Train Derailment and Toxic Cloud Over Ohio All But Ignored by Mainstream Media

Lobbying and lack of regulation caused a catastrophic environmental disaster— where’s the coverage?

On the night of Friday the 3rd of February, a few miles from Pennsylvania in the small village of East Palestine, Ohio, a massive Norfolk Southern freight train one hundred cars long had a derailment. Almost two weeks later, information is still emerging as to the extent of the devastation. But according to initial reports from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), ten cars came off the tracks, five of which contained the hazardous chemical vinyl chloride — although, I’ve seen other numbers.

Due to a massive inferno and plumes of toxic smoke, there was a shelter-in-place order for the roughly 5000 residents of the sleepy town, and citizens within a one-mile radius of the crash site got knocks on their doors from police shortly after the crash and were ordered to evacuate. Many were reportedly allowed to go back shortly after and experienced symptoms such as headaches mere minutes after returning.

The wreckage burned for days, and images of the flames and dark clouds are extremely ominous.

Officials from Norfolk Southern, the NTSB, and Ohio EPA were on the site assessing the situation. They’re monitoring air and water quality in the area, as inhaling high levels of the toxin can be fatal, according to the Ohio Department of Health.

Some have speculated up to one million pounds of the toxic chemical or one hundred thousand gallons have spilled into the ground and boiled off into the air.

In an attempt to avoid an explosion of the train cars containing vinyl chloride, officials allowed the toxin to spill into trenches where they then did a controlled burn, which people are alleging wasn’t necessary but was simply the faster and cheaper option.

So, while they celebrated avoiding an explosion, they’ve also potentially put thousands of pounds of acid into the air. There are already predictions of acid rain due to the burning of vinyl chloride creating the byproduct hydrogen chloride, which latches onto water molecules and turns into hydrochloric acid.

As mentioned, residents are already reporting visible side effects and even death in animals. Upward News recently reported a woman found all of her chickens mysteriously dead in a coup ten miles away.

The entire thing is an epic tragedy — being compared to a mini-Chernobyl — the ramifications of which we won’t know for weeks, months, or even years.

While there has been some coverage of the events — nowhere near enough — in mainstream media as CNN buried the story behind headlines about freaking UFOs and the typical rubbish, nobody is giving the backstory as to how such an accident could happen.

Freaking Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was apparently on the three Sunday shows last week and didn’t get a single question about the accident and has FINALLY voiced concern eleven days later.

Like everything in America, trying to find the cause of the accident leads to corporate lobbying and deregulation.

Luckily, there are outlets like David Sirota’s The Lever that do real reporting.

Here’s what they said about the causes of the tragedy in East Palestine, Ohio.

This excellent piece by The Lever team goes into great detail as to the specific laws, regulations, and corporate lobbying that led the American rail system to such a catastrophic state.

The first important piece is how the consolidated rail industry laid off thousands of workers while simultaneously extending train lengths in an attempt to be more profitable despite clear warnings that doing so was extremely dangerous. That alone put American lives at risk.

Another piece of the puzzle was lobbying that “effectively exempted many trains hauling dangerous materials — including the one in Ohio — from the “high-hazard” classification and its more stringent safety requirements.” In response to several derailments back in 2014, the Obama administration proposed improving safety regulations and eventually — as always — passed a watered-down initiative that “ended up narrowly focused on the transport of crude oil and exempting trains carrying many other combustible materials, including the chemical involved in this weekend’s disaster.”

So Americans had extra-long trains carrying carcinogenic toxins operating with very few engineers who were worked to their physical limits.

Again, that alone put the American people at very high risk.

Then came the Trump Administration, which further weakened the already lobbied-down safety requirements when it came to braking systems. As The Lever reported, “After rail industry donors delivered more than $6 million to GOP campaigns, the Trump administration — backed by rail lobbyists and Senate Republicans — rescinded part of that rule aimed at making better braking systems widespread on the nation’s rails.”

Trains carrying hazardous materials were supposed to be equipped with more modern Electronically Controlled Pneumatic (ECP) brake systems that can bring the mega-ton freights to a halt in a much shorter distance.

Naturally, train companies complained it would ‘cost too much’ to implement the braking systems and, of course, the industry lobbyists won out, and the Trump administration scrapped the rule.

Then — naturally — the Biden Administration and Secretary of Transportation Pete never reinstated the safety regulation. So, in 2023 America, “The vast majority of the nation’s trains continue to rely on a braking system first developed in 1868.”

Put all of that together, and disaster was bound to happen. It was inevitable. It was predicted, and the Biden Administration did nothing.

Again, The Lever team reported, “Prior to the stock buyback era, railroads agreed that ECP brakes were a good thing,” said Ron Kaminkow, a longtime railroad worker and organizer with Railroad Workers United. “The railroads hadn’t yet come to the realization that they could do whatever they wanted. ECP brakes were on the drawing board, then off.”

The railroads know they can get away with anything, so there’s no incentive to change.

Will a disaster that is being compared to freaking Chernobyl get the Biden White House and Secretary Pete to kinda-sorta-maybe stand up to corporations and protect American citizens?

Because the mainstream media isn’t giving any of the deregulatory backstory that could build public pressure, I doubt they’ll do anything significant.

So, in 2023 America, “The vast majority of the nation’s trains continue to rely on a braking system first developed in 1868”…Put all of that together, and disaster was bound to happen. It was inevitable. It was predicted, and the Biden Administration did nothing.

Since the Ohio catastrophe two weeks ago, two more trains have derailed in the US of A. One near Houston was also carrying hazardous materials and sadly killed the driver of an 18-wheeler. In another, a CSX train came off the tracks just yesterday near Enoree, South Carolina, and details are still emerging.

In 2023, with freaking drones, Chat GPT, autonomous delivery vehicles, and driverless cars being tested, one would think that America would have the 19th-century technology of railway locomotives firmly under control.

But we’ve gone so fallen so far down the laissez-faire-free-market-hell-hole that we’ve recreated Robber Baron-levels of wealth inequality and can no hardly operate railroads safely.

Because it would cost the Warren Buffets of the world a tenth of a percentage of their annual income, updating braking systems, having adequate staff in place, or listening to train engineers’ concerns on any number of issues is out of the question.

That’s why trains crisscrossing the nation with toxic chemicals have breaking system technology that almost dates back to the Civil War operated by train engineers who get zero time off.

Because any updates or safety measures impact the bottom line.

And that’s all this is about.

These aren’t train companies operating on critical American infrastructure and delivering important goods, raw materials, and extremely hazardous chemicals across the nation to elevate the economy and lift up American communities.

That is not their purpose.

They’ve become money-printing machines for shareholders.

Just like in our hospitals, airlines, energy sector, and more, shareholder value maximization is the first and only concern.

What is good for America or Americans doesn’t even register.

To show their indifference to the citizens of East Palestine who were forced to evacuate their homes and whose water and air quality could be compromised for generations, Norfolk Southern, which is owned by hedge fund and private equity giants, gave a whopping $5 per person.

That says it all.

And the corporate-purchased government is complicit in all of this. The Bidens, Secretary Petes, and deregulatory GOP who wine and dine with lobbyists night after night are just as responsible for this as anybody.

They get the donor checks, the free seafood and steak buffets, drink the single-malt aged scotch, and then implement whatever backward agenda the private equity goons or Warren Buffett would like.

And we the people suffer.

We must demand accountability from the rail companies, their corporate overlords, the lobbyists, and the politicians that do their bidding.

And we must demand justice for the people of East Palestine and the surrounding area.