In nature, lightning strikes occasionally cause small, localized fires that burn away the underbrush. The policy has been to put out those fires. So now there's plenty of underbrush, which is the perfect fuel for massive destruction. Hundreds and thousands of acres have been destroyed, lives lost, because we didn’t trust nature to do its job. Actually, the policy began with nature lover Teddy Roosevelt.

[…] but this served only to deprave his faculties, and to clouden his reason.

in one troop compell'd

Fortunately, the CrossCountry train did not derail when it struck the mud. It could easily have been much worse.