East Palestine tab at $387 million (so far)

This is about 10x the size of Graniteville's costs, and Graniteville involved 9 direct deaths. Something had to break the Wall Street driven fever.


https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/sta ... 154463007/

Out of curiosity, does NS pay for this fully or does insurance cover at least some of it?

I believe it's unlikely that we'll know the manner in which these costs will ultimately be apportioned between NS and its insurers (and others), for the following reasons:

It is my belief the terms of NS insurance coverage are confidential, except to the extent NS and/or their insurance carriers would choose to waive confidentiality.

Prominent among these terms would be the NS "Self-Insured Retention" (deductable). A typical Class I railroad, when I was directly involved in review of insurance terms in the 1990s, would have a minimum SIR on the order of $25 Million. It's entirely possible this value has since changed, perhaps substantially.

In this case, there are significant questions of third-party liability which complicate any attempt to forecast apportioned total costs among the involved parties.

For these and other reasons related to duties of disclosure, it would appear likely that projected costs will continue to be the total costs of this casualty for the foreseeable future.

One gauge of a freight railroad's deductible might be how much insurance it wants from the operator of a charter passenger train.

Annual Reports to stockholders (remember them?) may disclose these details. Ater Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Norfolk Southern reported a storm damage loss before insurance started to cover of $25 million.
There will probably be a footnote in the 2023 Annual Report warning about potential unknown loses from this wreck that could be in excess of insurance coverage.
At the beginning of this Century, Kansas City Southern was reporting a loss from a 1997 train wreck estimated at about $15 million partially covered by a $10 million policy after a $3 million deductible.

The 2023 Annual Report to stockholders was signed on February 3rd, hours before the East Palestine derailment. It contains no hints about NS's insurance deductibles.

They would probably have to report the loss somewhere as it is likely very large. My question, what is the entire assessed value of the Town of East Palestine? The people of East Palestine are fortunate that NS is a solvent company able to pay out claims even if it takes years to collect...