Ohio was from the bare minimum preventative maintenance and it’s cheaper to ship large quantities via rail than truck.

Chernobyl was a known flaw but buried because it was a cheaper design. Still wouldn’t have happened if safety protocols were followed.

Fukushima happened because the backup generators were on the second floor and the potential for sea water to get that high was either not considered or thought to be low probability.

It’s almost always cost demands that is the root cause which is exasperated in fiat but never really going to go away

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But why did they choose to detonate the excess rather than cleaning it up?

You’re asking about Ohio? There was a risk of a very large explosion so it was decided that a controlled burn was preferable to a uncontrolled detonation. Neither are good but they chose the lesser

Yeah, being from Ohio it’s really unnerving to hear that the “controlled burn” did not go as planned.

People are freaking out no matter how far away they are from the accident.

They should be. They were hauling some nasty stuff and you don’t really want to be breathing the fumes or have it in your drinking water. Exposure is based on route, quantity, and length of time so impact should be minimal but not zero.

All the details aren’t out yet but it sounds like the clean up crew chose the lesser evil out of few options on a limited time budget. Hopefully we will know more about what happened soon and that it wasn’t driven by cost concerns.