Joe Biden received a briefing on Friday on the multi-agency response to the derailment in Ohio of a freight train carrying toxic chemicals, as his administration came under criticism and safety regulators said the incident had been “100% preventable” – although the train crew were not at fault…

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chair Jennifer Homendy expressed concern about rail safety measures, as the agency released an interim report.

“We know for a fact what caused this derailment,” Homendy said on CNN on Friday morning, indicating that it was the dramatic overheating of a specific wheel bearing, and the fact that sensors on the track did not catch that overheating until it was too late.

“The crew did not do anything wrong,” she said, noting that they had responded correctly to an alarm but the train derailed anyway on 3 February.

“Now it’s looking at how we got there,” Homendy said. “What conditions were present to allow that to happen? And then we’re going to look at what would prevent it from reoccurring in the future.”

Hopefully, folks will do exactly what Ms. Homendy wishes for. And the result will be procedures and provisions that make it truly possible to prevent a similar disaster from reoccurring.