Front Burner - Fear lingers after Ohio's toxic train disaster

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

Weeks after a train derailed and crews released and burned toxic chemicals, officials are reassuring residents of East Palestine, Ohio that the air and water are safe. Many residents, however, remain wary of the long-term effects of materials like vinyl chloride, with some reporting symptoms like skin and eye irritation and hoarseness. Simultaneously, a political conversation is unfolding about who or what to blame for the crash, with critics pointing to a lack of regulation and cost-cutting from rail giants as they post record profits. Today, a look at what's happening on the ground as residents return to East Palestine, and a look at why rail disasters like this continue to happen more than a decade after the fatal catastrophe in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Two years ago, some residents of East Palestine, Ohio, acted as extras in a movie called White Noise, filming nearby. It follows a family after a train crash that spreads toxic chemicals and forces people to flee their homes.

They're not calling it the Black Billowing Cloud anymore. What are they calling it? The Airborne Toxic Event. Names are not important. The important thing is location. It's there. We're here. The movie just came out on streaming in December, but watching it now is kind of eerie because earlier this month in East Palestine, those same residents had to flee after a real life catastrophic train derailment. Officials warning of a potential major explosion.

The National Guard has been activated to help people get to safety. The Columbiana County Sheriff's Office say if you live in a mile radius with children and have not yet evacuated, you are subject to arrest. Officials say no one was hurt in the wreck. No rail workers and none of East Palestine's nearly 5,000 residents. But some of the train's 150 cars were loaded with hazardous materials. About three dozen cars derailed and National Transportation Safety Board investigators say 11 of those had hazardous materials, including vinyl chloride. That's a key ingredient in PVC plastic.

And in cases of chronic exposure to high levels, it's tied to liver damage and cancer. There were other chemicals spilled too, and the train caught fire. The smoke so thick, it could be seen from this weather radar. And conditions so concerning, firefighters had to leave the area as they let the fire burn.

Over the next couple of days, firefighters worked to keep the flames under control. But there were concerns over the temperature in one of the cars, and officials began to worry about a massive explosion. So they carried out what they called a controlled release. They dumped the freight of toxic chemicals into a trench alongside the track and ignited it. Tonight, the scene is still active and dangerous as flames continue to burn this tangled train wreck for a fourth straight day.

The company that owns the train blasted small holes in five of the cars to drain them of vinyl chloride, a highly toxic. The fireball sent this huge black plume of smoke into the sky, leading to questions and suspicions about the impact on the environment and health in the area. Especially as evacuated residents return to a village many can't afford to leave. BBC world journalist Bernd De Boesemann Jr. paid a visit to East Palestine late last week. And he joins me now. Hi, Bern. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you so much for having me.

So I know you were just recently in East Palestine late last week. Could you start today by taking us there? What did you see at the wreck site? What did you smell? What did it look like? Well, on Thursday, we actually went to a business that's just overlooking the actual derailment site. At the time, at least, there were still kind of charred rail cars that had been visibly kind of burned almost to a crisp. They were being removed by trucks. There was kind of visible discoloration in the gravel and the dirt, but there's a little stream there on one side of the rail track. And, you know, there was visible kind of a sheen of oil on the top. But the thing I'll remember most,

I think I'll always remember it is the smell. And it's hard to describe. It was kind of a chemical smell, kind of like sulfur, but it was something I'd never personally smelled before. And even then, which was about 13 or 14 days after the derailment, it was really overpowering. And, you know, we were only there for maybe an hour. And even with my mask on, I felt it in the back of my throat. My eyes were extremely, extremely irritated. it in the back of my throat. My eyes were extremely, extremely irritated. And it just generally felt and smelled and just kind of off, I would describe it. And the people that you were talking to there, what were they saying to you? What were you

hearing from them? There's a lot of frustration and dissatisfaction at the response so far, but more than anything, they're frightened. Chris Ammon says he bought this property so that his grandchildren could play in the creek. I ain't putting them in it this year. I don't know if I'll ever put them back in it. Being this close to the train derailment, I don't trust it. I honestly feel that the Palestine, the police department, the fire department, all the first responders, they don't have the answers to give us because I don't think they know. They're not getting the straight answers either. I am frustrated. Here I am. I just moved

