The Norfolk Southern Chemical Contaminer: Why I Don’t Feel Safe,” Sents Jessica Conard at a CNN Town Hall

The administrator of the EPA traveled to Ohio on Thursday to meet with officials about Norfolk Southern’s involvement in a train carrying hazardous chemicals that derailed.

Speaking to CNN’s Jason Carroll Thursday morning, EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said the agency has full authority to use its enforcement capabilities over the crisis.

The company signed a notice of accountability that said they would be responsible for the cleanup, Regan told CNN. “But as this investigation continues, and as new facts arise, let me just say, and be very clear, I will use the full enforcement authority of this agency, and so will the federal government, to be sure that this company is held accountable.”

“I don’t feel safe, because I don’t know what the future holds for my town,” said lifelong East Palestine resident Jessica Conard during a Wednesday evening CNN town hall. Her comment encapsulated a remarkable and pervasive feeling of mistrust among residents toward assurances by state and federal officials that their air and water are safe.

State officials have repeatedly stated that the municipal system’s water is safe to drink. The EPA encourages residents from private wells to get their water tested, according to the governor’s office.

Some residents complained of headaches and irritation in their throat due to the chemical smell in the area. Plus, officials estimate thousands of fish were killed by contamination washing down streams and rivers.

The Ohio Department of Agriculture (OHDOT) tries to help the East Palestine train operator after a train derailed and left the town hall

Hundreds of East Palestine residents attended a town hall to express their anger and distrust. The operator decided to pull out of the event due to safety concerns.

Some of the efforts to clean up the train wreck were observed by Regan during his visit. While the state EPA has the primary responsibility over the scene, Regan noted the federal arm is ready to provide aid when needed.

“I want the community to know that we hear you, we see you, and that we will get to the bottom of this,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said Thursday during a news conference. “We are testing for all volatile organic chemicals. We’re testing for everything. We’re testing for everything that was on that train. We feel confident that we can present a picture that will protect the community.

The governor of Ohio asked the CDC and the HHS to help out East Palestine after the train derailed and caused a fire.

In anticipation of rainfall, emergency response teams have plans in place to prevent contaminants not yet removed from the derailment site from washing into local waterways during the storms, DeWine said in a statement.

The governor said that butyl acrylate will be near Huntington, West Virginia, sometime tomorrow. The CDC considers the chemical to be hazardous and the results suggest that it is currently below that level. No vinyl chloride has been detected in the Ohio River, he added, though agencies will continue sampling river water out of an abundance of caution.

DeWine said the Ohio Department of Agriculture continues to assure Ohioans that its food supply is safe and the risk to livestock remains low following the train derailment.

The White House: A Redefinition of the EDS Hazard Against the Liverpool-Newtonian Derailed Tevatron Train, as Revisited by Conaway

She’s concerned about how many kids are living in East Palestine and laying in their bed. I don’t trust them.

The EPA and the CDC believe that the fire could cause vinyl chloride to degrade into compounds which were used in World War I as a choking agent. Maria Doa of the Environmental Defense Fund said thatVinyl chloride is known to cause cancer and can also affect the brain, as a result of it being involved in the derailed train.

“I need help,” Conaway told reporters Wednesday night. “I have the village on my back, and I’ll do whatever it takes … to make this right. I’m not leaving, I’m not going anywhere.”

Representatives of the train’s operator, Norfolk Southern, planned on attending Wednesday night’s meeting to provide information to residents on how they’re responding to the chemical crisis. But the company backed out, citing threats against its employees.

The company said in a release it has become increasingly concerned about the health and safety of employees and the community around the event because of the increasing likelihood of outside parties.

The company didn’t attend the meeting because it was less than half a mile away from where the train derailed, according to a man who lives there.

The family is temporarily staying in rentals away from the town. He previously told CNN that when he visited the town Monday, a chemical odor left his eyes and throat burning, and gave him a nagging headache.

“Most people did not want to go home, but they had to. All the people who had to leave were complaining of a lot of odors, pains in their throats, and headaches. The smell makes you sick, and I have gone back a few times. It hurts your head.

The Ohio Village of Collisionless Heavy ion Collisions: What the Government and the Federal Government can do about it, and how to help

“I was extremely disappointed that they didn’t show up at the town hall meeting last night. The public deserves transparency,” he said. The public needs to know the latest information. It’s our job to hold this company accountable, and I promise you we will.

After conducting air testing, the train company told Cozza it was safe to return home. However, she insisted the company run soil and water tests, and only then did a toxicologist deem her house unsafe.

Cozza said Thursday that if she hadn’t used her voice, she’d be sitting in that house right now when they told her it was safe.

The Biden administration said it has deployed federal medical experts to help assess the risks at the Ohio village where a train carrying hazardous materials derailed.

