Bomb Train in Ohio, Corporate Greed Led to Toxic Disaster

Bomb Train in Ohio Corporate Greed Led to Toxic Disaster

“Bomb Train” in Ohio Sickens Residents After Railroad Cutbacks, Corporate Greed Led to Toxic Disaster

Fire safety crews in a controlled explosion set fire to hazardous chemicals which were at the risk of spilling over from a derailed freight train in East Palestine, Ohio.
Fears of a wider health and environmental disaster are growing, after a 150-car freight train operated by Norfolk Southern derailed and a so-called controlled burn released toxic chemicals last week in East Palestine, Ohio. Residents reported seeing a fireball and mushroom cloud of smoke fill the skyline. Data released by the Environmental Protection Agency shows the train contained more toxic and carcinogenic chemicals than initially reported, including phosgene, a poisonous gas that has been used as a chemical weapon in war. Officials lifted an evacuation order for residents last Wednesday, saying the air and water were safe, but residents have reported sore throats, burning eyes and respiratory problems, and wildlife has been found dead. Meanwhile, scrutiny has turned onto Norfolk Southern, which in recent years has challenged regulatory laws aimed at making the rail industry safer and made mass cuts to railroad staffing while spending billions on stock buybacks and executive compensation. We get an update from Emily Wright, community organizer based near the site of the derailment; Ross Grooters, a locomotive engineer and co-chair of Railroad Workers United; and Julia Rock, an investigative reporter with The Lever.

Data released by the Environmental Protection Agency shows the train contained more toxic and carcinogenic chemicals than initially reported. The EPA also said, quote, “materials released during the [derailment] were observed and detected in samples from Sulphur Run, Leslie Run, Bull Creek, North Fork Little Beaver Creek, [Little Beaver Creek,] and the Ohio River.” The Ohio Department of Natural Resources estimates the spill killed more than 3,500 fish in surrounding waterways. Chickens have been found dead in their coops. Residents have reported sore throats, burning eyes and respiratory problems. A controlled burn of the chemicals following the derailment sent a mushroom cloud of smoke and fire into the air that contained the toxic chemicals. Surveillance footage also shows the train on fire about 20 miles before it derailed with hazardous chemicals as it passed through Salem, Ohio. Officials lifted an evacuation order for residents Wednesday, saying the air and water are safe.

For more, we’re joined by three guests. Ross Grooters is with us, a locomotive engineer, co-chair of Railroad Workers United. Julia Rock joins us, an investigative reporter with The Lever who has been following the derailment in Ohio, her pieces headlined “There Will Be More Derailments” and “Rail Companies Blocked Safety Rules Before Ohio Derailment.” But we begin with Emily Wright, a resident of Columbiana County in Ohio, a few miles from the derailment and explosion site in East Palestine. She’s also the development director for River Valley Organizing, which is working with residents to call for justice-centered healing.

Emily, can you describe the scene of what you’re calling a chemically driven environmental nightmare? What does it look like, smell like? Describe what happened when the train derailed and how you learned about how you had to protect yourself.

EMILY WRIGHT: Good morning. Thanks for having me on.

One of the things that I really want people to know is that this event has three parts. So, Friday night, we had the derailment around 9 p.m., between 9:00 and 10:00. And residents that were right at the site, you know, were evacuated.

Then, the next day, they evacuated more people on Saturday, because it was still burning. And at this time, we didn’t know what was on the cars. We heard maybe it was vinyl chloride, maybe it was 10 cars, maybe it was five. We really didn’t have a great picture of what was on the train. So we were told that if you were with — outside of that mile zone, you’re OK. I live a few short miles — I think on the tracks, there’s five miles in between where I’m at and where the derailment was. And, you know, you should be OK. And they kept saying the same thing over and over again in the media and in the press conferences: “There’s no toxins in the air. There’s no toxins. You know, don’t worry.”

Sunday night, we had heard — we got an alert on our phone that there had been an additional explosion and that the fire was out of control again, which it never really was in control. We have pictures and videos that — time-stamped clear through — that show it, it was burning, and to just be aware. Like, there was really no evacuation for us, just people that were a little bit further out from the radius.

