Rail car at risk for catastrophic failure and explosion after train derailment in East Palestine

could be possible charges if you choose to stay misconducted in emergency or if you have children in your house, child endangering and that will be enforced. Yeah, they are serious about this. Overnight, officers going door to door, making sure people in a one mile radius of the train derailment get out under a mandatory evacuation order. Now it comes after drastic changes at the site of that fiery train derailment just across the PA Ohio line in East Palestine. And to give you an idea, this is just about an hour from Pittsburgh. Yeah, and crews tell us a drastic change in temperature and one of those cars carrying a hazardous material is a concern. Jessica Gaway joining us live.

She's outside the evacuation zone in East Palestine. So just what's happening there right now? What can you tell us? Well, we're outside of the command center at East Palestine Elementary School. Emergency officials are gathered inside right now. A fire continues to burn where the train derailed and evacuation orders are still in place. Governor Mike DeWine deployed the Ohio National Guard to come out here as concerns grow over a new risk of explosion. A small explosion was caught on video early this morning as crews continue to work to put out the burning rail cars. An emergency alert was issued to residents within one mile radius of the derailment wreckage in East Palestine last night.

Any asking anyone within that area to evacuate immediately. The Columbia County Sheriff's Office says that individuals will face charges if they don't follow the order. The Columbia County Emergency Management Director tells KDK a the condition of one of the derailed train cars carrying vinyl chloride has degraded and that there's now a much higher concern for an uncontrolled release and explosion of the car. Now Ohio Governor Mike DeWine says a drastic temperature change has taken place in a rail car and there's now that potential of a catastrophic tanker tanker failure which could cause an explosion and there's potential for deadly shrapnel to travel up to a mile. The governor says while most people in the evacuation zone have left more than 500 have not. This catastrophic failure will if it if it occurs it will produce hydrogen chloride at phosgene gas into the atmosphere. We are working with several federal agencies to determine a plume cloud for that.

Mayor Trent Conaway says National Guard members should be arriving soon. They will be tasked with whatever help is needed including blocking off the evacuation zone. Now that zone includes part of Pennsylvania just a portion of Darlington Township Beaver County. All schools and offices in this village will be closed today. Stay with us throughout the morning for updates. Live in East Palestine Jessica Guay KDKA News. Alright Jessica thank you for that.

Still a lot happening out there in East Palestine that we need to be aware of. The NTSB in Ohio investigating this derailment as well. And our team coverage continues now with Brianna Smith joining us live in the studio to talk about where the investigation stands more than 48 hours after this derailment and some of it they really until they can get right to the scene. They're just they have to wait. Yeah because that scene is still active and dangerous but the NTSB is trying really hard to collect evidence to figure out what happened and they held a press conference yesterday and now here's the latest. Board member Michael Graham says they have the data recorder, camera footage and audio recordings from the train. The NTSB will review this data and then send it to their lab in Washington D.

C. for a thorough evaluation. The agency's drone team also did a full scene assessment and will continue to help in surveying the damage. Graham says this is what they discovered from the videos so far. We have attained two videos which show preliminary indications of mechanical issues on one of the rail car axles. We are working to identify which rail car experienced the potential mechanical issue for further examination. Now as for the train crew Graham says they received an alarm before the derailment and they activated an emergency brake.

The NTSB will review the crew's statements to analyze their actions before and during the derailment and then once the scene is safe they'll move the cars to a nearby holding area to look through more of the damage. The NTSB says it could take about six weeks to release an initial report and then more than two years for a final report but in the meantime the NTSB asks anyone with photos or videos of the derailment to contact them to help them with their investigation.

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