes that this is too big a burden on small fire departments.

“The time on scene is more concerning than even the amount of water — the fact that I might have a unit tied up for multiple hours while it cools down,” he said. “I'm just babysitting, and that’s problematic.”

WHY CORONAVIRUS COULD SPARK A CAPITALIST SUPERNOVA

By John Smith
APRIL 5, 2020
Republished from Open Democracy. This article is part of Open Democracy’s 'Decolonising the economy' series.

“Global yields lowest in 500 years of recorded history. $10 trillion of negative rate bonds. This is a supernova that will explode one day,” tweeted Bill Gross, the ‘bond king’, in 2016.

This day has come closer. Capitalism now faces the deepest crisis in its several centuries of existence. A global slump has begun that is already devastating the lives of hundreds of millions of working people on all continents. The consequences for workers and poor people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America will be even more extreme than for those living in Europe and North America, both with respect to lives lost to coronavirus and to the existential threats to the billions of people already living in extreme poverty. Capitalism, an economic system based on selfishness, greed and dog-eat-dog competition, will more clearly than ever reveal itself to be incompatible with civilisation.

Why is supernova – the explosion and death of a star – an apt metaphor for what could now be about to unfold? Why could the coronavirus, an organism 1000th the diameter of a human hair, be the catalyst for such a cataclysm? And what can workers, youth and the dispossessed of the world do to defend ourselves and to ‘bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old’, in the words of the US labour hymn, Solidarity Forever?

To find answers to these questions, we need to understand why the ‘global financial crisis’ that began in 2007 was much more than a financial crisis, and why the extreme measures taken by G7 governments and central banks to restore a modicum of stability – in particular the ‘zero interest rate policy’, described by a Goldman Sachs banker as “crack cocaine for the financial markets” – have created the conditions for today’s crisis.


GLOBAL CAPITALISM’S ‘UNDERLYING HEALTH ISSUES’

The first stage of a supernova is implosion, analogous to the long-term decline in interest rates that began well before the onset of systemic crisis in 2007, which has accelerated since then, and which fell off a cliff just as coronavirus began its rampage in early January 2020. Falling interest rates are fundamentally the result of two factors: falling rates of profit, and the hypertrophy of capital, i.e. its tendency grow faster than the capacity of workers and farmers to supply it with the fresh blood it needs to live. As Marx said, in Capital vol. 1, “capital’s sole driving force [is] the drive to valorise itself, to create surplus-value… capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.”

These two factors combine to form a doom loop of awesome destructive power. Let us examine its most important linkages.

Many things both mask and counteract the falling rate of profit, turning this into a tendency that only reveals itself in times of crisis, of which the most important has been the shift of production from Europe, North America and Japan to take advantage of the much higher rates of exploitation available in low-wage countries. The falling rate of profit manifests itself in a growing reluctance of capitalists to invest in production; more and more of what they do invest in is branding, intellectual property and other parasitic and non-productive activities. This long-running capitalist investment strike is amplified by the global shift of production – boosting profits by slashing wages rather than by building new factories and deploying new technologies. This enables huge mark-ups, turbo-charging the accumulation of vast wealth for which capitalists have no productive use – hence the hypertrophy of capital.

This, in turn, results in declining interest rates – as capitalists compete with each other to purchase financial assets, they bid up their price, and the revenue streams they generate fall in proportion – hence falling interest rates. Falling interest rates and rising asset values have created what is, for capitalist investors, the ultimate virtuous circle – they can borrow vast sums to invest in financial assets of all kinds, further inflating their ‘value’.

Falling interest rates therefore have two fundamental consequences: the inflation of asset bubbles and the piling up of debt mountains. In fact, these are two sides of the same coin: for every debtor there is a creditor; every debt is someone else’s asset. Asset bubbles could deflate (if productivity increases), or else they will burst; economic growth could, over time, erode debt mountains, or else they will come crashing down.

Since 2008, productivity has stagnated across the world and GDP growth has been lower than in any decade since World War II, resulting in what Nouriel Roubini has called “the mother of all asset bubbles,” while aggregate debt (the total debt of governments, corporations and households), already mountainous before the 2008 financial crash, has since then more than doubled in size. The growth of debt has been particularly pronounced in the countries of the global South. Total debt for the 30 largest of them reached $72.5tn in 2019 – a 168% rise over the past 10 years, according to Bank of International Settlements data. China accounts for $43tn of this, up from $10tn a decade ago. In sum, well before coronavirus, global capitalism already had ‘underlying health issues’, it was already in intensive care.

Global capitalism – which is more imperialist than ever, since it is both more parasitic and more reliant than ever before on the proceeds of super-exploitation in low-wage countries – is therefore inexorably heading to supernova, towards the bursting of assets bubbles and the crashing of debt mountains. Everything that imperialist central banks have done since 2008 has been designed to postpone the inevitable day of reckoning. But now that day has come.

