Reader Comment – CSB Backlog Update

Long-time reader and commentor Richard Rosera posted a comment to yesterday’s post about the latest CSB incident investigation report; the comment is also applicable to my longer post on the topic at CFSN Detailed Analysis. Richard noted that there were actually four incident reports on the CSB backlog, not the three that I reported. He also noted that the link I provided on the backlog was out-of-date. And Richard is correct on both counts. I have made the appropriate corrections to both posts.

The CSB investigation report page provided links to two versions of the backlog report.

I used the third link (and did not look at the second) as the source for the information I included in the blog post. That document was published in August 2022 and shows just four investigations that would be published in the second half of 2023. The second link, which Richard pointed to, shows a June 2023 update to that document which lists five outstanding investigations. Both included last week’s Yenkin-Majestic report. The difference is the addition of the Foundation Food Group which was in the ‘1^st Half of 2023’ block in the earlier document.

 

It looks like the CSB will be attempting to finish these 4 outstanding reports in the remaining 20 days of this month. Last year they managed to meet their year-end goal by publishing three reports in December. It will be interesting to see if they manage a 4-feat.

 

If they get the backlog closed out (with a 2022 investigation still ongoing), what does the Board do in 2025. I have complained that the Board was not being proactive in initiating new investigations, but they did have the backlog to clear. Can they shift to the process of identifying appropriate new investigations, deploying teams to multiple incidents, and produce timely reports? I certainly hope so.