Toxic Blame Game: Who’s Responsible for East Palestine’s ‘Mini-Chernobyl’

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine provided an update on the cleanup operation in and around East Palestine earlier this week, expressing appreciation for local residents’ hearty can-do attitude in dealing with the emergency.

“I just want to say that I continue to be impressed by the resiliency of the people in the village, by their attitude, and how many people are pitching in to really make a difference every single day not just in the community but outside of the community,” DeWine said, standing alongside representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other state and federal officials Wednesday.

“We had the chance to watch really almost all of the operations going on today, and again I was impressed by the magnitude of it, and also impressed by the hard work that so many people are doing to make sure this is a community that is in fact safe and does in fact remain safe,” DeWine added.

Empty feel-good sentiments aside, the governor was light on the hard facts about what’s being done to mitigate the disaster. Earlier in the week, DeWine’s office reported that “approximately 4,832 cubic yards of contaminated soil” had been removed from the ground by Norfolk Southern, the Atlanta-based rail giant whose train derailed in East Palestine on February 3. Incidentally, that same 4,832-cubic-yard figure was mentioned by the governor last week, even as the railroad and officials continue to assure that cleanup operations are ongoing.

DeWine has taken heavy flak for his role in the disaster, particularly over his and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s decision to sign off on Norfolk Southern’s proposed “controlled burn” of the toxic chemicals on board the derailed freight cars, instead of carefully and thoroughly removing them from the disaster area via tanker trucks. The railway said the derailed cars posed an explosive hazard, and to mitigate this danger, rigged them with explosives and sent millions of pounds of chemicals into the skies over the town on February 6. Residents in a two-mile area were ordered to leave their homes and evacuate, but were told just two days later, on February 8, that they could "safely return home."

The trains’ load included industrial chemicals used to make products like rubber, paint, and household synthetic polymers known as polyvinyl chloride (PVC), including vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, and isobutylene. Many of these chemicals have been linked to cancers, respiratory illnesses, and neurological and behavioral disorders.

Despite the danger posed by these substances, DeWine, Shapiro, Norfolk Southern, the Environmental Protection Agency, and others insist that air quality in and around the town remains normal, and that air and ground pollution testing has been extensive.

However, town residents, independent reporters, and people from nearby communities have told another story, reporting to anyone who will listen on the death of their pets, birds, farm animals and local wildlife, and the contamination of rivers and streams. On February 28, one independent journalist spotted three dead deer on the banks of Little Beaver Creek, almost 25 kilometers south of East Palestine, speculating that the animals may have died from drinking contaminated water.

US legacy media have attempted to smear those sounding the alarm about the potential scale of the environmental disaster in East Palestine as “right-wing” crazies. “How a train derailment in East Palestine turned into a right-wing cause,” Jeff Bezos-owned newspaper The Washington Post opined in a feature February 24, attacking conservatives for criticizing the Biden administration for its half-hearted response. “In Fog of East Palestine’s Crisis, Politicians Write Their Own Stories,” The New York Times wrote the same day, accusing “far-right podcasts,” “conservative celebrities,” and House lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene of spreading “conspiracy theories” after Greene tweeted that East Palestine was in the middle of “an ecological disaster because authorities blew up the train derailment cars carrying hazardous chemicals and press are being arrested for trying to tell the story.” The NYT didn’t clarify what part of MTG’s tweet constituted a “conspiracy theory.” A NewsNation reporter named Evan Lambert was indeed arrested on February for “speaking loudly” and getting into a “heated conversation” with a National Guardsman while DeWine was addressing other reporters at one of his press conferences. The charges against him were soon dropped.

The National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report on the East Palestine disaster last week, focusing on the derailment (but crucially, not the "controlled burn" or its consequences, which investigators promised to study at a later date). The federal agency also stressed that it is "not involved in air monitoring, testing of water quality, environmental remediation, or evacuation orders," and referred any questions on those matters to the EPA. In essence, the report boiled down to recounting what everyone already knows: that 38 railcars of a 149-car train derailed, among them 11 carrying hazardous materials.

In a press conference accompanying the report, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy intimated that the February 3 incident was preventable, because "we've never seen an accident that isn't preventable."

While state and federal authorities and much of the media have shied away from blaming Norfolk Southern directly for the decision to burn the chemicals off instead of removing them, residents of East Palestine have had no qualms about pointing the finger at those they believe are responsible.

