GEOFF BENNETT: The CEO of Norfolk Southern faced intense questioning from senators today following last month's toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

During the Senate hearing, lawmakers focused their questions on railroad safety and preventing future derailments ALAN SHAW, President and CEO, Norfolk Southern: Norfolk Southern will get the job done and help East Palestine thrive.

GEOFF BENNETT: On Capitol Hill today, an apology from the head of one of the nation's largest railroads, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw.

ALAN SHAW: I want to begin today by expressing how deeply sorry I am for the impact this derailment has had on the residents of East Palestine and the surrounding communities.

GEOFF BENNETT: Norfolk Southern facing scrutiny since last month's derailment of dozens of cars on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, some carrying toxic chemicals.

Days later, a controlled burn of vinyl chloride to prevent an explosion sent flames and smoke into the sky.

That prompted the evacuation of thousands of residents.

Today, a local emergency official said that Norfolk Southern was absent at critical meetings about that planned release.

ERIC BREWER, Beaver County, Pennsylvania, Department of Emergency Services: I think this confusion was probably a result of a lack of communication from Norfolk Southern.

GEOFF BENNETT: Residents in East Palestine remain concerned about their health following the chemical exposure.

DEBRA SHORE, Environmental Protection Agency: I can share some good news with you.

GEOFF BENNETT: During the hearing, EPA officials said testing so far shows only low levels of hazardous chemicals known as dioxins.

For his part, Shaw promised some specific safety changes and pledged to send the community more than $20 million.

ALAN SHAW: Just this week, we announced several new initiatives to enhance safety, which included more hotbox detectors across our network, partnering with other railroads to share best practices.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): The devil is in the details.

GEOFF BENNETT: Senator Bernie Sanders accused the company of putting profits over safety and its workers' rights.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Will you make that commitment right now to guarantee paid sick days to all of your workers?

That's not a radical demand.

It really is not.

Will you make that commitment, sir?

ALAN SHAW: Senator, I share your focus our employees.

I will commit to continuing to discuss with them important quality of life issues with our local craft colleagues.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: With all due respect, you sound like a politician here, Mr. Shaw.

GEOFF BENNETT: This week, the National Transportation Safety Board launched a special investigation into a number of Norfolk Southern's issues, including its safety culture.

It's investigating five incidents since December 2021, three of which involved employee deaths.

There were more derailments in the last week, one near Springfield, Ohio, on Saturday with no casualties, another at an Ohio steel plant, killing a conductor, and one today in Alabama involving roughly 30 train cars.

Senators also criticized the federal government for being slow in communicating potential health risks to the East Palestine community.

SEN. SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO (R-WV): You can't address fear and mistrust by printing by pointing residents to an EPA Web site filled with fact sheets and press releases.

GEOFF BENNETT: Government data shows more than 1,000 derailments last year, though a decline in recent years.

Senators say they want safer railroads and are pushing for bipartisan legislation to regulate an industry they say enjoys lavish benefits.

That includes Ohio's J.D.

Vance, a Republican who's become an unlikely ally with Ohio's other senator, Democrat Sherrod Brown.

They're working on a bill calling for more inspection and tougher fines.

SEN. J.D.

VANCE (R-OH): This is an industry that enjoys special subsidies that almost no industry enjoys.

This is an industry that enjoys special legal carve-outs that almost no industry enjoys.

GEOFF BENNETT: Today, the Norfolk Southern CEO stopped short of endorsing that legislation.

For a closer look at these issues and the investigation into Norfolk Southern, we're joined by Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Thank you for being with us.

And have you, in your investigation, been able to determine why Norfolk Southern has had so many derailments of late, especially in Ohio?

JENNIFER HOMENDY, Chair, National Transportation Safety Board: Yes, Ohio is something -- we actually looked at the record of some of the major freight railroads in Ohio.

And it's interesting to note that CSX operates twice the track mileage as Norfolk Southern, but Norfolk Southern has a greater number of accidents per 1,000 miles.

Each of these accidents are very different.

We are investigating six now involving Norfolk Southern, and we will review a seventh one that occurred back in October.