10-year US Treasury bonds are considered the safest of havens and the ultimate benchmark against which all other debt is priced. In times of great uncertainty, investors invariably stampede out of stock markets and into the safest bond markets, so as share prices fall, bond prices – otherwise known as ‘fixed income securities’ – rise. As they do, the fixed income they yield translates into a falling rate of interest. But not on March 9, when, in the midst of plummeting stock markets, 10-year US Treasury bond interest rates spiked upwards. According to one bond trader, “statistically speaking, [this] should only happen every few millennia.” Even in the darkest moment of the global financial crisis, when Lehman Brothers (a big merchant bank) went bankrupt in September 2008, this did not happen.

The immediate cause of this minor heart attack was the scale of asset-destruction in other share and bond markets, causing investors to scramble to turn their speculative investments into cash. To satisfy their demands, fund managers were obliged to sell their most easily-exchangeable assets, thereby negating their safe-haven status, and this jolted governments and central banks to take extreme action and fire their ‘big bazookas’, namely the multi-trillion dollar rescue packages – including a pledge to print money without limit to ensure the supply of cash to the markets. But this event also provided a premonition for what is down the road. In the end, dollar bills, like bond and share certificates, are just pieces of paper. As trillions more of them flood into the system, events in March 2020 bring closer the day when investors will lose faith in cash itself – and in the power of the economy and state standing behind it. Then the supernova moment will have arrived.


THE LEFT’S IMPERIALISM-DENIAL, AND ITS BELIEF IN THE ‘MAGIC MONEY TREE’

The gamut of the left in imperialist countries – the Jeremy Corbyn-led wing of the Labour Party in the UK; the motley crew of left-Keynesians such as Ann Pettifor, Paul Mason, Yanis Varoufakis; supporters of Bernie Sanders in USA – are united on two things: they all acknowledge, to one degree or another, that imperialist plunder of colonies and neocolonies happened in the past but do not acknowledge that imperialism continues in any meaningful way to define relations between rich and poor countries.

And they believe in one or other version of the ‘magic money tree’, in other words, they see the decline of interest rates into negative territory not as a flashing red light showing the extremity of the crisis, i.e. not as the implosion phase of a supernova, but as a green light to borrow money to finance increased state investment, social spending, a Green New Deal, and even a bit more foreign aid. In fact, there is no magic money tree. Capitalism cannot escape from this crisis, no matter how many trillions of dollars governments borrow or central banks print. The neoliberals rejected magical thinking, now they embrace it – this shows the extent of their panic, but it does not make magical thinking any less fantastical. The trillions they spent after 2007-8 bought another decade of zombie-like life for their vile system. This time they will be lucky to get 10 months, or even 10 weeks, before the explosion phase of the supernova begins.


CORONAVIRUS – CATALYST FOR CATACLYSM

The coronavirus pandemic occurred at the worst possible time: growth in the eurozone had shrunk to zero; much of Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa were already in recession; the sugar-high from Trump’s huge tax-giveaways to US corporations was fading; the US-China trade war was causing serious disruption to supply chains and was threatening to entangle the EU; and tens of millions of people joined mass protests in dozens of countries across the world.

Interest rates are now deep in negative territory – but not if you are Italy, facing an enormous increase in its debt/GDP ratio, not if you are an indebted corporation trying to refinance your debts, not if you are an ‘emerging market’. Since March 9, corporate interest rates have gone through the roof; in fact few corporations can borrow money at any price. Investors are refusing to lend to them. Corporations are now facing a credit crunch – in the midst of global negative interest rates! That’s why the ECB decided to borrow €750 billion from these same investors, and use it to buy the corporate bonds which these same investors now refuse to purchase, and why the USA’s Federal Reserve is doing the same on an even bigger scale. Italy’s (and the EU’s) fate now depends on the willingness of the Bundesbank to replace its private creditors. Their refusal to do this would be the final stage of the EU’s death agony.

During the middle two weeks of March, imperialist governments announced plans to spend $4.5 trillion bailing out their own bankrupt economies. An emergency online summit of the G20 (the G7 imperialist nations plus a dozen or so ‘emerging’ nations, including Russia, India, China, Brazil, and Indonesia) on 26 March, declared “we are injecting over $5 trillion into the global economy.” These are weasel words; by ‘global’ they actually mean ‘domestic’! The response of the ‘left’ in the imperialist countries is to clap its hands and say, we were right all along! There is a magic money tree after all! – apparently not realising that this is exactly what happened post-2008: the socialisation of private debt. Or that, unlike post-2008, this time it will not work.

