On March 4, a Union Pacific train in Ogden, Utah released magnesium chloride. On March 8, a CSX train spilled diesel fuel into a West Virginia river. On March 30, a BNSF train crashed and burst into flames, igniting ethanol and forcing midnight evacuations in Minnesota. On June 26, molten asphalt spilled into the Yellowstone River in Montana after a bridge collapsed. And in a four-day span in July, freight trains in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Montana, and Wisconsin, all with hazardous materials on board, derailed.
These were just a few of the 59 freight train derailments in the six months following the East Palestine disaster that were significant enough to be reported in local or national news, according to data compiled by Motherboard. Fifteen of those derailments involved cars with hazardous materials. By contrast, there were 33 freight train derailments reported in local and national media in the six months prior to East Palestine, which thrust freight rail safety issues into the national spotlight. (Part of this difference is probably attributable to the attention the East Palestine disaster got, making outlets more likely to cover derailments.) Motherboard did not include passenger rail derailments or derailments caused by extreme weather or vehicles on the tracks in the data.
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