seven months ago. I busted my ass to make this place look like it does. And I got to move because I'm not safe being here. There is no way we are safe being here. You know, this is a really small town of about 4,700 people. You know, they're really worried about their health and they worry that, you know, things might seem fine now in the short term, but who knows a decade down the line or 20 years down the line, whatever health concerns they have, how they might manifest themselves over time or in their children or, you know, perhaps in their children's children some of them even said they were worried about so I think it's more than anything there's just kind of a sense of fear

the night itself this happened and then they you know people saw the fire trucks come and then eventually they were told to at least the ones in the one mile radius were told to leave and everyone else was told to stay in place you know it's something people will remember for a long time a lot of people described it to us and I do mean quite a lot of people said that for them, it's a local version of something like a Pearl Harbor, a 9-11 or a Chernobyl sort of thing, that this is something that was so scary the night of, but I mean, their lives are forever going to be kind of a before February 3rd and after February 3rd sort of situation because it's such a traumatic event to happen. For the town,

it's going to be like a 9-11 moment. It's going to be like a Pearl Harbor moment where people remember where they were when it happened. The memories are going to be ingrained early on and how they felt early on, that sense of unease and chaos. I feel like there's going to be a before and after from when that happened to living post that situation. Do you get the sense that a lot of them have returned home now? I think a lot of them have returned home. Quite a few people I met had returned home, but then left again. They were given the all clear on February 8. But they went home. And like I said, it still smells or you know, they're still not feeling particularly well when they are in that area. So some people told me, frankly, that,

you know, they don't trust the testing thus far. So they're going to stay away as long as they can. But some people again, have have no choice, you no choice. Their businesses and their lives are in this town. So a lot of people, quite frankly, just have to go home. There's no real other option. And some people just said they're coming home for now, but they plan to leave. There's, I think, quite a few people that will end up maybe moving a town or two over just to be away from that immediate radius of the derailment. You know, you mentioned that they don't trust the testing. And can you flesh that out a little bit more for me? Like, what's been going on there? Sure. Well, you know, in the immediate aftermath of the derailment, authorities, state and local authorities gave an all clear. They said

there was they tested the water and the air and there was not enough concentration of toxins in the water and the air that would be harmful to humans. And then people, of course, come back. And for example, they're noticing that fish in the stream have died or they're noticing that they don't feel well so authorities will said that you know the concentration of toxins that kills a fish in a stream is obviously much different than what would kill a human in the air but one guy asked me you know why would i take a chance if i don't have to you know with the water as well you know there's least last week, there was mixed messaging in that authorities were saying, the water is safe to drink, but drink bottled water. So people wonder

how both those things can be true, which causes a lot of uncertainty. Now the mayor, for example, he says he's drinking the water supply again. But I didn't't meet anyone at least last week who felt confident enough to to drink from the tap people we met were still washing food with with bottles or jugs of water they they say that the tap water is safe and i can appreciate that but i still feel like i need to cut down our exposure to it um so something just in the mornings like for my kids just to wash some blueberries off uh still using bottled water and kind of staying away from the tap water as much as we can. A lot of people, if they're able, are bringing in outside experts to do their own testing. But that's an expensive proposition and obviously not everyone can do that.

Yeah, yeah. I saw over the weekend that Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, he said the testing showed water was safe to drink, but also said that residents are right to be skeptical. Well, they're right to be skeptical. The EPA administrator when I was there, both the state and the federal EPA administrators said that, but when you return to your home, we think the water is safe. But when you return to your home, we think the water is safe. But when you return to your home, you should be tested again for your water and your soil and your air, not to mention those that have their own wells. So, you know, this is this. There was this town hall meeting late last week in the company Norfolk Southern that ran this train, decided to not send any representatives to the meeting.