Yet, as imperialist governments belatedly mobilise – and monopolise – medical resources to confront the coronavirus crisis in their own countries, they’ve abandoned poor countries to their fate. The left in the imperialist countries (or we could just say ‘imperialist left’, for short) has also ignored the fact that there is nothing in these emergency cash injections for the poor of the global South. If you are an ‘emerging market’, well, fuck off and join the queue for an IMF bail-out! As of March 24, 80 countries were standing in this queue, waiting for some of its $1tr lending capacity. $1 trillion sounds like a lot of money, and indeed it is, but, as Martin Wolf, chief economic correspondent for the Financial Times, points out, “the aggregate external financing gaps of emerging and developing countries are likely to be far beyond the IMF’s lending capacity.”

Furthermore, as Wolf suggests, the purpose of IMF loans is to help with “external financing gaps” – in other words, to bail out imperialist creditors, not the peoples of debtor nations; and they invariably come with harsh and humiliating conditions that add to the crushing burden already pressing down on the peoples of those countries. In this sense, they are just like the vast government bailouts of private capital in the rich countries – but without anything added on to finance welfare payments or partially replace wages. The aim of the latter is to purchase the docility of the working class in the imperialist nations, but they have no intention of doing this in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

On March 24, the United Nations issued an appeal for $2bn to fight the coronavirus pandemic in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This money, which the U.N. hopes to raise over the next nine months, is 1/80 of the annual budget of the U.K.’s NHS, and less than 1/2000 of the $4.5tr they plan to spend keeping their own capitalist economies alive. It is also less than 1/40 of the money which imperialist investors have taken out of ‘emerging markets’ during the first three weeks of March, “the largest capital outflow ever recorded,” according to IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva.

The maximum extent of relief for the collateral effects of the coronavirus epidemic on the peoples of poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America was indicated by World Bank president, David Malpass, who said after the G20 summit ended that his board is putting together a rescue package valued at “up to $160 billion” spread out over the next 15 months – a minuscule fraction of the economic losses that the coming global slump will impose on the peoples of the absurdly-named ‘emerging markets’.


“WE HAVE A REVOLUTIONARY DUTY TO FULFILL" – LEONARDO FERNANDEZ, CUBAN DOCTOR IN ITALY

So, what is to be done? Instead of applauding the bailout of big corporations, we should expropriate them. Instead of endorsing a temporary moratorium on evictions and the accumulation of rent arrears, we should confiscate real estate so as to protect workers and small businesses. These, and many other struggles to assert our right to life over the rights of capitalists to their property, are for the near future.

Right now the priority is to do whatever is necessary to save life and defeat the coronavirus. This means extending solidarity to those who are most vulnerable to the pandemic – homeless people, prisoners, asylum seekers enduring ‘hostile environments’ – and to the dispossessed and victims of imperialism in the slums, shantytowns and refugee camps of the global South. Raghuram Rajan, former governor of the Bank of India, points out that “pending a cure or a reliable vaccine, the world needs to fight the virus into submission everywhere in order to relax measures anywhere.” The Economist concurs: “If covid-19 is left to ravage the emerging world, it will soon spread back to the rich one.”

The coronavirus pandemic is just the latest proof that we need not so much an NHS, but a GHS – a Global Health Service. The only country that is acting on this imperative is revolutionary Cuba. They already have more than 28,000 doctors providing free health care in 61 poor countries – more than the G7 nations combined – and 52 in Italy, 120 more to Jamaica, and are helping scores of other countries to prepare for the pandemic. Even the far-right Bolsonaro government in Brazil, which last year expelled 10000 Cuban doctors, branding them terrorists, is now begging them to return.

To defeat coronavirus we must emulate Cuba’s medical internationalism. If we are to defeat this pandemic we must join with its revolutionary doctors and revolutionary people, and we must prepare do what Cuba did to make this internationalism possible – in other words, we must replace the dictatorship of capital with the power of working people. The coronavirus supernova makes socialist revolution – in imperialist countries and across the world – into a necessity, an urgent practical task, a life and death question if human civilisation is to survive and if the capitalist destruction of nature, of which the coronavirus epidemic is merely the latest symptom, is to be ended.



Thanks to Andy Higginbottom, Shih-yu Chou, and Walter Daum for comments on earlier drafts of this article.

How D.C. Swamp Money Made Trains More Dangerous

I CHOO-CHOOSE YOU

The Norfolk Southern crash has brought renewed focus on how the rail industry has evaded some regulations. That story has been playing out for decades.


Roger Sollenberger
Political Reporter
Updated Mar. 05, 2023

Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images, James St. John/Wikimedia Commons, and Public Domain

After the catastrophic Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, it didn’t take long for the supercharged partisan atmosphere in Washington to morph the disaster into a political blame game.