They were concerned on Monday morning that we were going to have an explosion. I will give everybody, you know, this much, that the explosion could have been much, much worse. So they announced to everybody that they were going to do a “controlled” release. And I’m using air quotes when I say “controlled.” So, they were supposed to do it at 3:30. My daughter was going to be on the bus route at that time. I already was experiencing symptoms of — I have asthma, so I was having shortness of breath already and was concerned, you know, from that burn, I already had irritation. But when they did the release, they were supposed to do it at 3:30 p.mThey announced it in a huge press conference. Mike DeWine was there. All of the sudden, they stopped the press conference. They evacuated DeWine. We work with a lot of — you know, we’re nonpartisan, nonprofit, so we work with a lot of — you know, both sides of the aisle — politicians, and had, you know, got confirmation that he had been rushed out of there. The media was given five minutes to get out, that they were pretty sure an explosion was imminent. So they did not do the burn at 3:30. I can’t tell you why. They did it two hours later.

The problem is, we had forecasted high wind gusts up to 45 miles an hour. We get a lot of wind in our area. The hills usually break it up, but it was announced that it was going to be very windy. So what they wanted to do was let it off earlier, so the cloud would go — I’m sorry, one second, my voice — so the cloud would go straight up. It wouldn’t span out. So they let it off late. And instead, the winds caught it. It went over four counties, four to five counties, in two states — actually, three, because the Panhandle of West Virginia was also affected. So we have Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia all affected by this huge mushroom cloud. You’ve all seen the pictures, I’m sure.

We started in my home, being just a few short miles away, experiencing nausea — sorry to be explicit, but — diarrhea. My father has bilateral asbestosis from working in the mill. So, these industries are killing us in more than one way. And he couldn’t breathe well. And, you know, I wanted to evacuate. We had a family that was telling us to come. But then, there was this massive shelter-in-place order put out: “Do not be out if you don’t have to. Shelter in place” — in the same breath we're hearing in a press conference and on the news, “This is out of an extreme abundance of caution. There’s no toxins. There’s no toxins. There’s no toxins. There’s no toxins.” That’s all we kept hearing.

But the only thing I really want to highlight — and I’m sorry if I’m going on too much — is what we found out through the org. We’ve been on the ground talking with people. We’re actually investing — our offices are in East Liverpool, Ohio, which is just a little bit south of East Palestine. But we have a lot of members of our org that live, like me, in and around East Palestine. So, we’ve invested in the community and are bringing on a couple organizers that are right outside the front door of the derailment, you know, to work with people, because, from day one, we’ve been fed what wasn’t the truth. And now we find out with this EPA report that, what, over 10,000 gallons of oil went into the ground, that the vinyl chloride was like double what we thought, and there was diethylene glycol, and there’s other chemicals. Norfolk Southern, from what the EPA says, did not report this to the EPA in a timely manner. So, we know this is on the report.

None of this really comes as a surprise. There’s deep systemic issues. You talk about the normal response to an event like this. This isn’t a normal event. And we really haven’t seen anything like it in the United States, and probably not something like it since 2013, as you know, when we had the Quebec train derailment and explosion in Lac-Mégantic. There are deep systemic problems with the freight railroads right now, and those need to be addressed for us to have some sort of a normal response to events like this. And until we get at those root causes of the safety issues in the freight rail system in this country, it’s not a matter of if these events are going to disrupt and really — just what the people of East Palestine are going through is just — it’s heart-wrenching. That’s going to occur again. It’s just a matter of when and where.
you have companies that are making obscene amounts of money, and they’re doing so by adopting operating policies — there’s a whole system for this called precision scheduled railroading — that is just designed to maximize profits. And what that means is you’re cutting to the bone the amount of people doing the job. So you have fewer people doing a lot more work faster. You have across-the-board cutbacks on the maintenance of cars, on the maintenance of locomotives, on the maintenance of track. This is critical infrastructure. And those things are being done, in many cases, by skeleton crews or are outsourced to subcontractors. And then you have increasingly long and heavy trains, like the one we saw here, where these trains have a greater propensity to derail. They’re going to derail more frequently because they are longer and heavier.

And then, lastly, you have the railroads themselves who are fighting any kind of regulation, whether it be train control systems that help manage the signal system, or the lobbying efforts that we saw to kill electronic braking, which can make for safer operations and a quicker stop, should a derailment like this occur.