The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has issued a report identifying the "catastrophic failure" of a railroad bridge as the cause of a June 2023 derailment of 10 Montana Rail Link cars into the Yellowstone River near Reed Point.
The report, which was released in March, details the final results of the investigation into the derailment of the 17-car train, which spilled 419,442 pounds of hazardous material into the river, some of which was found nearly 100 miles downstream near Billings.
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is also investigating the incident. The agency says it's still trying to determine what happened first: the bridge failure, or the cars derailing into the river. The FRA is declining to comment on the NTSB report.
The bridge was destroyed in the derailment but has since been rebuilt, and trains are running through the area again.
A unified command of local, state, federal and MRL officials has completed the first phase of the cleanup and is working on the second. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality is weighing whether to assess penalties.