Republicans castigated President Joe Biden’s administration for falling asleep at the switch. Biden officials pointed to deregulation under former President Donald Trump. And all the while, the rail industry knew that, even though new safety regulations would seem like an obvious response to the crash and subsequent release of toxic chemicals into the air, new regulations were far from a given.

Although it’s far from the most influential lobby in Washington, the rail industry has spent more than $700 million in the last 25 years, according to data maintained by OpenSecrets. And it’s those hundreds of millions spent pushing back against government safety regulations—primarily but not exclusively through Republicans—that has purchased considerable influence in the U.S. Capitol.

A review by The Daily Beast of lobbying and campaign finance filings tells a story of a decades-long ideological push and pull. The review shows that, while it’s sometimes difficult to draw straight lines between an acute event and its cause, entrenched corporate and political cultures still have an overwhelming influence.


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For instance, one major requirement now on the books—an automated braking technology called “positive train control” (PTC)—debuted on the National Transportation Safety Board’s “most wanted” list in 1990. But under industry pressure, PTC wasn’t fully implemented for 30 years.

As the dust, debris, and various poisons settle from this Norfolk Southern crash, it appears the Trump administration’s specific anti-regulatory moves may not be directly responsible for the wreck, which the National Transportation Safety Bureau’s preliminary report blamed on an overheated wheel bearing.

But that finding itself doesn’t necessarily shift the blame back to Biden. In fact, it puts more pressure on Republicans to do something they’ve resisted for years—expand rail safety regulations, such as updating outdated track detection technology.

That’s perhaps the most profound revelation to emerge from the financial data: meaningful changes are almost always reactive, in response to catastrophes instead of anticipating and preventing them before they happen.

In the wake of the crash, federal regulators disclosed that there have been five similar derailments since 2021, two involving Norfolk Southern, the American Journal of Transportation reported on Thursday. The article also said that current track monitoring relies on “antiquated technology” with “a mixed record of preventing accidents.”

But it’s difficult to rein in an industry that’s as vital to everyday American life as railroads are, let alone convince the industry to support forward-looking regulations that would eat into its bottom line. It’s hard to overstate the leverage that this special interest group wields—if railroads stop working, America stops eating.

And yet, the railroad industry’s culture of resistance is most immediately and easily identified in the money.

Over the years, the industry has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into blocking and stalling new rules and legislation, including measures designed to strengthen and modernize rail safety. But a side-by-side comparison of rail lobby spending and government action also suggests that money alone doesn’t explain everything. Instead, the larger baked-in political ideology of the governing party appears to have carried the day on key issues.

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‘NO GOODNESS IN THEIR HEART’
Josh Fiallo


This is reflected in the fact that the rail industry’s lobbying expenditures soared under Barack Obama—most specifically his first term—and then fell, most notably after Obama unilaterally enacted key safety regulations in 2015. The spending stayed at those same lower levels after Trump took office, and have continued at that rate under Biden.

According to OpenSecrets data, the railroad industry shelled out nearly $185 million on lobbying during Obama’s first four years. During Trump’s one term in office, that spending totaled around $107 million. (Rail lobbying during Obama’s second term was about $127 million, according to OpenSecrets.) And railroad lobbyists are far more likely to have direct connections to Capitol Hill than almost any other group

Filings further show that the money was largely aimed at blocking government regulation.

The Association of American Railroads—the industry’s top lobbying group—spent heavily to push back against safety, labor, and antitrust proposals during the Obama years, according to an OpenSecrets database of lobbying disclosures. Under Trump, the partisan winds became friendlier, and spending tailed off.

While Obama didn’t exactly stick it to the railroads—his early visions of overarching antitrust and labor reforms never came to fruition—he did use his executive power to impose some key safety regulations in the face of all that cash. But Trump quickly scrapped those rules with the stroke of a Sharpie, and the railroad companies apparently didn’t feel they had to kick up their spending to convince him and his allies to act in their favor.

That’s not to say they stopped spending. Lobbyists know they have to maintain their relevance, and over Trump’s term, the rail lobby—led by AAR—spent millions of dollars renting the ears of lawmakers.

Many of those expenses went to combat the Safe Freight Act. That bill would have enshrined the two-member crew minimum into law, and was introduced in 2017 by a Republican—the late Rep. Don Young of Alaska, who’s the longest serving Republican in Congress of all time.

Norfolk Southern alone spent about $4.5 million on lobbying between 2017 and 2018, according to the company’s federal lobbying disclosures.

A Norfolk Southern representative referred The Daily Beast to “our extensive Government Relations’ Political Activity and Political Contributions overview” and their statement on the NTSB findings.

“We are taking further actions to improve the safety processes and technology we currently have in place while we await the final results of the NTSB investigation,” the representative said, pointing to $1 billion annual investments in safety technology, equipment, and infrastructure and several corporate commitments.