The request for medical experts included but is not restricted to physicians and behavioral health specialists, according to DeWine. “Some community members have already seen physicians in the area but remain concerned about their condition and possible health effects – both short- and long-term.”

The Biden administration approved the request and began deploying teams from both federal agencies in part for public health testing and assessments, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday.

Jean-Pierre stated on Thursday that the train accident situation is more expansive than what FEMA can offer.

The federal support boost to a community of some 5,000 people along the Ohio-Pennsylvania state line comes amid some residents’ growing concerns that some areas may not be safe to live in.

Investigating the crash site of a Ohio freight train in Salem, Ohio: State Air Quality, Air- and Water samples, and Environmental Agency Administration actions

The area near the crash site was deemed safe after the air and water samples came back clean, officials said.

The head of the Environmental Agency Administration made a point of reassuring East Palestine residents that the agency was there for them.

Regan also noted that the train operator, Norfolk Southern, has signed a notice of accountability, acknowledging they will be responsible for the cleanup.

There was no evidence that the Michigan area had been exposed to hazardous materials when a Norfolk Southern train derailed on Thursday.

Around 30 rail cars derailed as first responders arrived at the crash location. One of the overturned rail cars contained agricultural grain while the other overturned cars were empty, Van Buren Township Public Safety said.

The chief of the National Transport Safety Board said in a message that investigators are working very hard to figure out why the freight train went off the tracks.

The board chairwoman wrote that she will continue to share information publicly as soon as possible after the analysis. “Next: NTSB investigators will thoroughly examine the tank cars once decontaminated. As always, we’ll issue urgent safety recommendations as needed.”

Two videos obtained by CNN show that sparks from an apparent wheel bearing overheating were visible as the train passed through Salem, Ohio. The rail cars have a bright light and sparks in them.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/us/ohio-train-derailment-east-palestine-friday/index.html

The East Palestine Detonation Crisis: Public Debate on the Cause of the Railroad Derailment and Financial Assistance to a Community Town Hall in Norfolk Southern

Homendy, whose agency is responsible for investigating various transportation crashes from aviation to railways, implored the public on Twitter not to speculate about the cause of the crash.

The train was carrying a range of toxic materials, including vinyl chloride, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate, isobutylene and butyl acrylate, the US Environmental Protection Agency has said.

During a community town hall meeting on Wednesday in a high school gym, Mayor Trent Conaway commented on the controlled detonations in East Palestine and said that the only option was to manually release the chemicals.

“Yes, harmful chemicals went into the air. I am truly sorry, but that is the only option we had. If we didn’t do that, then they were going to blow up, and we were going to have shrapnel all across this town.”

Jami Cozza, an East Palestine resident who attended the meeting and was vocal about the issues her family have been facing since the train derailed, said she will not return home until it’s safe. Cozza told CNN she’s staying at a hotel paid for by the train company due to toxicity in her home cause by the derailment.

The company initially said it would make $1,000 payments to residents who lived within a mile of the spill evacuation zone. The company decided to pay every resident in the ZIP code of 44413, a spokesman for the company told CNN.

As of Tuesday evening, Norfolk Southern has distributed more than $1.5 million in direct financial assistance to more than 1,000 families and some businesses to cover costs related to the evacuation, the company said Wednesday in a news release.

The Post-Disaster War Zone: Trump vs. Biden on a Worldline Addressing Poisonous Chemicals

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday visited the site of a train derailment, criticizing President Joe Biden’s administration’s handling of the railway disaster that spewed toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio, 19 days earlier.

His trip to one of the most conservative regions of the deep-red state came with many of the hallmarks of a presidential visit, as Trump sought to contrast himself with Biden – who on Monday made a historic war zone trip to Ukraine’s capital.

“You are not forgotten,” Trump said after traveling to East Palestine on Wednesday – although lacking the power of his former office, he has more capacity to boost his slow-moving 2024 campaign than to fix the disaster.

The former president’s Ohio trip came as the 2024 GOP presidential race begins to take shape, with intra-party rivals lining up to take on Trump. Other Republicans have also criticized Biden’s response to the derailment near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.

Trump claimed the announcement of his visit caused the federal government to act quickly, saying that he opened up the dam.

The FEMA announcement last week that it was sending teams to the area should have taken place two weeks earlier or a week earlier, he said.

Trump pledged bottled water sourced from his hotels and bought burgers for firefighters in a local McDonald’s as he adopted the trappings of a presidential post-disaster visit to polish his own political profile. He bragged about how he had deployed the Federal Emergency Management Agency during his presidency. After Hurricane Maria destroyed Puerto Rico, he did not mention his own mismanagement.

