Residents of East Palestine—the Ohio town where a train freighting toxic chemicals derailed this month, triggering health concerns and a national outcry—were hoping to get some answers at a town hall Wednesday night. But the rail company behind the incident didn’t show up. Norfolk Southern cited its concerns about “the growing physical threat to our employees and members of the community” in its rationale for skipping the event, while emphasizing that it was “committed” to addressing residents’ concerns. But for many in the town on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, the company’s decision not to attend amounted to a snub.
“It is just a slap in the face,” one resident told CNN, “because the people who put us out are too afraid to show up to the meeting.”
That sense of uncertainty and abandonment has hung over East Palestine in the two weeks since the February 3 incident, in which dozens of freight cars—ten of which were transporting hazardous materials—derailed in a fiery crash. Residents were asked to evacuate the town days later to allow a controlled burn of vinyl chloride amid concerns the five cars transporting the cancer-causing chemical could explode. The evacuation order was lifted on February 8 and residents were told that air tests had consistently shown “readings at points below safety screening levels for contaminants of concern.” But health concerns have nevertheless remained, driven by reports of thousands of dead fish in waterways and expert warnings that a full understanding of the environmental impacts would require a more robust investigation. “I just don’t trust anybody,” one resident told the New York Times.
The incident has led to calls for stronger action from local, state, and national lawmakers, and has made for some strange political bedfellows in the process. “East Palestine railroad derailment will have a significant negative impact on the health and wellbeing of the residents for decades and there is almost zero national media attention,” progressive Representative Ilhan Omar wrote earlier this week. “We need Congressional inquiry and direct action from [Pete Buttigieg] to address this tragedy.”
“Fully agree,” right-wing Senator Ted Cruz tweeted in response.
Buttigieg, the Transportation Secretary, has defended the Biden administration’s work on rail safety, noting several measures and investments that his department has implemented. “We are using the powers we do have to keep people safe,” Buttigieg wrote in a lengthy Twitter thread Tuesday, explaining that his department has been constrained by the rollback of a braking rule under Donald Trump. “I’m always ready to work with Congress on furthering (or in some cases, restoring) our capacity to address rail safety issues,” Buttigieg added.
But he’s continued to face scrutiny, particularly from Republicans who have railed against him for lacking visibility amid the crisis. In a letter Wednesday, GOP Senators Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance, the latter of whom represents Ohio, raised questions about the DOT’s oversight and about “the administration’s prioritizing of efficiency over resilience in its national infrastructure and transportation systems.”
It’s worth noting, as Buttigieg did this week, that freight companies have been “prioritizing” efficiency well before this administration. Concerns about precision-scheduled railroading, which may have contributed to the incident, led the Obama administration to establish new rules to “lessen the frequency and consequences” of freight accidents. But the industry, including Norfolk Southern, fought the new rule requiring special brakes on trains carrying hazardous materials, and the Trump administration officially junked it in 2017, on the basis that the “expected benefits…do not exceed the associated costs.” Had that rule been in place, a former senior official at the Federal Railroad Administration told USA Today, the East Palestine disaster may have been avoided. “ECP brakes would have avoided that monster pile up behind the derailed car,” the official, Steven Ditmeyer, told the outlet. “In fact, depending on when the crew got the (error) notice from the wayside detector, applying ECP brakes would have stopped everything very quickly.”