GOP Demands Rail Safety Fixes After Ignoring Rail Safety
CARRY ME OHIO
Sam Bodey


Asked for comment, an AAR spokesperson sent a 228-word statement saying that “any assertion that railroads broadly opposed increased safety regulations is patently false,” pointing to a “a long, consistent record.” The spokesperson gave one concrete example, “pushing the Department of Transportation” in 2015 to raise standards for tank cars carrying flammable liquids, including a petition on the matter to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. (Those negotiations were more nuanced, according to the DOT’s final rulemaking and the PHMSA’s response to the petition.)

The statement also directed The Daily Beast to the AAR’s statement this week on newly released Federal Railroad Administration safety data, and touted “$20 billion in annual private investments” towards broadly “maintaining the network” and “deploying technology to enhance safety.”

When Trump landed in the White House, he quickly tanked several of the targeted Obama policies. One rule—which briefly came back into the news after the Norfolk Southern derailment—mandated new brake technology for trains carrying volatile and hazardous materials. Trump also killed a rail safety audit program, along with another proposed Obama rule requiring trains to operate with two-man crews, which had already begun to languish. Those repeals and others under Trump appear either minimally or entirely unrelated to the Norfolk Southern derailment, according to a Washington Post fact check.

Generally speaking, the rail industry’s political giving has always favored the GOP. According to OpenSecrets, the industry has spent about $108.6 million to influence elections since 1990, with PACs giving more than individual employees.

Republicans have received the majority of those donations in every election, with two exceptions—the 1990 and 2010 midterms. And some of the recent top GOP recipients, such as Sens. Sam Graves, Jerry Moran, and John Thune, hold leadership positions with influence over that industry.

Contributions from Norfolk Southern employees and its corporate PAC have also historically curved towards Republicans, the data shows, though the company favored Democratic candidates in both 2020 and 2022.

In one curious case, the money went the other way.

Between 2017 and 2021, then-Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) rented office space from Norfolk Southern for both his campaign committee and leadership PAC, FEC records show. Over that period, Blunt’s committees paid Norfolk Southern approximately $76,000 in rent. (In 2015, Blunt introduced a bill with bipartisan co-sponsors that would extend the deadline for adopting PTC.)

Still, it’s clear that Obama’s actions—no matter how debatable their relevance to the Norfolk Southern disaster, or the Democrats’ failure to deliver on antitrust issues—appear to have overcome an onslaught of cash. But he and liberal allies also weren’t able to rally enough support to fully overcome Republican and industry resistance.

It’s instructive to note that the anti-regulatory lobbying push actually started the year before Obama took office, under a Republican administration.

Rail Officials Back Out of Town Hall on Ohio Train Disaster
NOW YOU’RE WORRIED?


That year, the railroad industry spent almost $43 million lobbying inside the beltway as Congress negotiated the bipartisan Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, which introduced positive train control. President George W. Bush signed it into law that October.

But the pendulum quickly swung the other way.

After the RSIA was passed, the industry dug in hard against some of those new rules, including the PTC requirement, which at that point had already been on the government’s wishlist for 18 years.

Over the next several years, the rail lobby successfully convinced lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to delay the mandate, citing cost and time constraints.

Obama himself signed a bill delaying PTC in 2015—the same year he put forward the new braking requirement that Trump tossed—and the rule was only fully adopted at the end of 2020.

The biggest revelation in the data is still not about money’s effect on the speed of progress, or even partisanship per se. Again, it’s that the most significant advancements are almost never proactive. Industry interests are powerful, and it takes a catastrophe like East Palestine to sharpen the focus on safety.

For instance, the RSIA of 2008, with its long-awaited PTC mandate, came only after a commuter train collision in Southern California killed 25 people. At the time, the Association of American Railroads put out a press release backing the bill. But according to the Internet Archive, the page disappeared from the organization’s website sometime between 2012 and 2013.

Around that same time, the industry convinced the Obama administration to extend the timeline for the PTC rule. Three years later, however, a fatal Philadelphia Amtrak wreck brought rail safety front and center again. In response, Obama enacted federal regulations without the help of Congress, while agreeing to delay PTC. The next year, however, another deadly passenger train crash put the heat back on the railroad lobby.

The Norfolk Southern freighter that derailed last month had positive train control. According to the NTSB’s preliminary report, the train’s PTC system was not to blame, as it was “enabled and operating at the time of the derailment.”

That’s put a new albeit reactive focus on another safety mechanism: old detection technology that may not be up for the task.

At a press conference addressing the report, NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters that track monitoring is “something we have to look at.”

“Roller bearings fail,” Homendy said. “But it’s absolutely critical for problems to be identified and addressed early so these aren’t run until failure.”

