A year on from the East Palestine toxic train derailment, what’s changed?

This is The Guardian.

I'm Jonathan Freedland, columnist for The Guardian, and this is Politics Weekly, America. February the 3rd marks one year since a small village on the border of Ohio and Pennsylvania met disaster.

The aftermath of the derailed Ohio train has had catastrophic impacts on the Palestine.

community, and it doesn't end there.

A few days after the freight train derailed, officials decided to vent and burn the chemicals that were on the damaged cars.

This giant plume of smoke and fire erupting into the sky Monday afternoon in a controlled release, burning for hours with hazardous material.

Those still living in East Palestine and the surrounding communities have been told that the air they breathe and the water they drink is safe, but many are not confident in what they're being told. So what led to this toxic train derailment? What's changed in terms of legislation to make sure this kind of accident does not happen again? And how are residents coming together to advocate for their safety and the safety of fellow Americans in the future? My colleague, Dana Noor, who is a fossil fuels and climate reporter for Guardian US, traveled to East Palestine to see for herself what's changed in the 12 months since the toxic spill.

So I'm in East Palestine, Ohio, and we've just pulled up to the site where the cleanup of the train derailment that happened about a year ago is still taking place. So there's workers who are wearing hard hats and vests and masks, still cleaning up the site. And I'm looking at these giant blue containers that I think are full of toxic waste from the derailment. Pretty wild to see it in person.

I don't know where you want it to set up.

Her backyard looks out onto the train tracks. The very same tracks that the doomed train passed through.

If the train would have derailed about 60 seconds sooner, it would have been right here. And the barn, which sits about 600 feet from the tracks, was filled with horses. that night. It was really cold. And so we would have had an absolute mess right in the backyard.

That Friday night was, just like most others, for Jess and her family.

I started hearing sirens up and down the road for like 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. I thought, what's going on? Something's going on. So I came downstairs and my husband had the news on and he had said, a train derailed and apparently there's a really big fire.

Trains have derailed in East Palestine before, but pretty quickly Jess realized something was different this time.

My husband had previously been on the East Palestine Fire Department and we still had his radio. And so we were able to listen to some of the things that were happening that night.

Officials told residents within a mile of the derailment site to evacuate. That's about 2,000 people. But Jess and her family, they lived a little farther away.

So my family was advised to shelter in place that evening, but attention really quickly shifted to that vinyl chloride car.

The emergency responders didn't know it yet, and neither did the residents. But 11 of the derailed cars had some pretty dangerous stuff on board, including something called vinyl chloride. It's a carcinogenic gas made from fossil fuels.

Vinyl chloride is responsible for PVC plastics. And these are plastics that cannot be recycled. These are plastics that pollute the world in the name of profit. PVC is a product that is used to make drinking water pipes and shower curtains. They are the toys that kids chew on in the bathtub.

It's also a highly volatile gas. And the message went out to residents that if the tank cars carrying the chemical caught fire, they could explode.

There was different communication in terms of the radius that this would impact. So it was a one-mile radius, it was a circle, and it was an oval, and then it was a square, and then it was one by two, so it was like a wonky rectangle. But being that I'm right at that two-mile mark, I got spooked.

To avoid a devastating explosion, authorities scheduled what's called a controlled vent and burn. that's basically burning off the gas for Monday afternoon, three days after the derailment.

The closer we got to that 3.

With her husband at work, Jess bundled her family into the car and called up her brother. He was a local counselor at the time. She told him she was getting out and urged him to leave too.

We met at a pizza shop, and all the cousins had this seemingly normal midday pizza party. But during our meal, we had received word that the vent and burn was a success.

Rail operator Norfolk Southern, saying their plan was completed successfully, draining the chemicals into a trench.

Inside that trench will be flares aligning that trench. that then will light off the material.

Ohio's governor telling me this was the least harmful option.

We think this is the choice that will save lives.

When we came home, I was floored that they would call that a success, because when I looked from my house, all I could see was this massive black cloud.

It's hard to describe how apocalyptic this black, dark plume looked, but if you've seen the pictures, you'll understand why residents were so worried.

The first thing that I noticed was the just thick chemical smell, and it wasn't smoky like you would imagine. It was like you have your head in a bucket of chlorine and bleach mixed.

Almost immediately, residents started reporting some pretty serious symptoms.

I was very tired that week, definitely had a headache, felt dizzy, nauseated. I didn't have too many respiratory symptoms, but I could tell that something wasn't right in my throat and in my nose. And I think it was that chemical film that was just sticking around.

