On the Ground in East Palestine
A visit to American Chernobyl.
This past weekend, I visited East Palestine, the site of the Norfolk Southern train derailment disaster.
The trains are the first thing you notice when you arrive in East Palestine. If you drive in from the north, you first hear them, then see them, then wait for them to pass. The tracks intersect the town’s main street, and trains roll through every 10 to 15 minutes; about a mile down east is Ground Zero. Although the roads leading there have been closed, you can still peer through houses to see huge machines operating on charred husks of railcars rising from the earth.
As of Monday, the smell of chemicals arrived with every gust of wind. It was even worse near water—going close to creeks in town was like suffocating your nose with plastic wrap doused in synthetic chemicals. Many shops were closed or temporarily abandoned. The streets were quite empty, save for a few journalists bookending East Palestine’s main street on each side.
The chemicals from the disaster have contaminated at least six different waterways, including the Ohio River. Still, as you will see below, no one in the town or surrounding areas has been warned yet of the grievous damage to the water, air, or soil. Residents were assured their homes were safe before any testing was done—only now, after a few residents have demanded testing, has the railroad acknowledged that some of their homes are completely uninhabitable.
That alone demands decades of litigation and investigation, but there are bigger conspiracies circulating online. Viral tweets have claimed that East Palestine residents were the test subjects for a Digital ID program a few months ago. While this very well may be true, none of the 15 or so residents we talked to had participated in the program; only one said his friend has taken part in it. It also appears that the EPA suspiciously changed their toxicological profile of vinyl chloride in January 2023, for the first time in fifteen years. You can go back and read the 2006 version yourself to see what changed, although a cursory comparison does appear to confirm allegations that they “softened” its toxicity profile.
Some of the most histrionic claims about the town aren’t true. There haven’t been mass wildlife die-offs; the town’s feral cat population remains mostly intact, and pigeons still roost on the tops of factories. For now. The biggest questions of this crisis will only be answered in the years to come. I don’t have a positive prognosis, however—even after spending only a few hours in East Palestine, I myself experienced nausea, sickness, and a burning in my throat the next day (which I sincerely hope was some sort of deranged placebo effect).
The only tangible conspiracy we were able to pin down was allegations of the the town’s politics being in league with “one-percenter'“ biker gangs, facilitating drugs and prostitution. Otherwise, many residents seemed disturbed by the national attention. Some accused outside forces of trying to divide the town and attack the mayor. “He’s only one person,” a couple complained. “This is a town of 4000 people facing a national disaster. [The mayor] is doing the best he can.”
The one silver lining from this absolute travesty is that the town is doing the best it can, too. Neighbors are helping neighbors; signs in nearly every storefront say things like “We love our First Responders,” “Pray for EP,” or “East Palestine Lives Matter.” Clusters of orange-vested workers filter local waterways with noisy machines. A pastor walks around, offering support and bottled water to those who need it. The Salvation Army has set up a tent to distribute emergency supplies.
While we have uploaded much of our East Palestine footage on Twitter already, we’ve archived for posterity the following interviews with residents. Their stories deserve to be heard.
Stephanie is a schoolteacher who lives 1.2 miles down from the derailment. She has young children and worries for their long-term health. While she was out-of-town during the blast, she is currently experiencing symptoms like a burning throat and dry cough.
Diana lives just outside of East Palestine. She says that she has received no warnings at all about compromised air, soil, and water quality. She also now feels her family home is un-sellable. "Who's gonna want to move here? People won't even come here to play basketball."
Jami is one of the few who've raised enough hell to get a toxicologist to test her house. They concluded it was dangerously uninhabitable. While the railroad has since offered her money to move out, she wonders—how many more homes are like theirs, with families still in them?
Debbie lives within 1 mile of the train derailment. While she and her partner evacuated during the blast, she says she has received not a single follow-up or test—even though their neighbor's house was declared uninhabitable due to chemical levels.
Debbie and her partner live right next to a creek, that still grossly reeks of chemicals and plastics 2 weeks after the train crash. They said the smell often comes directly into their home.
While many people in East Palestine now want to move out, and the streets are quite empty, some residents like Wade refuse to leave. "My kid's buried in the cemetery down the street. I'm not going to leave unless I can take her with me."
While every resident we spoke to expressed genuine concern over the disaster, some, like this pastor, took a more hopeful approach. Residents are coming together like never before: performing clean-up on the water, sharing resources, and distributing bottled water.
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