Beware a new wave of populism, born out of coronavirus-induced economic inequity

Big businesses and governments are fast making themselves inviolable. There could be a backlash


Nick Cohen Sat 18 Apr 2020 THE GUARDIAN 
 

Protesters ‘Rally Against Capital’ in London in February 2020. Photograph: Ollie Millington/Getty Images
SEE SOME PROTESTERS WERE ALREADY MASKED AGAINST COVID-19

Aglobal wave of injustice could follow the global pandemic. Pre-existing tendencies towards monopoly, Chinese dominance and predatory capitalism will explode unless governments take measures to contain them. I accept that it is hard to imagine public fury at a rigged economy when voters are rallying to their leaders and lockdowns are enjoying overwhelming support. Solidarity cannot last, however, as the crisis accentuates the division between insiders and outsiders.

You see them now. Employees with staff jobs, and the ability to work from home, are coping, for the moment. A few might experience lockdown as something close to a holiday and rhapsodise on the joys of home baking and box sets. As insiders stay inside, they save the money they would have spent in shops, restaurants, hotels and travel agents - the places where the insecure, the luckless nine out of 10 in the bottom half of earners who cannot work from home, once made their livings.


What applies to individuals applies to corporations and private equity funds that are strong enough to buy up distressed assets at a fraction of their pre-crisis value. I sat up and paid attention last week when I heard Sebastian Mallaby of the US Council on Foreign Relations warn that private equity is likely “to play both sides”: soaking up government largesse and profiting from market mayhem. It won’t, he concluded, “look great when we consider the political economy of the pandemic a year from now”.

You catch a glimpse of the future in the manoeuvres of the US private equity firms thinking of deploying hundreds of billions of dollars they hold in reserve as high-interest loans to struggling companies. The arguments this month about a Chinese state-owned investment firm buying up the British chip manufacturer Imagination Technologies are a further harbinger of a possible world to come. The Chinese Communist Party’s “2025 Made in China” strategy sees it leapfrogging the west by taking over companies and establishing a global lead in smart manufacturing, digitisation and emerging technologies. Covid-19 gives the party the opportunity it needs. Funds and states are operating in a market where the tendency towards monopoly was already established.

The 2008 crash, like recessions before it, concentrated economic power, as large firms used their resources and access to finance to ensure their survival. But, unlike in the last century, a multitude of rival businesses did not emerge once recession had passed, to provide competition and new employment opportunities for workers wanting to raise their wages by switching firms. In 2016, according to the Resolution Foundation, Britain’s 100 biggest firms accounted for 23% of total revenue across the economy, up by a quarter since 2004. As the economic crisis we are entering looks worse than 2008, worse indeed than anything anyone alive can remember, the rise of corporate giants seems assured. Big governments – and this crisis is making governments bigger than ever – will welcome them, because they want the convenience of dealing with big businesses, not with tens of thousands of small and medium-size firms.

Complaints about tax-exile billionaires wanting other people’s money are a warning

Do you begin to see how popular fury might build? Vulture capitalists swooping on undervalued assets. Chinese communists, who censored news of Covid-19 rather than alerting the world, benefiting rather than suffering. Big business trampling over all who might challenge it. It’s not a recipe for social peace.

Superficially, the crisis of 2020 does not appear anything like the financial crisis of 2007-08 and not only because it threatens to bring an incomparably greater level of impoverishment. Then there were human villains: bankers and captured regulators who broke the financial system, northern Europeans who congratulated themselves as they let southern Europe collapse. Now there’s just an invisible infectious agent that wants only to replicate itself. The similarities remain striking, for all that. Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, like leaders across the west, weren’t interested in jailing bankers or making them pay back their bonuses. Their sole concern was to stop the collapse of the banking system. The morality of the bailout could wait – forever, as it turned out. Everywhere in the west, the public reaction was the same. Democracy was a racket. Taxpayers had to rescue the richest people in the world and then suffer years of stagnant wages and cut public services to meet the bill. If you need a one-line explanation for populism, this is the best there is.

Yet again, vast amounts of public money are being committed, but instead of stagnation we face catastrophe. Nervous commentators rererence how the Great Depression of the 1930s fuelled nazism and communism, as 2008 fuelled populism, and dread what awaits us. They should know there is no necessary link between economic and political failure. Far from enabling tyranny, the economic crisis of the 1970s, for instance, saw the end of the rightwing tyrannies in Spain, Portugal and Greece and the beginning of the decline and fall of the Soviet empire. Our future depends not only on the work of scientists but on the efforts of governments to stop democracy turning into a swindle.

The EU says countries must ensure that big business doesn’t use state funding to buy out rivals and adds that nation states should take stakes in companies threatened with Chinese takeovers. However the UK’s relationship with the EU ends, that’s good advice.

Governments should not forget natural justice as they did in 2008. Complaints about tax-exile billionaires in the Richard Branson mould wanting other people’s money are a warning, not a tabloid distraction. If, as seems likely, the government moves from subsidising wages to direct loans to big business, the first question must be what do taxpayers, employees and wider society gain in return.

