The video highlights the aftermath of a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which involved the spillage of hazardous chemicals. Residents, describing their community as tight-knit and trusting, were quickly affected by fears and health issues as the chemical release occurred. Despite official assurances that environmental testing showed no danger, residents experienced various symptoms and mistrusted the information being provided, leading to criticism of the response and the railway company, Norfolk Southern.

A significant part of the discussion revolves around the response to the accident, which included a controlled burn of vinyl chloride to prevent a larger explosion. This decision, which invoked anxiety among residents, was made by railroad contractors and not in consultation with some emergency agencies. The train resumed its operation quickly after the evacuation was lifted, prompting more frustration as residents continued to suffer.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. derailment [dɪˈreɪlmənt] - (noun) - An occurrence in which a train comes off its tracks. - Synonyms: (accident, off-track event, wreck)

Train derailment forces hundreds from their home in Ohio.

2. vinyl chloride [ˈvaɪnəl ˈklɔːraɪd] - (noun) - A toxic chemical compound used to make PVC plastic products. - Synonyms: (chemical compound, hazardous substance, PVC component)

The company that owns the train blasted small holes in five of the cars to drain them of vinyl chloride.

3. tornado [tɔːrˈneɪdoʊ] - (noun) - A violently rotating column of air extending from a thunderstorm to the ground. - Synonyms: (twister, cyclone, whirlwind)

I stood out on my front lawn, and it looked like a big alien tornado.

4. vulnerable [ˈvʌlnərəbl] - (adjective) - Susceptible to physical or emotional harm. - Synonyms: (susceptible, exposed, defenseless)

The people of East Palestine and the surrounding community had a trauma visited upon them that they're not responsible for.

5. evacuation [ɪˌvækjuˈeɪʃən] - (noun) - The action of moving people from a place for safety reasons. - Synonyms: (removal, withdrawal, exodus)

By late Monday afternoon, they had done this controlled release, and then by Wednesday evening, they had lifted the evacuation order.

6. mitigation [ˌmɪtɪˈɡeɪʃən] - (noun) - The action of reducing the severity or seriousness of something. - Synonyms: (alleviation, reduction, lessening)

Ohio EPA and the National Guard were concerned about the uncontrolled explosion and pursued mitigation strategies.

7. contamination [kənˌtæmɪˈneɪʃən] - (noun) - The presence of an unwanted substance or impurity in a natural environment. - Synonyms: (pollution, impurity, foulness)

In order for that to happen, they had to lay down new rails on top of the contamination

8. catastrophic [ˌkætəˈstrɑːfɪk] - (adjective) - Involving or causing sudden great damage or suffering. - Synonyms: (disastrous, calamitous, devastating)

It came back that the concern was that this would be a catastrophic, what was described as a catastrophic explosion of the car

9. regimen [ˈrɛdʒɪmen] - (noun) - A planned course of action, especially ones related to health or medical treatment. - Synonyms: (regime, routine, schedule)

EPA will be developing long term monitoring plans for air, for water, for soil, and establishing a testing regimen.

10. frustration [frʌˈstreɪʃən] - (noun) - The feeling of being upset or annoyed as a result of being unable to change or achieve something. - Synonyms: (exasperation, irritation, dissatisfaction)

This was a key source of contention, criticism and frustration among residents, politicians and even officials involved in the response.

The Unknown Catastrophe Left Behind in East Palestine | Bloomberg Investigates

East Palestine is a small town. That's a great place to raise a family. We're a look you in the eye handshake type of community. We are very tight-knit. We're all connected and intertwined in some way. Hopefully, in a couple of months, everything will be, you know, back to normal, but it is going to be that new normal we are following breaking news. Train derailment forces hundreds from their home in Ohio. A train carrying hazardous material derailed near the state border. Oh, my God. We quickly realized that this was not your typical train hitting a cardinal. It was something with a greater magnitude.

