task of keeping oil trains from blowing up, well then maybe the companies can t be trusted to handle this all on their own. so the feds have now announced in the wake of this debacle, there will be new rules. whether conservatives complain about regulations, this is what they re complaining about. this is what they hate. but this is kind of the reason that we have regulations. federal railroad administrator sarah fineberg said what this broken rail incident shows us is that we need to insert ourselves and put some pretty high standards in place. standards don t even need to be that high. if you detect a problem on the tracks, maybe get out of your cab and look at it! i mean this really was just simple negligence and incompetence but it resulted in a firestorm that burned for four days. they will issue a safety advisory now and doing better inspections and stronger training and may change how they replace rails after which will are progress and good things.
we now know that this gigantic oil train explosion was caused by a defect on the tracks. specifically a broken rail that had been detected twice by a contractor hired by the rail company but even though it was detected twice it was never fixed. and then it caused this terrible accident in this terrible xbloegs. we know this thanks to an investigation by the federal railroad administration. joining us now is sarah fineberg, the acting administrator. great to you have here. thanks for being here. thank you for having me. good to see you. let me ask you first about the fine in this case. is it true that company in charge of the tracks and the contractor in charge of checking them, they only got fined $25,000 for this disaster? that s right. $25,000 each. that s actually the limit of our statutory authority for failure
infrastructure package and we need a big bill to move throughout congress n term of rail specifically, the railroads are responsible for that rail infrastructure. in fact, they re investing billions of dollars every year. it is enough? you know, it depends on the amount of tonnage that is moving. it depends on the kind of track and what kind of product you re moving on it. but they certainly need to be doing more and we ll be urging them to do more. sarah fineberg, acting administrator of the federal railroad administration. really appreciate you being here tonight. thank you. great to be with you. we have these esoteric fights about regulation and the role of government and whether or not business needs to be free to use the invisible hand of capitalism to make everything safe and fine. somebody like the federal railroad administration is the sharpened of the stick in terms of finding out what need to be done by government because it won t be done by industry. there is the stuff
we now know that this gigantic oil train explosion was caused by a defect on the tracks. specifically a broken rail that had been detected twice by a contractor hired by the rail company but even though it was detected twice it was never fixed. and then it caused this terrible accident in this terrible expolosion. we know this thanks to an investigation by the federal railroad administration. joining us now is sarah fineberg, the acting administrator. great to you have here. thanks for being here. thank you for having me. good to see you. let me ask you first about the fine in this case. is it true that company in charge of the tracks and the contractor in charge of checking them, they only got fined $25,000 for this disaster? that s right. $25,000 each. that s actually the limit of our statutory authority for failure to identify and mitigate a defect like this.
we now know that this gigantic oil train explosion was caused by a defect on the tracks. specifically a broken rail that had been detected twice by a contractor hired by the rail company but even though it was detected twice it was never fixed. and then it caused this terrible accident in this terrible xbloegs. we know this thanks to an investigation by the federal railroad administration. joining us now is sarah fineberg, the acting administrator. great to you have here. thanks for being here. thank you for having me. good to see you. let me ask you first about the fine in this case. is it true that company in charge of the tracks and the contractor in charge of checking them, they only got fined $25,000 for this disaster? that s right. $25,000 each. that s actually the limit of our statutory authority for failure to identify and mitigate a defect like this. and as you re taking these new steps to try to improve track safety, you re taking multiple steps to make oil trains a s