10 Months Out from East Palestine: What Have We Learned?

BY THE HEARTLAND BEAT

In February, Norfolk Southern, or NS, may have been running behind. A train carrying incredibly hazardous chemicals was caught on several surveillance cameras potentially speeding its way through a brake malfunction that caused its wheels and axles to light up in a fiery blaze. Rather than bring the train to a halt, conductors barreled through hoping to reach their next checkpoint just beyond the Ohio/ Pennsylvania border. By the time the train had decided it couldn’t make it to its destination and attempted to brake, the damage was too severe, causing the entire train to run off the rails and crash into the village of East Palestine.

The Heartland Beat was one of the first outlets covering this event that led to catastrophic results across the area back in February. You can read our previous coverage here and here. 10 months out from one of Ohio’s most devastating disasters, what have we learned?

In June, after the event garnered mainstream attention, The National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB, along with the Ohio Senate, finally decided to hold hearings to get to the bottom of the decision to “vent and burn” the extremely volatile contents of several train cars NS argued posed a significant safety concern to the village. At the time, it was argued that the contents in the two of the tankers were likely to explode, which would send hazardous waste across many miles of currently undisturbed areas. As such, Norfolk Southern met with local officials, which “may have” included representatives from the federal EPA, and the local emergency management team of East Palestine, a volunteer fire chief by the name of Keith Drabick.

We say “may have” because early questioning to the EPA, as found in our previous coverage, revealed the EPA was incredibly dodgy when asked who the onsite coordinator was on location and though the president claimed they had a presence on site “from the beginning”, no one could really say who was organizing and directing the operation. During the hearings, however, these questions were answered. 

During the NTSB hearings, Paul Thomas, executive representing OxyVinyls, the company that owned the vinyl chloride in the Norfolk Southern tankers, testified that immediately after the derailment, they had communicated to Norfolk Southern that the vinyl chloride was at no risk of combustion.

“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,” Thomas said.

Per Thomas’ testimony, the vinyl chloride in transport had been ‘stabilized’ and treated for transport, which is an industry standard that called into question the rationale for Norfolk Southern arguing the necessity to burn it off. Despite this detail, representatives from Norfolk Southern met with the emergency response team, which included chief Drabick, and argued they had mere minutes to make a decision, conveniently leaving out that the compounds had been treated to prevent combustion. The Heartland Beat had made several attempts to reach Drabick for comment with no success. Given how every involved party has attempted to evade responsibility for the East Palestine decision, it may be evident why.

“I was met by the CEO and several other members and one of the members said I had 13 minutes to make a decision of whether or not we were going to vent or burn because they were running out of daylight. I was very overwhelmed by that approach to explaining that to me,” Drabick said.

—–Read the Rest of this article at the source, here.—–