East Palestine, Ohio is not a huge place. It's a town of about 5,000 people not far from Pittsburgh. For many years, East Palestine was known as the place that produced dishes and cups and pitchers for America's hotels. The enormous ceramics works there employed much of the town.
That's all gone now. And predictably, East Palestine is a lot poorer for it. The median household income in the town is now less than $45,000. East Palestine is overwhelmingly White and it's politically conservative. More than 70% of the voters in the surrounding counties supported Donald Trump in the last election.
That shouldn't be relevant, but as you're about to hear, it very much is. Eleven days ago, 150-car train derailed in East Palestine, and when it did, it spewed poisonous chemicals onto the ground and into the surface waters. After the crash, the Ohio state EPA found evidence of butyl acrylate in the Ohio River as well as in the creeks and streams that feed it. Now, this was a concern for more than simply East Palestine, given that the Ohio River supplies drinking water to about a tenth of the entire US population.
So this train derailment was an environmental disaster, not an "environmental disaster" like climate change is, but an actual environmental disaster, a disaster that's hurting actual people.
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And then it got worse. Several days after the derailment, officials decided it was a good idea to set fire to the spilled chemicals. And the result of that decision was a giant toxic mushroom cloud over the entire region. So given the evident crisis in East Palestine, how did the federal government and the Biden administration respond?
Well, under Pete Buttigieg, the Department of Transportation, which responds to train derailments, took decisive action. Pete Buttigieg announced something called Transit Equity Day. That's yet another day that we celebrate race-based federal funding, that, despite the trail train derailment, does not apply to East Palestine because the people who live there are the wrong color. So instead, Buttigieg's DOT announced an $80 million project to improve the roads in Philadelphia and $24 million for the roads in Detroit, both of which vote Democrat.
And then Mayor Pete talked about perhaps the most pressing problem in this country, which is that we have too many White construction workers. Mayor Pete said not a single word about East Palestine, Ohio. And that's not because everything was under control there. As the DOT was busy tweeting about Black History Month and transit equity, the governor of Ohio announced that that controlled burn of chemicals from the derailment could potentially kill thousands. And that shouldn't surprise you because vinyl chloride, when burned, turns into phosgene. That was the single most deadly poison gas used during World War I. And vinyl chloride was one of the chemicals on that derailed train in East Palestine. Here's the governor of Ohio:
GOV. MIKE DEWINE: Norfolk Southern Railroad is planning a controlled release of the vinyl chloride at approximately 3:30 p.m.. The controlled release of the toxic chemicals also has the potential to be deadly if inhaled. Those in the red area, those in the red area are facing grave danger of death if they are still in that area. Those living in the orange area are at risk of severe injury, severe injury, including skin burns and serious lung damage. To state the obvious, all of you need to leave as well. And I need to leave as well, too.
Notice the tone and the chuckle at the end. That's Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio, a great defender of Ukraine. And he's just announced that, well, thousands of people in his state could die. But he doesn't seem panicked by it. It's not a "hair on fire emergency". It's not like Kiev is in peril.
So after that controlled burn of the deadly chemicals, officials told residents within East Palestine that if you live within a two-mile radius of the derailment, you had to shelter in place and keep your windows closed. Residents closer to the mushroom cloud were put up in a hotel. Within days, they were all let back into their home without the Department of Transportation in Washington saying a word. As one hazardous material specialist put it, "The whole town may be unsafe as a result of this." Watch.
SIL CAGGIANO: The railroad company is responsible for this and for these people wjho went back to their homes. Their homes should have been tested. Their homes should have been cleaned. From the onset, These people were being marginalized in an effort to mitigate this. And at first, they're being told, you know, "Go get a hotel and keep your receipts and we will reimburse." East Palestine is a very poor community. Some of these people don't have the money to go get hotels and do all of this ****. And, you know, all this stuff. This really looks like a nuclear winter. And well, you know, pretty much, yeah, we nuke this town with chemicals, and this is what they're getting.
Now, imagine if this had happened in, well, the favored cities of Philadelphia and Detroit. Lots of poor people in those cities. Everyone feels for them. Everyone wants them to be safe. Imagine at the same time this had happened in Washington D.C., in say Georgetown. Well, the National Guard would be called in. There would be no mushroom cloud of toxic chemicals on the horizon. We can promise you that.