And it wasn't just locals who said they got sick. The Center for Disease Control sent out a team to knock on doors and collect data on the pollution's effects, and, according to the agency, seven investigators fell ill on the job. Norfolk Southern, by the way, told us they've spent $103 million cleaning up this disaster and that they remain committed to East Palestine.

My name is Jennifer Homendy, and I am the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board. As chair, I'm the chief executive officer of the agency.

So, the NTSB is looking into the causes of the train derailment and the choices made in its aftermath, including the decision to vent and burn the train, which is a very important vent and burn the vinyl chloride. Early on, investigators realized the first responders should have known a lot more, a lot sooner.

In any sort of incident, command situation or any time a firefighter is out there risking their lives to protect others on a very serious hazmat situation, they need to know what's on that train well in advance of that event. So, number one, they're appropriately trained. Number two, they have the right gear. And number three, that they have the resources they need, that if there is event, they know how to respond. In this case, they were pretty much operating blind for a very long time, which is completely unacceptable.

This did prompt change in the industry. In September, the East Palestine area got set up with the Ask Rail app, which lets firefighters quickly look up what's on board every train once they get a car number. But when the NTSB held a public hearing in East Palestine last summer, lots of other issues came to light.

I'm sure I speak for all of us in the room and in East Palestine when I say that none of us would prefer to be here today. The train derailment has, quite frankly, changed East Palestine forever.

East Palestine's fire chief, Keith Drabik, was the incident commander during the derailment. He testified that he greenlit the decision to vent and burn the vinyl chloride because everyone agreed it was the best option. But he didn't have a lot of time to make that decision.

When we got taken down to that room, we were told we had 13 minutes to make the decision. And that had to do with convergence, with the weather and the transitioning from day to night.

Here's Jennifer Homendy again.

13 minutes. 13 minutes. they were told to make a decision, a very important decision, on whether to vent and burn. Part of our investigation is what information they were provided, what information they had, and what information was shared with those who were tasked with making the decision at the time. And then what happened after that decision was made.

It seems communication broke down after the derailment, too. Drabik didn't have all the information he needed.

We made it clear, based on our expertise of the chemical properties of our product, that stabilized VCM would be unlikely to spontaneously polymerize under the conditions described to us by Norfolk Southern and its contractor.

This is a representative from OxyVinyls, the company who owned the vinyl chloride. He testified that his team had told Norfolk Southern three times that they didn't believe an explosion was going to happen. But it turns out that was never communicated to the team tasked with making the final decision. Still, in that NTSB hearing, a Norfolk Southern representative said venting and burning was the right call.

The very last alternative is vent and burn.

When you get to that point, there are no other options available to us.

And that was the case here.

We won't see the final NTSB report on the disaster until late spring or summer. But whatever the findings, residents in and around East Palestine are still concerned that the controlled burn made them sick. According to the National Cancer Institute, vinyl chloride is a highly flammable gas. Exposure is associated with an increased risk of liver, brain and lung cancers. But tonight, authorities are reassuring the public.

We have zero readings of any health risks as far as anything airborne coming from the chemicals that they're looking for.

And so it's funny, this was like our favorite room in the house. When I moved back in, I made this my bedroom because I loved it so much. And then it's like, this is the room that probably is the reason my home was more impacted.

When the train derailed, Hillary Flint was living just across the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, about four miles from the disaster.

So we are in Enon Valley, Pennsylvania, and people kind of forget about Pennsylvania in all of this. You know, where the train derailed, it happened by State Line Bar, because it was that close to the PA border.

Hillary heard the sirens on the night of February 3rd and found out about the crash on Facebook. But Monday, February 6th, is the day she'll never forget.

My family was waiting to be evacuated. We really thought that we would be. My little brother went to school that morning. And around 11 a.m., we found out he would, like. our school district, was sending all the kids home.

Like Jess, she watched the news and heard officials say that the Ventenburn was a success. So she went home to the house she shared with her grandmother.

There was a very strong smell the minute we came home and opened the door. It was something like I had never smelled before. I describe it as sweet bleach. So it was kind of like that, a smell that you would smell when you're around a pool. There was something sugary about it.

We asked the EPA about Hillary's situation, and they said their voluntary indoor air testing program was only available for residents living within the evacuation zone. Federal and local officials, as well as Norfolk Southern, have maintained that Pennsylvania air is safe.

We couldn't find anyone to do testing until March. So we're talking, you know, a month after the fact. At that point, I was having extreme rashes. We had coughs. It was like constantly, if you had like a sinus infection, it just felt like that nonstop.

