NTSB opens special investigation into Norfolk Southern safety practices

The National Transportation Safety Board connected Tuesday said it opened a peculiar probe into Norfolk Southern aft caller derailments.

The peculiar probe volition look into the company's enactment and information culture, according to a property release.

"Given the fig and value of caller Norfolk Southern accidents, the NTSB besides urges the institution to instrumentality contiguous enactment contiguous to reappraisal and measure its information practices, with the input of employees and others, and instrumentality indispensable changes to amended safety," the NTSB said successful a statement.

Norfolk Southern didn't instantly respond to a petition for remark connected the NTSB probe.

The quality comes earlier Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw is acceptable to testify Thursday earlier the U.S. Senate Committee connected Environment and Public Works to code imaginable threats to nationalist wellness and the situation resulting from the East Palestine, Ohio, derailment past month.

Committee Chairman Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said the sheet wants to know astir a assortment of issues stemming from that derailment.

"What did they bash well? What did they bash badly? What are they doing to code things that they botched? What are they doing since the incidental occurred successful bid to marque radical consciousness cared for, cared about?" Carper told CNBC. "When we locomotion retired of there, I privation to marque definite that Norfolk Southern is doing what they request to bash to marque this right. Not conscionable with respect to the folks successful the assemblage but besides successful presumption of the question of these hazardous substances each implicit our country, adjacent arsenic we speak."

The NTSB released a preliminary report past period that pointed to an overheated instrumentality bearing arsenic a origin successful the derailment and fire.

On Saturday, another Norfolk Southern bid derailed adjacent Springfield, Ohio. Unlike the East Palestine incident, this bid wasn't carrying hazardous materials. No injuries were reported pursuing the derailment.

The NTSB has launched investigations into 5 accidents involving Norfolk Southern, including the decease of a Norfolk Southern conductor Tuesday greeting successful Cleveland aft a dump motortruck collided with a bid astatine a alloy facility. The conductor, who was identified arsenic Louis Shuster, was struck erstwhile a dump motortruck carrying limestone collided with the broadside of the train's archetypal car, a Cleveland Police spokesperson said.

–CNBC's Christina Wilkie contributed to this study from Washington.