Growing concern as it's discovered even more chemicals than were originally reported were on that train. A controlled burn of the toxic chemicals has gone as planned. I stood out on my front lawn, and it looked like a big alien tornado. It was like this bomb went off. It was heartbreaking. The company that owns the train blasted small holes in five of the cars to drain them of vinyl chloride. It was scary. And then the kids got sick, and I got sick, and it's just not something that anybody should have to go through. What are we still doing about the main cause of people getting sick? Well, the cleanup continued.

The people of East Palestine and the surrounding community had a trauma visited upon them that they're not responsible for. There were no casualties, and there were no loss of buildings. But you can't say that no one was injured, because we've all been hurt by this, and we're continually being poisoned by this. So this is Taggart street. This is as far as you can go. On the other side, you'll see this building up here. Right behind it is where the train derailment actually happened. The road's been closed since the derailment. My name is Jessica Connor. I grew up here, and the train was background noise. It was just the hum of the day.

My first realization that something was up is when I heard all of the sirens going up and down the road. The train was on fire when it passed by in our backyard. The initial focus was to really contain this growing, and the concern wasn't necessarily toxic chemicals. It was just that there was a fire, and people didn't know how far that could get. We had our emergency responders, our on-scene coordinators there between two and 03:00 a.m. only hours after the derailment. They were supported by what we call start contractors, and they began setting up air monitoring.

But as the hours wore on, more people came on the ground, and it became clear that at least one of the cards was leaking chemicals into the soil and surrounding water. In addition to the fire, there was also serious environmental concerns. US EPA and the Ohio EPA worked to slow the flow of contaminated water, while firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze. The role of the Ohio EPA emergency Response team is to respond to any sort of chemical release. We immediately are looking for any release to the waters of the state. We're looking for air releases of chemicals. We immediately identified that there was a chemical release into sulfur run, which is right near the derailment.

A number of the cars that had derailed were leaking toxic chemicals, but the full amount wasn't known for a couple of days, known that the two streams there, Leslie Run and sulfur run, ultimately going downstream, connect with the Ohio River. And that is a major drinking source for not just Ohio or Pennsylvania, but the whole region. And so the concern was, could these chemicals get to a point where they're impacting not just these thousands of people, but really hundreds of thousands of people all along the river basin?

Things took a real change or pivot. On Sunday night, they realized that one of the trains holding vinyl chloride was at risk. It came back that the concern was that this would be a catastrophic, what was described as a catastrophic explosion of the car. Seeing the temperature rising in one of the cars led the incident commander and Norfolk Southern representatives to be very concerned about a potential explosion and led them to this decision to vent and burn the contents of those rail cars and containing vinyl chloride.

When they said, there's going to be an explosion was when the real anxiety started to come in. It was ultimately determined that all five cars carrying vinyl chloride, not just the one with the rising temperature, could also be at risk of potentially exploding or there being damage. This giant plume of smoke and fire erupting into the sky Monday afternoon in a controlled release, burning for hours with hazardous material. Officials had to make this choice, do we do nothing or do they try and do something with those chemicals? And ultimately, that's what they decided to do.

Our on-scene coordinators were in the room. I'm told there were about 50 representatives of different agencies. They were not consulted in the decision, nor were they asked to approve of it. It was the railroad and their contractors. They were really the only ones that had the information about the contents and the car heating up and potential outcome of that. I'm sure they've got their own perspective. What I can tell you was a dynamic situation. We were part of unified command.

Unified command included the governor of Ohio. Governor DeWine was right there. We had EPA, Ohio EPA and National Guard and other state and local authorities. What we were all concerned about was the risk of an uncontrolled, catastrophic explosion that could shoot shrapnel and vinyl chloride gas throughout the community. Our goal, and I know that all of the unified command's goal was the health and safety of the entire community. And so unified command came up with a decision to do a controlled vent and burn.

I was there, and I understand how it looked. I mean, it was terrifying and I hope I never see it again. The US EPA's air monitoring showed that the vinyl chloride did exactly what they expected to do. It dissipated versus having any deposit into surface water. By late Monday afternoon, they had done this controlled release, and then by Wednesday evening, they had lifted the evacuation order. People were told that they can come and return to their homes, that it was safe for them to do so. With the full support and backing of Governor DeWine, I'm happy to announce that the evacuation order is now lifted.