There are -- that's a lot in a short period of time, but it's tough to say there's a commonality among all of them, because they're all very different.

GEOFF BENNETT: The NTSB investigation into the East Palestine derailment so far has found that there was an overheated bearing on the 23rd car that caused the derailment.

So, you have established the what.

Have you learned more about the why and the how?

JENNIFER HOMENDY: Well, that's right.

The easiest thing to find -- or the fastest thing we will find is the what.

Now we have to dig into the why and how, which is getting a lot of factual information from Norfolk Southern.

And it will require a lot of digging and constant requests for information, which our investigators are doing right now.

In addition, we are testing the pressure relief valves on the DOT-105 tank cars that were carrying the vinyl chloride, the five tank cars carrying vinyl chloride.

And a lot of that testing is going on through next week.

So there is a lot of work that our investigators are currently conducting.

GEOFF BENNETT: In talking with railroad union members, they really point the finger at cost-cutting by these major rail companies and the reduction in work force.

I was told that, in some cases, safety inspections in the rail yards aren't even done by humans.

They're done by some sort of automated process.

What's your assessment of that?

JENNIFER HOMENDY: That's exactly what we're going to look at.

This week, we announced a special investigation into Norfolk Southern, where we're going to look at the organization as a whole and the safety culture.

And part of that is looking at what's occurring, whether it's cost-cutting, or staffing, or training, or how they're conducting their inspections and maintenance.

We want to look for commonalities across the organization, the company as a whole, to see if there are greater concerns within the company and make some recommendations on that.

GEOFF BENNETT: The train that derailed in East Palestine had two crew members and a trainee.

I spoke to Alan Shaw, the CEO, some weeks ago and asked him, if that train had only had one crew member on it, which is what the railroads had wanted, that the problem would have been exponentially worse, as bad as it was.

Have you been able to come to some sort of assessment or determination on that issue in particular?

JENNIFER HOMENDY: Not on that issue.

We have in the past recommended that the Federal Railroad Administration collect data on crews, the number of crew members, when accidents occur.

I don't know if they're collecting that now.

But what I will say is, the crew did nothing wrong in this derailment.

In fact, they followed procedure, which was uncoupling the railroad from the railcar -- or - - I'm sorry -- the locomotive from the railcars, and moved the locomotive up about a mile to make sure that they were safe.

One thing I do want to give some credit to the Federal Railroad Administration is, yesterday, they came out with a notice of proposed rulemaking that there -- will be published in the federal register for providing train crews with emergency escape breathing apparatus.

That's a recommendation we have had on the books since 2005, when two Norfolk Southern trains -- a Norfolk Southern train collided with a parked Norfolk Southern train on a siding and released chlorine gas, killing eight people, including a locomotive engineer.

So we're happy that they're moving forward on that front to protect crews.

GEOFF BENNETT: What are the next steps in your investigation?

And how long will it take to wrap up?

JENNIFER HOMENDY: So, we're in the fact-finding phase of the investigation right now.

That does take some time, because we are requesting information from different entities.

And then we will follow up on that information.

That could take about three months.

Then we will move into the analysis phase of the investigation, where we will start taking those facts and conducting an analysis to determine how this happened, and we will present a number of findings, a probable cause, but including some contributing causes, and some safety recommendations to various entities, like DOT, or Department of Transportation, and Norfolk Southern, and possibly even to the response community, to prevent this from reoccurring.

We are going to have an investigative hearing, a very rare hearing, in East Palestine in June.

And we hope to wrap this up within the next 12 to 18 months.

With that said, the NTSB does regularly issue urgent safety recommendations where we feel something is needed to address safety throughout the railroad system.

GEOFF BENNETT: So it won't take 12 to 18 months for you to make recommendations; you can make those recommendations along the way?

JENNIFER HOMENDY: That's right, at any time.

And we have done that many times in the past across all transportation modes, and I suspect that we're going to do that here as well.

GEOFF BENNETT: Jennifer Homendy is the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Thanks for your time.

JENNIFER HOMENDY: Thank you so much.