And of course, in both cases, if this affected the rich or the favored poor, it would be the lead of every news channel in the world. But it happened to the poor benighted town of East Palestine, Ohio, whose people are forgotten And in the view of the people who lead this country, forgettable. So no big deal.
The hazmat specialist in that video, Sil Caggiano explained to local media that it's such vinyl chloride on the train, that's not the only threat. There's also ethylene gas and we're quoting. "You're looking at five, 10, 15, 20 years down the line until you see potential long-term effects. This stuff seeks low lying areas. It could be in sewers, it could be in nooks, crannies and crevices. Of course, that's how poison gas works. Ask anyone in Verdun.
And that would explain the effect that the chemical weapons expert just outlined. it would explain why fish and animals are dying in the area without explanation. Of course, the explanation is very obvious. One resident in East Palestine, says his foxes are sick now. Watch this.
REPORTER: Taylor is an O.D.R registered fox keeper. A couple of his foxes broke their legs trying to run after the initial derailment. One of his foxes even died.
TAYLOR HOLZER: Out of nowhere. He just started coughing really hard and just shut down, and he had liquid diarrhea and just went very fast.
REPORTER: Taylor tells me all of his foxes have been sick and acting different since the weekend. Some have abnormally puffy faces, including the one he's holding. He says they are not eating properly. Many are dealing with stomach issues and are acting lethargic.
TAYLOR HOLZER: This isn't how a fox should act. He is very weak, limp. His eyes are very like watery and weepy.
REPORTER: Some of the foxes are pacing rapidly in their pen, another sign they are not well.
Pay attention to the animals always. There's a reason the phrase "canary in the coal mine" is a cliche.
So after all of this becomes public, that the water and the air in and around East Palestine, maybe in the region, could be contaminated, finally – finally – Pete Buttigieg and the Department of Transportation decided to weigh in: "Our federal partners at EPA are on-site and monitoring indoor and outdoor air quality."
Air quality? What about water? Oh, water. What does that have to do with climate change? Well, it's the one thing you can't do without. After about two and a half days, you die. But they're not even checking the water.
They only checked on the air a week after people were let back into their homes. And according to Mayor Pete, the EPA hasn't even screened 200 homes in close proximity to the burn, the burn that wasn't organic or accidental. It was authorities burning it. So they just don't care, actually. Could that be clearer?
While residents of East Palestine were inhaling toxic fumes, Mayor Pete was joking about the Chinese spy balloon his boss allowed to fly across the country. He's a funny guy. Watch this.
PETE BUTTIGIEG: I mean, if you look at what the American transportation systems have faced in the last two or three years, partly because of the pandemic, we've faced issues from container shipping to airline cancellations. And now we've got balloons.
So you're completely incompetent. Completely. There's never been a cabinet secretary this flamboyantly incompetent and this so obviously uncaring almost to the point of evil, if we're being honest about it. And then a little joke at the head. Oh, that was Mayor Pete yesterday, nearly two weeks after the disaster in Ohio.
Now, was this disaster predictable? Well, we're not sure. Netflix made a movie about it last year. A train derails in Ohio and spills toxic chemicals everywhere. Some of the locals in East Palestine were actually extras in that film, but no one saw it coming. It never could have happened, right?
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Well, it is coming out now, and again, we're not exactly sure why this train derailed. But according to a report in Jalopnik, the train involved in the derailment, Norfolk Southern, lobbied federal regulators for about a decade so they wouldn't have to improve their emergency brakes. The Biden administration, like the previous two administrations, didn't push the issue, and apparently the emergency brakes on this particular train failed during this incident.
Now, again, there's a lot of propaganda here. There's unions involved. There are a lot of people who benefit from assigning blame to this disaster. So, we're not going to endorse any theory about why it happened.
We're only going to note that Mayor Pete, who's in charge of finding out why it happened, doesn't seem interested at all. And like everybody else in New York, Washington and L.A., he's just kind of pretending it didn't happen and telling us little jokes.