Sociologists talk of the “Matthew effect”, an idea lifted from Saint Matthew’s account of the most unChristian words Jesus uttered: “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” Our task is to make sure this miserable prophecy is not now vindicated.

• Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist

'No genocide': Tibet activists sidetrack Beijing Winter Olympics flame ceremony

 

Activists grabbed the spotlight at the flame-lighting ceremony for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in Greece on Monday by unfurling a Tibetan flag and a banner that said "no genocide" at the Games. The demonstrators pulled out the flag and banner during the ceremony in Olympia attended by International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach and several dozen dignitaries including Chinese officials.

Activists urge IOC to postpone 'genocide' Beijing Games

Issued on: 19/10/2021 -

Activists have called for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing to be postponed

 ARIS MESSINIS AFP

Athens (AFP)

Activists on Tuesday called for the postponement of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics as China prepared to receive the Olympic flame, a day after a protest disrupted the lighting ceremony in Olympia.

"This is sports-washing. There are no legitimate reasons to host the Games during a genocide," Zumretay Arkin, advocacy manager of the World Uighur Congress, told a news conference in the Greek capital.

"For sure there will be protests (in China) by Uighurs, Tibetans," said Arkin, who said she has had no contact with her family since 2017.

Lit on Monday in Ancient Olympia, the cradle of the ancient Games, the flame will be handed over to the delegation from Beijing 2022 at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, where the Olympics were revived in 1896, and will be flown to China.

During the ceremony in Olympia on Monday, the activists unfurled a Tibetan flag and a banner that said "no genocide" at the Games. A similar protest was held at the Acropolis in Athens.

Tibet has alternated over the centuries between independence and control by China, which says it "peacefully liberated" the rugged plateau in 1951 and brought infrastructure and education to the previously underdeveloped region.

But human rights campaigners and exiles say the Chinese central government practises religious repression, torture, forced sterilisation and cultural erosion through forced re-education.

Campaigners believe that at least one million Uighurs and other Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim minorities are incarcerated in camps in Xinjiang.

After initially denying the existence of the Xinjiang camps, China later defended them as vocational training centres aimed at reducing the appeal of Islamic extremism.

"Who is going to guarantee that none of my relatives are actually now working in forced labour factories producing clothing and uniforms for the Olympic Games," Arkin said Tuesday.

"Can anyone tell me where my relatives are? I don't think so."

The activists on Tuesday said Hong Kong residents, Tibetans and Uighurs faced "Orwellian" surveillance in China, which they said was "emboldened" after hosting the Summer Games in 2008.

The IOC is legitimising "one of the worst violations of human rights in the entire 21st century" and defiling the spirit of the Games, said Pema Doma, campaigns director for Students for a Free Tibet.

"These Games cannot go ahead as planned, they must be postponed," she said.

IOC chairman Thomas Bach has batted off talk of a potential boycott, claiming the International Olympic Committee's political neutrality and saying it was up to governments to live up to their responsibilities.

A victim of the 1980 Moscow Games boycott, the former fencer has said such moves only punish athletes, and insists the IOC was addressing the rights issue "within our remit".

Around 2,900 athletes, representing approximately 85 National Olympic Committees, will compete in the Winter Games between 4 and 20 February 2022.

Arkin said the campaign "to train light on all the different abuses" was stronger than that of 2008, bringing together "Uighur communities, Hong Kong communities, Tibetan, Southern Mongolian, Chinese and Taiwanese communities".

"No one can stop us. Not the IOC, not governments, not sponsors, not athletes. We will not stop," she said.

Protesters Disrupt Torch Lighting For Beijing Winter Olympics


AP
Mon, October 18, 2021

ANCIENT OLYMPIA, Greece — Three activists protesting human rights abuses in China sneaked into the archaeological site where the flame lighting ceremony for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics was being held Monday and ran toward the newly lit torch holding a Tibetan flag and a banner that read “No genocide games.”

The protesters managed to enter the grounds and attempted to reach the Temple of Hera, where the ceremony was being held. They were thrown to the ground by police and detained.

A security officer tries to stop protesters holding a banner and a Tibetan flag as they crash the flame lighting ceremony for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. 

(Photo: ARIS MESSINIS via Getty Images)

“How can Beijing be allowed to host the Olympics given that they are committing a genocide against the Uyghurs?” one protester said, referring to the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in China’s northwest region of Xinjiang.

The flame was lit at the birthplace of the ancient Olympics in southern Greece under heavy police security.

With the public excluded amid pandemic safety measures, and a cloudless sky over the verdant site of Ancient Olympia, the flame was ceremoniously kindled using the rays of the sun before being carried off on a mini torch relay.