The Ohio disaster is giving the public a chance to see why the Washington battle between regulators and freight firms is so important for keeping Americans safe as long as 150 cars carrying poisonous chemicals, rumble through towns and cities. Trump might be posing as a savior now, but he presided over a slashing of environmental and safety regulations in office. Huge transportation firms, meanwhile, pay lobbyists millions of dollars to loosen safety rules and staffing levels as they strive to maximize profits even while rewarding shareholders and avoiding safety.

“A lot of the folks who seem to find political opportunity there are among those who have sided with the rail industry again and again and again, as they have fought safety regulations on railroads and hazmat, tooth and nail,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who announced Wednesday he will visit the site of the derailment Thursday. Sometimes I welcome people to find religion about rail regulation for the first time.

According to experts speaking to CNN, the regulations likely wouldn’t have impacted the crash because the train didn’t meet the criteria laid out in the regulation.

Republicans ignored the argument and bashed the federal government for the slow response, which some conservative commentators claimed was because residents in East Palestine are GOP voters.

“That was the biggest slap in the face that tells you right now he doesn’t care about us,” East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway, a Republican, said of Biden’s trip to Ukraine earlier this week on Fox News. I was angry this morning when I heard that he had been in the Ukranians giving millions of dollars to people there and not to us.

One adviser told me that after Trump announced his trip, the EPA administrator changed his schedule and went to East Palestine, allowing for more federal help to be provided.

But these Ohioans in the epicenter of an environmental crisis, which suddenly arrived on their doorsteps on February 3, are also becoming political extras on an early stage for GOP White House candidates like former President Donald Trump.

Disasters such as hurricanes, industrial accidents and transportation meltdowns occur due to toxic politics and can be used by adversaries to damage those in power.

Republicans know they are vulnerable. Marco Silva, a Florida senator, says that Buttigieg needs to be fired because of his fantasies about his political future.

Maybe the consequences of the train crash could lead to unusual coalitions in Washington. Conservative Republican Sen.Ted Cruz of Texas, as well as a liberal democrat, are both demanding reforms. But in Washington, expectations of bipartisan action after a catastrophe often wane as time passes.

Given the political hypocrisy on show, the sometimes slow-moving machinery of a government disaster response, and the complex layers of federal, state and local responsibility, it’s no wonder residents question whether they are being heard.

Their concerns were further heightened by the fact that a controlled burn of several wagons containing chemicals was ordered by officials in order to avoid an even worse disaster, a massive explosion.

The response of Trump, Trump, and Norfolk Southern during the Ohio train wreck: America First is the slogan of the Trump era, and America will always be with you

A response that some saw as sluggish has ramped up. The government and Norfolk Southern have been made to pay for the clean-up operation.

Many townspeople distrust officials who tell them they are not in danger because they contrast their own evidence with what the officials are telling them.

The visit by Trump to a region that voted for him was a political play, even though some people in the region may have been reassured by it.

When Biden, Trump, and the other politicians get back from touring Ukraine, they have money left over, as Trump said in East Palestine, which he won with 98% of the vote.

“We stayed with you, we pray for you and we will stay with you,” Trump said, despite having no capacity to direct the government response. His attack on Biden added to the idea that America First is his slogan.

In response, Biden tweeted about the disaster while in Europe, blaming his predecessor’s administration for making it harder to implement rail safety measures and telling residents, “We’ve got your back.”

Given his political profile, Buttigieg is one of the most famous Transportation secretaries in modern history. He’s been thrust into the spotlight during travel meltdowns in the aviation industry – during weather-related shutdowns and during the chaos triggered by Southwest’s scheduling nightmare last year.

Republicans blame the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor for every transportation mess. In response, he has positioned himself as the champion of the victims. In the case of the Ohio train wreck, for example, he wrote this week to Alan Shaw, the head of Norfolk Southern, bemoaning the way the derailment had “upended the lives of numerous residents.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/23/politics/partisan-politics-east-palestine-ohio-derailment-analysis/index.html

The Buttigieg Manifesto: How the Palestinians Cannot Be Left Behind and how the State of Palestine Can Affirmed

“The people of East Palestine cannot be forgotten, nor can they be simply considered the cost of doing business,” Buttigieg wrote in the letter, which was clearly designed for an audience wider than Shaw.

“I was focused on just making sure that our folks on the ground were all set but could have spoken sooner about how strongly I felt about this incident and that’s a lesson learned for me,” Buttigieg said on CBS News’ “Red & Blue.”

When he comes to East Palestine, Buttigieg vowed to be focused on action, not politics, and said he had been respectful of the role that the independent National Transportation Safety Board plays.

The odds of Biden making his own visit now that he’s back in the USA, to empathise with townsfolk and show that he’s on top of the response, must be rising. Such trips are often about perception. But the presence of a commander in chief does galvanize the government like nothing else and assure those hit by disasters that they are not forgotten.