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In late January, Alan Shaw, the chief executive of Norfolk Southern Corp., touted the railroad’s financial performance and rising cargo volumes. “Service is at the best it’s been in more than two years, and customers are noticing,” he told investors.
The following week, Shaw was getting alerts that a Norfolk Southern
NSC,
freight train carrying hazardous chemicals had derailed near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, setting off a crisis that has put intense scrutiny on the railroad’s operations and its leader.
The National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB, is due to issue its preliminary results on what caused the derailment on Thursday.
“‘The people of East Palestine, Ohio, don’t like that people are calling it American Chernobyl when all the tests show that it is safe and that it is clean.’”
“It is clear that our safety culture and our investments in safety didn’t prevent this accident. We’re going to see how we could have prevented it when we get the NTSB results,” Shaw said in an interview Wednesday. “We’re going to look for other opportunities as well, beyond what is in the NTSB results.”
The Norfolk Southern veteran, who has been CEO less than a year, is under pressure from local residents, politicians, regulators and shareholders to explain what happened and clean up East Palestine, Ohio. He has visited the small town three times. On Tuesday, he met with local school officials and plans to be there again Thursday.
“My job is to push out the noise and focus on the citizens of East Palestine, focus on the environmental remediation, focus on investing in this community,” Shaw said.
An expanded version of this report appears at WSJ.com.
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