Only one mile away from the Ohio train derailment site, one East Palestine mother recounted her family’s “scary” evacuation experience and called out policymakers who’ve been slow to reply to the disaster.
“Until you see it along with your own eyes, you don’t consider it,” Tracy Hager said on “The Bottom Line” Tuesday evening. “And it’s been a very scary thing for all of us. It was definitely something that we never considered before.”
On Feb. 3, roughly 20 Norfolk Southern rail cars traveling near the Pennsylvania border derailed from the tracks and were set ablaze, releasing burning plumes and smoke because the train was reportedly carrying hazardous materials including vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate and ethylene glycol monobutyl ether.
Hager claimed that her family spent two days of their home surrounded by the possibly contaminated air before being evacuated by emergency responders.
“They’d trains running through town inside hours after the evacuation was lifted. We actually just didn’t know what to think,” Hager recalled. “We still had concerns because we had our friends, everybody here knows everybody, and we had people telling us that it still smelled, there was still fire burning, after which we had people telling us there was fish.”
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s office had previously confirmed with Fox News Digital that detectable traces of contamination within the water had an “immediate fish kill” response within the Ohio River.
“While you’re thrown right into a tragedy like that, you bring everybody else in around you they usually’re concerned for you, too,” Hager said. “And when you’ve gotten all these people telling you about these chemicals where there’s documentation of the way to handle it and what happens if you don’t, and also you see them covering it up with gravel, that’s scary stuff, because that is the water that we drink, the water and our animals drink.”
While the governor’s office and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have each verified that air monitoring systems have “not detected any levels of health concern” as of Tuesday afternoon, Hager still expressed concern over nearby residents’ exposure.
“We didn’t even know what was on the train until three days after once they finally released it to the general public, what was partially on the train. Three days ago, we came upon about three more materials that were equally hazardous, if no more, on the train,” the Ohio mom said. “That’s the reason we got evacuated, because they didn’t know whether or not it was going to explode, when it was going to explode, so one of the best thing to do is send everybody out of the world. That was immediate danger.”
Communication and transparency from “higher-up” politicians and the government have been lackluster, in accordance with Hager.
“Our own city municipality website doesn’t have any links to this disaster on it. I had to seek out links for community service for food through my school website because that they had a small link for it,” she criticized. “None of them include the Red Cross or any of those forms of organizations. Anybody who’s coming on the town, and God bless all of them, they’ve been church organizations and those who are volunteers through other churches which are bringing in cleansing supplies.”
“They’re only giving that assistance to the individuals who live within the one-mile area, their services,” Hager continued. “Their cleansing services, their air checking services. Anybody outside that area has got to do it on their very own.”
Trent Conaway, East Palestine’s mayor, acknowledged that his community stays frustrated attributable to lingering odors and promised the village is “not only taking the word” of Norfolk Southern Railway and has Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) representatives involved in air testing.
“This isn’t going to get swept under the rug. I’m not going to be the country bumpkin that gets talked over by a giant corporation,” Conaway told The Associated Press. “We’re going to carry their feet to the fireplace. They’re going to do what they said they were going to do, they usually’re going to guard the people of this town.”
Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, sounded the alarm Tuesday as well, as residents proceed to report sickness and even dead animals.
“It is a relatively frequent occurrence. To not this scale, but throughout the Midwest, as we have now numerous trains which are traversing with hazardous materials that undergo towns, sometimes cities, and will impact the health of the those who are there,” Turner said on “Mornings with Maria.” “The Secretary of Transportation, Buttigieg must be on this. He’s been ignoring this.”
