Ohio train derailment: Buttigieg admits he waited too long to publicly respond

During a visit to the site of the Norfolk Southern train derailment near East Palestine, Ohio, on Thursday, a reporter asked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg if he waited too long to express anything after the accident.

"The answer to your question is yes," Buttigieg said, acknowledging that letting a week and a half go by before tweeting about the train derailment was too long. He told reporters he had tried to "balance" his desire to get involved with the "norm of transportation secretaries" — which is to permit the proper regulatory authorities to work without his interference. 

"I felt strongly about this and could have expressed that sooner," the secretary continued. "Again, I was taking pains to respect the role that I have and the role that I don't have, but that should not have stopped me from weighing in about how I felt about what was happening to this community." 

Buttigieg came under fire for his response to the Norfolk Southern train derailment on Feb. 3, which spilled toxic chemicals into the environment. The first time the secretary made any public mention of the accident came on Feb. 13, after he was lambasted on social media for ignoring the disaster while speaking at the National Association of Counties Conference. Critics questioned Buttigieg's political priorities after he spoke about racial disparities in construction workers instead of discussing transportation safety.

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Following backlash on social media, the secretary tweeted that Department of Transportation personnel were on the scene in East Palestine within hours of the accident and that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was investigating what happened. He has since provided updates on the ongoing work to clean up after the accident and traveled to Ohio on Thursday to tour the scene of the accident. 

Buttigieg's trip coincided with the release of the NTSB's preliminary report detailing the factual findings of its investigation. The report indicated a hot axle was the cause of the accident and that the train crew was notified to slow and stop by an alarm system that detects overheated bearings.  

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"After the train stopped, the crew observed fire and smoke and notified the Cleveland East dispatcher of a possible derailment. With dispatcher authorization, the crew applied handbrakes to the two railcars at the head of the train, uncoupled the head-end locomotives, and moved the locomotives about 1 mile from the uncoupled railcars," the NTSB wrote. "Responders arrived at the derailment site and began response efforts." \

About 15,000 pounds of contaminated soil and 1.1 million gallons of contaminated water have been excavated from the site of the derailment, Norfolk Southern said Monday.

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Dozens of rail cars, including 11 that were carrying toxic chemicals, derailed as the train passed by the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. Officials conducted a controlled release of vinyl chloride three days after the derailment to avoid an explosion. 

Buttigieg called the preliminary report an "important step" towards developing a policy solution to prevent another accident on this scale. 

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"While we will, of course, wait for their analysis and recommendations at the end of the full process to make certain judgments, we will not wait for that process to run its course, to continue doing everything that we can to raise the bar on rail safety and to hold people accountable," Buttigieg said, calling on Congress to come to the table with legislative proposals. 

Fox News' Greg Norman and Paul Best contributed to this report.