“You know, their main concern was to get the rail line open so they could move freight. That’s all they care about,” Bob Figley, owner of a local hardware store, said in an interview with independent media. “When the guy from Norfolk Southern came on right after it happened to talk about their plans, the first thought that came out of his mouth was, they’re going to get this all cleaned and opened up and the tracks down and get the trains running. There was no talk about 'well, we’re going to find out what people need.' You know people were thrown out of their houses and they couldn’t stay there. But I haven’t seen anybody from Norfolk Southern come in and say ‘hey, you know, how has this affected you financially? Here’s a check.’”

The EPA announced earlier this week that Norfolk Southern representatives would be forced to attend a town hall gathering on Thursday after the railroad ducked out of a similar event held in mid-February, citing a “growing physical threat to our employees.” However, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw skipped Thursday’s event, sparking outrage from locals, some of whom shouted “Where’s Alan?” Residents implored the railroad to hear their plight. “It’s not safe here. I’m begging you, by the grace of God, please get our people out of here,” one man said. “If I did something wrong, I’m going to stand up and I’m going to face my wrong. And I’m just one simple human being – they’re a corporation,” an outraged woman added.

The Biden administration has also faced flak for its role in the disaster, both for failing to pay it much attention and for refusing to pressure Norfolk Southern into doing more to mitigate it. Instead of deploying federal law enforcement and government environmental agents to East Palestine, for example, Washington has allowed a private police force owned by Norfolk Southern to provide security, and let company-hired ground and air quality testers with a notorious reputation for serving corporate interests do the air and soil analysis.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg didn’t show up to the disaster site until last week, nearly 20 days after the derailment, citing other commitments and the prevalence of train derailments (the US suffered over 1,000 derailments in 2022 alone). House Republicans have slammed Buttigieg for “neglecting” his duties and failing “to mitigate or effectively respond to multiple national crises” in a resolution this week, urging him to resign.

President Biden, meanwhile, has skipped visiting the battered town entirely, instead jetting off to Kiev and Warsaw last month to reiterate the US’ continued support for Ukraine in NATO’s proxy war with Russia. East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway blasted Biden over the “slap in the face” to his community that his Kiev trip demonstrated, saying it “tells you right now he doesn’t care about us.”

With Biden remaining a no-show in East Palestine, former President Donald Trump turned up instead, expressing his support for the town, buying McDonald’s for first responders and bringing 13 pallets of food and Trump-brand water to residents he said had been “betrayed” by Washington.

Amid complaints by conservatives over the Biden administration’s mishandling of the disaster, Democratic politicians, media, and pundits have jumped at the chance to accuse Trump and other Republicans of responsibility for the accident by rolling back rail safety regulations.

During his visit to the disaster zone, Buttigieg accused Trump of giving Norfolk Southern a “Christmas tree of regulatory changes that the last administration made on its way out the door in December of 2020.”

However, even anti-Trump, pro-Biden media have pointed out that, so far, they have yet to find a direct correlation between the regulations rolled back by the Trump White House and the East Palestine derailment.

As for the “Christmas tree” mentioned by Buttigieg, including brake safety inspections, a two-person crew requirement, and revisions to minimum safety requirements, all of these had “unclear” or “no” impact on the February 3 disaster, according to WaPo “Fact Checker” Glenn Kessler.

The reality is that the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations all share in the blame for the disaster by okaying a culture of lax railway safety regulations. As former Bernie Sanders campaign advisor David Sirota noted, all three presidents, and both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Congress, allowed the rail industry to successfully lobby “against stricter rules for trains carrying flammable chemicals, and against more advanced breaks that experts and the rail industry have said could lessen the severity of derailments.”

“There’s no question that some regulations are outdated, unnecessary, or too costly,” President Obama boasted in a 2012 State of the Union address, which has now been cited in connection with the East Palestine derailment. “In fact, I’ve approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his. I’ve ordered every federal agency to eliminate rules that don’t make sense. We’ve already announced over 500 reforms, and just a fraction of them will save business and citizens more than $10 billion over the next five years,” Obama promised.

Ironically, Biden ran in 2020 on a promise to "fix" America's aging infrastructure, including rail, roads, and bridges. The president and his allies in Congress passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill in late 2021, and Democrats have been touting its implementation. However, by one count, so far, his administration has only succeeded in increasing the number of derailment incidents.

The East Palestine derailment epitomizes the rot and non-viability of the current political system, in which the rail companies seek to maximize profits, and officials and lawmakers from both parties seek to serve lobbyists’ interests, and blame one another when something goes wrong, resulting in an utter lack of accountability to anyone but lobbyists and shareholders, instead of the American people.

As independent journalist Tom Hall recently summarized, “in reality, both parties bear responsibility for the disaster, having both supported decades of deregulation and backing rail profits to the hilt. Indeed, both parties received campaign contributions from the railroads, including $725,000 from Northern Southern in 2022, split 51-49 in favor of the Democrats.”