Pretty much within hours of that evacuation notice being lifted, trains had started running again. In order for that to happen, they had to lay down new rails on top of the contamination. This was a key source of contention, criticism and frustration among residents, politicians and even officials involved in the response after they lifted the evacuation order. A train comes rolling through, and it's astounding that they thought that that was okay in any shape. The railroad decided to resume train traffic, I'm told within minutes after that evacuation order was lifted.

And so they were running trains on track, laid over soil laden with toxic chemicals. And for a month, every time that train horn blew, with trains moving through East Palestine, it was a reminder to the local residents that the railroad was continuing its operations and not cleaning up the toxic mess. I understand how that impacted the community, and I got some good feedback. You know, one of the immediate pieces of feedback I got was frustration about Norfolk Southern leaving the soil underneath the tracks.

Now, we had an environmentally approved remediation plan in place, but it was important to me to do what's right. We've already removed 38,000 tons of contaminated soil and we hope to be done by the end of May, early June. Initially, it was state officials that were in charge of the response. By late February, the federal officials had taken over. Federal EPA issued what's called a unilateral administrative order that compels Norfolk Southern to pay for all the cleanup costs and establishes federal EPA as being in charge of a host of agencies working together.

It was pretty clear that there had been extensive contamination into Leslie Run and sulfur run, and that had spread about seven to 8 miles. We know this because aquatic life was dying at the point where these water streams meet up with the Ohio River. It was clear that the levels were not of any level of concern. Contractors continue to sample. We continue to post those results. We have a real-time surface water map, and we haven't found anything that is, you know, dangerous to human health.

EPA will be developing long-term monitoring plans for air, for water, for soil, and establishing a testing regimen. One of the tank cars contained a chemical called butyl acrylate. It's in things in our home. It's not, as I understand, a carcinogen, but it is a chemical that we began monitoring for. Residents who are directly impacted by the fire in the spill were evacuated and came back. And so for about three and a half weeks, the US, EPA, the state agencies, didn't release much chemical testing data, but told everybody, the air is safe, the water is safe. I want to be clear that our testing, air quality testing in the state's water quality testing has not yielded any adverse health impacts that we have seen at this moment.

At that point, we realized that maybe we should go and help. Like any disaster, when you have contamination, you need to know what chemicals are present and where to look for them. When you get the manifest from Norfolk Southern, you identify those chemicals, and then you put them on a list to go test for them. And it's clear, based on all the testing evidence that agencies put forward, that they didn't do that. When we showed up to the first home along Leslie run, there was like a rainbow sheen on the surface of that water.

We were told by federal officials that the rainbow Sheen is butyl acrylate, one of the chemicals that's spilled from the train. That's not true. And we know that because we did testing. And when we tested it, sometimes we saw the sheen, and we didn't find any butyl acrylate. And other times we found butyl acrylate. We didn't see Sheen. So we are still trying to figure out what that sheen is.

There's a reason why this disaster is so complicated. There were chemicals initially going into the air and to the water and soil, but then there was also this controlled release that really seemed to magnify the environmental and human health concerns. So after this controlled burn, all the residents were told that we could come back into town and that everything was safe.

Nobody really knew those dangers on the train. EPA monitors have not detected any volatile organic compounds above levels of health concern. And immediately there is just so much confusion in a lot of mixed messaging, because you have the EPA telling you one thing, and that's something that we do want to believe. But then you have independent researchers that are coming out and saying, like, hey, we're here, we're testing, and we're having conflicting results. It pains me to see the Norfolk southern logo go through my backyard every day.

It's like having your abuser in your backyard just staring at you all the time. The information that we continue to hear is that it is safe. It's safe. It's safe. Everything is safe. Everything is fine. What is your proof that it is safe? Why are we getting sick if everything is safe? If I breathe in air and it causes me to be ill, that air is not safe. So stop telling me that it's safe, because it's not.