Earlier, other protestors were detained by Greek police before they could reach the site. Pro-democracy protests also had broken out during the lighting ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Summer Games.

A police officer rushes to stop protesters holding a banner and the Tibetan flag (unseen) as they crash the start of the flame lighting ceremony for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics at the Ancient Olympia archeological site. 

(Photo: ARIS MESSINIS via Getty Images)

Despite widespread international criticism of China’s human rights record, the International Olympic Committee has shied away from the issue, saying it falls outside its remit.

In his speech in the ancient stadium of Olympia, where in antiquity male athletes competed naked during a special truce among their often-warring cities, IOC President Thomas Bach stressed that the modern Games must be “respected as politically neutral ground.”

Security officers stop three protesters holding a banner and a Tibetan flag as they crash the flame lighting ceremony for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics at the Ancient Olympia archeological site. (Photo: ARIS MESSINIS via Getty Images)

“Only this political neutrality ensures that the Olympic Games can stand above and beyond the political differences that exist in our times,” he said. “The Olympic Games cannot address all the challenges in our world. But they set an example for a world where everyone respects the same rules and one another.”

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

World at risk of second Great Depression due to coronavirus, says Chinese central bank

Zhu Jun from the People’s Bank of China says the risk is small, but the world must be alert to the threat

Economies around the world have been hit by the measures taken to stop the spread of Covid-19
Karen Yeung 5 Apr, 2020 SCMP

Measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 are likely to take

 a serious economic toll.  Photo: Xinhua

China’s central bank has warned the international community to be alert to the risk of a “Great Depression” in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak, although it said the chances of this occurring was low.

“The possibility of a ‘Great Depression’ cannot be ruled out if the epidemic continues to run out of control, and the deterioration of the real economy is compounded by an eruption of financial risks,” Zhu Jun, director of the international department of the People's Bank of China, was quoted by local media as saying last week.

The difficult trade-off between the need to protect public health and the economic cost of shutting almost all face-to-face human activity has prompted warnings from many economists that the economic shock from Covid-19 may be more severe than the 2008 global financial crisis or even the Great Depression.

The latter, which began with the Wall Street Crash of 1929, saw credit markets freezing up, massive bankruptcies, US GDP falling by more than 10 per cent and unemployment rates that touched 25 per cent.


Professor Terence Chong Tai-leung from the department of economics at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, said he was optimistic the global contraction would not be as severe as the 1930s slump.

“Governments are likely to decide to ease off restrictions by July. They need to prevent disruptions that would cause food shortages, social unrest or greater damage to human lives and the economy than if the restrictions continued,” Chong said. “The economy will naturally rebound when restrictions are lifted.”

But there is evidence the major toll this crisis is already having a massive impact on the US employment situation. US initial jobless claims of 6.65 million last week, up from 3.3 million the week previous week, highlighted fears of mass unemployment.

Currently global markets are already down 35 per cent, credit markets have seized up to 2008 levels. Even mainstream financial firms such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley expect US GDP to fall by an annualised rate of 6 per cent in the first quarter, and by 24 per cent to 30 per cent in the second.


Moody’s has warned that 30 per cent of US home loans may stop being serviced as a result of job losses and a lack of support for small businesses.

Zhu from the Chinese central bank said the biggest market uncertainty came from the fact that central banks’ swift and forceful actions could not directly help to control the epidemic but stopping its spread would help market confidence.

He said the policies of advanced economies had helped stabilise stock market sentiment but hidden risks continued to exist in the global financial system.

For example, stock markets in developed countries have been rising for many years so their valuations are under pressure.

If the market panics due to the intensifying impact of the epidemic, that could lead to tighter market liquidity, triggering market contagion across different asset classes.

The corporate sector, which has a relatively high level of debt, could also see an increase of defaults on banks’ non-performing assets and corporate bonds.


Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business, said the public-health response in advanced economies has fallen far short of what is needed to contain the pandemic and so the risk of a “greater depression” was rising by the day.

He warned that if a series of virus-related negative supply shocks reduced potential growth, the fiscal response of many countries could hit a wall as they would not be able to borrow enough in their own currency.

“After the 2008 crash, a forceful (though delayed) response pulled the global economy back from the abyss. We may not be so lucky this time,” Roubini said. “Who will bail out governments, corporations, banks and households in emerging markets?”



Despite a US$349 billion government backstop, US banks are refusing to lend to struggling small businesses at 0.5 per cent, and choosing to make the loans at 1.0 per cent instead.

Michael Every, global strategist at Rabobank said, in reality these financial packages can be hard to access, and may not be really effective.

“That is a Great Depression happening in the blink of an eye,” Every said. “Who knows where the damage will spread to, and when, if we are going to see 25 per cent unemployment across much of the developed world for an extended period?”

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