The Environmental Protection Agency turned down Hillary's requests for indoor air testing. But a research team from Wayne State University who were investigating pollutants in the area did take some samples from her house. The researchers found compounds associated with the derailment clinging to filters in her house, including vinyl chloride and also ethyl hexylacrylate. That's another hard-to-pronounce chemical used to make plastics that the EPA says might be linked to cancer.

The test results proved I was being gaslit because I was affected, right? These chemicals were found in my home. And so I wasn't crazy. And so I remember having that moment of being like, oh, okay. Maybe I was losing it for a minute, but no.

The EPA told us. those chemicals found in Hillary's home are also found in household products like adhesives and paint. And though they looked at the university's data, they didn't have the information they'd need to know how much of this stuff was in Hillary's house. But Hillary didn't exactly feel reassured by the testing. In fact, with the information she did have, she decided to leave.

I had looked at other places around here and I would hear, you know, the noise of a train. And I'd say, oh, nope, not this one. If I could hear it, it's too close. So it really changed how I looked at where I would want to live. And so I did a lot of research and I found out that the state of New York has banned fracking.

Hillary set up a volunteer group called the Unity Council. It's made up of concerned residents who had questions they wanted answered by officials.

Our number one ask was at the time a state of emergency declaration.

This demand was echoed by Ohio state senators, who have asked the government to consider announcing a disaster declaration for East Palestine. That could unlock more resources for Ohio, which could use for things like relocation assistance and crisis counseling.

And so we thought, you know, OK, we have all. we have our senators on our side. Like, of course, Biden's going to do the disaster declaration. And he still hasn't.

OK, so the Biden administration has told us disaster declarations are really meant for natural disasters, but that Norfolk Southern, not nature, was responsible for the East Palestine crash back in September. In November, the president did sign an executive order appointing a coordinator through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, better known as FEMA, to make sure Norfolk Southern is doing enough to help the community recover. But Ohio's request for that declaration is still open. while that happens. FEMA told us they've been, quote, collaborating with partners across government, the private sector and voluntary and community organizations supporting the recovery.

So, you know, number one, they talk about. they don't know the unmet needs and they need to do research on the unmet needs. The FEMA coordinator they sent wouldn't meet with residents. It would only meet with faith leaders, local politicians, business owners. So you're not meeting with a subset of people that have health symptoms, the people that can't afford to do things.

The EPA told us that, based on all of the data they've analyzed, they found no evidence that East Palestine's air is contaminated. Local officials have said the same, but some aren't totally convinced, even those that stayed. Here's Jess again.

When you have to wake up and ask yourself, am I safe here today or am I willing to tolerate the risk of being here, it's not easy to think, am I safe in my own home? And some days, no, I don't feel safe.

But that fear hasn't stopped residents from advocating for themselves. So Jess has been focusing her energy on demanding an outright ban on the use of vinyl chloride. Again, that's the carcinogenic chemical that's used to make plastic.

This is not rocket science. We have safe alternatives for every single product that is made from PVC, yet we're still using this product. Why? Because it's cheap. But when you think about the actual cost, who is paying for it?

In October last year, Jess finally got some good news.

This week marked another step forward for accountability and change. after the East Palestine train disaster. We've learned that the U.S. EPA will dig deeper into the effects of vinyl chloride.

The U.

I jumped up and down. I was elated. It felt like, wow, we can really do this.

We're going to do this.

This is not just going to be this tragic story. We are going to make global change. There's only seven types of plastics. And if we can take a seventh of that away, we can have massive impact.

We're going to take a quick break here. When we come back, we'll look at why Norfolk Southern is being investigated for its safety practices and chat with people looking to change railway legislation, so this kind of disaster doesn't happen again. We'll be right back.

Doing well.

Thanks for meeting us. Yeah, no problem. This is Clyde Whitaker. He directs the International Sheet Metal Air Rail Transportation Union for Ohio.

Oh, yeah. That's a busy railroad.

I don't think he'll mind me saying this, but I've never met someone who's a bigger nerd about trains than Clyde.

I've just been around, grandfathers and uncles, all of them railroaders. I got to ride my first train when I was five years old. My papa took me out one day, here's the train. He's like, get on that caboose, boy. Wow.

Clyde actually predicted a train disaster, like East Palestine, many months before it happened.

I've seen the workforces get cut, cut, cut. They want to hang their head on technology, but technology fails quite often. As we've seen here in East Palestine, that's a prime example right there. But the industry took a big change when Hunter Harrison came from the Canadian Pacific to CSX, and he instilled what they call precision schedule railroading.