When we were there the first time, I experienced health impacts just by being in the area. And so we know that something was wrong, that people weren't being told about the health risks and that people needed to understand what the health risks were. So this is just our kitchen. It's a mess. This is our fridge. It's kind of where all our oh, Lordy family pictures go. We're very close-knit family. Our pictures are kind of where our memories are and having cancer. I like having memories. So we take a lot of pictures in our family here.

We had symptoms immediately when the chemical release started. And they lasted all the way up until the very end of March. This here is symptom tracker for the family. Basically started on the third with a derailment. Just goes each day talking about what we experienced. We'll pick on the 15th. I had to use my inhaler because it was irritating my lungs on that day. We just want to have a paper trail of our symptoms to show that our family has been affected by this for months now.

Everybody in our family definitely did have some symptoms. Both of my children were a little sick when we came home. You want to trust these agencies and these experts. I love living here. I don't want to uproot my family. And so you want to be able to be in an environment that is safe. But then when you start getting symptoms like that, it is. It is really scary and it just makes you question everything.

Governor DeWine and I are very careful never to say, everything's fine here. That is not the message, because this was a traumatic event. This is the biggest spill, of course, that Ohio EPA has dealt with in years. And so I would never undermine how they're feeling. In the village or how folks feel about their town. What we're committed to is making sure that it is safe for the long run.

So the key thing that officials are doing to ensure that people are safe is to clean up the mess that they know about. So it's cleaning up the water? It's cleaning up the soil. I want people to know that the goal is to get all the contamination out, and we'll keep testing to make sure that we've accomplished that goal. They are collecting just huge barrels. I mean, we're talking house size, office size containers of contaminated soil and contaminated water. The solids and liquids are being shipped to a number of sites around the country.

Norfolk Southern has been responsive. They are following the work plan. They're doing pretty much everything they've been asked to do. We had the family assistance center open since day one, and we've already committed over $34 million to the community. But it's not just about writing a check, right? Certainly the financial assistance is a key component of this, but it's also being there.

Despite the growing efforts to deal with the contaminated soil and water, people have lost a lot of trust with the official response and with Norfolk Southern. Hi, baby. You want to come out, mommy? I'm going to catch it for one day. The chickens, we've had them since we moved in here. It keeps us from having to buy eggs, and, you know, eggs are expensive right now. Hey, get out of there.

Community meeting. We were safe to eat the chicken eggs, but by the second community meeting in East Palestine, about a month later, we were told that the eggs were not safe anymore. It's kind of like the whole derailment itself, you know, that calculated risk. Do we stay? Do we go? You know, and now it's with our eggs, too, you know, do we eat the eggs? Do we not? Do we risk it? Do we not risk it?

People feel like there is a disconnect. You have officials saying that the water is safe to drink, that the air is safe to breathe, and yet at the same time, people were getting sick. As a mom, it has been extremely challenging to know how to talk to the kids about it. Norfolk Southern has donated to the school on multiple occasions. And my concern was I didn't want my child writing a thank you note to Norfolk Southern. While I'm appreciative that Norfolk Southern is trying to make amends, I don't think they should be glorified, because when it comes down to it, they still poisoned us.

My son has asked me, you know, am I going to die from being in my own home to get a question like that from your child, it's just like a dagger to your heart. And that's just heartbreaking as a mother, because I want to be as transparent as possible with my son. I'm just praying that the decisions that we're making as parents are not going to impact his long-term health.

For the residents I spoke to, it's an open question whether that trust can ever be regained now or in the future. And that's in part what led to them deciding to open this permanent clinic, because they realized there needed to be this long-lasting medical resource for communities. Many of the people who I have talked to, you know, have a concern, where am I going to be in a year? Where am I going to be in five years, in ten years? Having a clinic here back by the hospital, I think, goes a long way to answer that concern.

It's important that there's a positive, that there's still hope, that things can change, that people can be protected, that their experiences can be understood. We have to remember that we are all people, that we are all experiencing a trauma, and that we all want the same thing, which is to get back to our lives.

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