Accidents/Man-made Disasters

Recent train derailments, including one in a small Ohio town, have prompted officials to examine what is causing the accidents and whether they are happening more frequently.  Derailments rank as the most common type of accident involving major freight railroads, federal data shows. Equipment failures are increasingly responsible for derailments, and problems with equipment and train tracks accounted for nearly 60% of derailments nationwide last year.  To…

Four years after a second 737 MAX crashed, Boeing Co. BA -4.38% and attorneys for families of the dead are arguing over whether the plane maker should have to pay for the victims’ suffering.Boeing attorneys say the crash victims died instantaneously when the Ethiopian Airlines jet slammed into the ground. They argue in court documents that any pain and suffering they may have felt before impact aren’t legally relevant for calculating damages. Plaintiffs’ attorneys want…

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost sued Norfolk Southern Corp. NSC 0.22% , seeking to hold the company financially responsible for the train derailment in East Palestine. The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Ohio on Tuesday, sought civil penalties, damages, court costs and other relief for the Feb. 3 incident, which led to the derailment of 38 cars, including 11 tankers…

A fatal incident occurred as a Norfolk Southern train moved through a crossing at the Cleveland-Cliffs Cleveland Works steel plant. Photo: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg News…

Officials on Sunday were investigating what caused a Norfolk Southern Corp. NSC -0.10% train to leave a track near Springfield, Ohio, in the company’s second derailment in the state in recent weeks.  Unlike the Feb. 3 derailment near East Palestine, Ohio, which spilled toxic chemicals, no hazardous materials were aboard the train that went off track on Saturday, officials said.  About 20 of the train’s 212 cars derailed…

The Arlington, Va.-based plane maker has said the large wide-body plane won’t be delivered to customers until 2025. Among Mr. Calhoun’s goals when he became CEO in January 2020 was to get the 777X approved by regulators and into airline service by the end of 2023, while ramping up production and deliveries. “It is clear that this goal will not be met, albeit for reasons largely beyond Mr. Calhoun’s control,” Boeing said in its annual proxy statement, filed Friday with securities regulators. The filing said the board’s…

The freight railcar that federal investigators say likely caused last month’s derailment in Ohio was handed off among four railroads before its fateful trip and was owned by a fifth company, according to documents and people familiar with the railcar’s history and journey.The story of the railcar, which was destroyed in a fiery wreck on Feb. 3 in East Palestine, a small town near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, illustrates the challenges that federal investigators have in understanding the cause of and factors that…

For years, the U.S. Postal Service has faced competition from the likes of United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. To fight them off, it hired outside trucking companies at cut-rate prices, required them to meet aggressive schedules and then looked the other way when they ran afoul of highway safety rules, a Wall Street Journal investigation found.The result has been deadly. Postal contractors have been involved in at least 68 fatal crashes that killed 79…

Ford F -1.66% Motor Co. is extending the halt on F-150 Lightning production until the end of next week, the company said Friday, as it works to resolve a battery problem that caused a vehicle fire. The Feb. 4 fire occurred in one of the company’s holding lots during a predelivery quality check, a Ford spokeswoman said. The blaze spread to two other trucks, according to a fire department incident report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Ford said last week that…

An overheated bearing on a railcar carrying polypropylene was the likely cause of a Norfolk Southern Corp. train derailment earlier this month, federal transportation officials said Thursday, an incident that subsequently created an environmental mess in a small Ohio town that the railroad as well as state and federal officials are still trying to clean up. Monitoring equipment along the tracks alerted the train crew to the overheated bearing, which was 253 degrees Fahrenheit above ambient…