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Okay, this can get a bit technical, but what you need to know about precision scheduled railroading, or PSR, is that it means running fewer trains and making them way, way longer. I'm talking up to three miles long. All the while slashing workforces. So, just imagine. Massive trains carrying dangerous chemicals?

I have been told by workers who work for your company and other rail companies that they are now being asked to do more work with fewer workers, and that includes safety inspections. Will you make a commitment right now to the American people that you will lead the industry in ending this disastrous precision scheduled railroading, which has slashed your workforce and made railroading much less safe? Yes or no, will you make that commitment? Senator, I understand your concern, and I share that concern. If you'll permit, I have a couple points on that.

So how does this all relate to East Palestine? Let's go back to Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, who's looking into what caused the derailment.

So on that day, there was a bearing.

Remember, a bearing is just a part of the wheel.

That overheated on railcar 23,, which is where the derailment began. It went through three detectors.

Defect detectors. They're meant to do exactly what it says on the box. Detect any issues with trains as they pass by. Like, for example, a dangerous increase in temperature.

The wayside detectors had identified an increasing temperature trend. And it kept increasing over the period of about 20 miles to the point where part of the wheel bearing and axle at that point were on fire. And it derailed.

A critical alarm was sounded after the fire had started. The NTSB is still working out why that happened. But Jennifer made it clear the crew did everything right in this case.

I had several of my members on Norfolk Southern giving me complaints about them being ordered to bypass the company's own rulebook. They ignore these defect detectors. You either slow your train down to try to cool that wheel down, or keep going to the next forward point because they were short on crews, short on equipment, whatever the case may be.

We asked Norfolk Southern about what Clyde's heard from workers. They didn't comment. What they did tell us is they're working to shorten the distance between these detectors and that they've installed 115 more of them. since the crash. The NTSB decided to open a specific investigation into the company's safety practices.

What prompted that investigation is we had a few accidents involving Norfolk Southern that we were already investigating when the one in East Palestine occurred. Then, between East Palestine and just a few months afterwards, a total of five investigations, open investigations, involving Norfolk Southern. So we felt, with the situation where there were so many in such a little amount of time, that we wanted to look deeper into the safety culture of the railroad itself.

Norfolk Southern told us that since the derailment, it's upped its safety spending. But Clyde thinks the problem isn't just Norfolk Southern. He argues the whole U.S. rail system is way too loosely regulated. Ohio last year passed a law instating stricter freight train regulation.

It aims to change key issues that have come to light following the fiery crash,

including procedures for carrying hazardous materials, reducing risks of wheel-bearing failures, and increasing fines for rail carriers and budgets for hazmat training grants. Railway companies immediately pushed back on some elements of the bill, like the requirement to have a two-person minimum crew on all trains. They argue that's unnecessary and costly, despite thousands of rail workers reporting that accidents are more likely to happen when they work solo.

Senator, we're a data-driven organization, and I'm not aware of any data that links crew size with safety. I believe that we have operations infrastructure on the ground to respond to derailments.

That response has frustrated those who want to see this bill passed as soon as possible, including, as we'll hear in this news clip, U.

I have said directly to the CEO of Norfolk Southern that they should be supporting this bill, not fighting it. But in any case, no matter what the industry does, this is good legislation, and I'm hoping that Congress gets it to the president's desk so that we can get to work executing it.

But that hasn't happened. In fact, the bill hasn't even made it out of committee and onto the Senate floor for a vote. Clyde thinks he knows why.

I have to go back to the railroad lobbyists. These people have a lot of money, and they have a lot of influence. Think about history and how Rockefeller had so much influence on Congress. We've got the same thing at the railroads today.

Just to give you a sense of what he's talking about here, the rail industry has spent more than $600 million on federal lobbying over the past 20 years. And for every month they delay passing railway safety legislation, the risk of a more serious train derailment grows.

We need everybody across the nation to get a hold of their legislators in D.

Meeting folks in and around East Palestine, I was so struck by the confusion facing residents. Are we safe? Should we leave? Who's to blame? The frustration was clear.

We have to continue to be loud. We have to hear from the voices of the people that are impacted, the frontline community members to these petrochemical industries. We can't just sit and say, oh, but, it's providing 40 jobs or it's providing 30 jobs. The economic devastation that we see across the nation is a real problem, and it's coming to a town near you. if you don't stand up and use your voice.

A big thanks to Jess Conard, Hillary Flint, Jennifer Homendy, and Clyde Whitaker for speaking with me for this week's episode. My colleague, Joni Grieve, will be with you next week. But for now, it's goodbye. The producer is Danielle Stevens and the executive producer is Maz Ebtehaj. I'm Dharna Noor.

This is The Guardian.