And tell me a little bit more about that town hall. As you mentioned, a few hours before, Norfolk Southern put out a statement saying that they wouldn't be participating because they were concerned about the safety of their employees from outside groups that might have attended the town hall meeting, which from a PR perspective, that didn't go down well in the town. Because at the end of the day, more than anyone else, townspeople are kind of holding Norfolk Southern responsible for what happened. They're cowards. Cowards. Absolute cowards.

They don't want to answer our questions. They don't want to have to confront everybody that way. How can you look all these citizens in the face and tell them there's nothing wrong? How can you do that? They feel that they can take advantage of us because we are a smaller town. What rolls through on those tracks is of more value than the lives of the residents in this community. Are we really safe? Is our water safe? You destroyed our town. Why? I mean, one answer to all, just give us truthful answers. So people were extremely angry that they weren't there. You know, people said, why aren't they here? That suggests that they have

something to hide. They should be here answering questions. This was their train. Since then, the CEO of Norfolk Southern, Alan Shaw, he went to East Palestine over the weekend. This has been devastating to this community. and I want to make sure you understand, I am terribly sorry that this happened to the community. Northwark Southern is fully committed to doing what's right for this community. And they've put out a statement saying that they'll do whatever it takes to kind of rebuild trust in the community. They've put aside a million dollars so far for cleanup and reconstruction. Still, I think that's going to ring hollow for a lot of townspeople, especially after that town hall meeting. Before we go, I wonder, you know, you're there for a

couple of days. Is there anyone you met or an interaction that you had that really stood out to you? Yes, there was very much so. So at that site that was next to the derailment, we met an older couple in their, probably in their, I'd say about their mid-50s, that runs a garbage truck industry that was exactly there next to where the train derailed. And their livelihood is destroyed. The evening of the derailment, they had seen flames coming from near their business, so they ran over there. The gentleman said to me, the good news was that our trucks weren't on fire. The bad news was that a train had derailed right in front of us. They looked as if they were having quite a lot of health issues. Their eyes were very red. The gentleman was coughing a lot. But more than that,

I mean, they really kind of painted a picture of the kind of emotional trauma and the stress of what's happened. They said they hadn't really slept since the derailment. I mean, this business, which they built kind of from the ground up over a 20-year period, they're losing customers because a lot of their customers have canceled service because they plan to leave East Palestine. There's a level of stress there. You know, they described anxiety. They had to go to the doctor now for anxiety to get sleeping medication. They described it kind of as similar to being post-traumatic stress.

The guy said, quite frankly, our livelihood is wrecked. Yeah. Thank you so much for this, Bernard. It was really helpful to hear the stories of how the people there have been so horribly affected by all of this. So thank you so much for this, Bernard. It was really helpful to hear the stories of how the people there have been so horribly affected by all of this. So thank you so much. No problem. Thank you. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization.

Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people, and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%.

That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. This derailment is highlighting broader safety issues in the rail industry and igniting a political showdown about lobbying and industry cost-cutting. The National Transportation Safety Board's investigation isn't complete, but it says early signs suggest that a faulty wheel bearing on one rail car may have caused the derailment. A home surveillance system recorded what appeared to be an overheated part of the train leading up to the accident.

For more on that part of this story, I'm joined now by Aaron Gordon. He's a senior writer with Motherboard and Vice. Hi, Aaron. Thanks so much for coming on to FrontBurner. Of course. Thanks for having me. So can I ask you, what was your reaction two weeks ago when you saw what was happening in East Palestine? Well, a lot of derailments happen in the U.S. pretty much constantly. I have a Google alert set up for any time a train derails in a significant enough way that it makes a local news story.

I get one of those every couple of days, every week or so. That was pretty much what happened with the East Palestine derailment, too. It looked a lot like all the other derailments that I've been hearing about for the last couple of years. It wasn't until Norfolk Southern and local authorities became concerned about, you know, the tankers holding the vinyl chloride that really escalated the derailment into this higher tier of catastrophe that it's been since. Well, tell me more about that. The idea that there have been all these other derailments that people haven't been paying

attention to. I know that you've done a lot of work on this and that a lot of people have been sounding alarm bells. Over the past two years, I've been kind of writing about investigating the freight rail industry. But I started just by looking at the extreme labor shortages they were having due to COVID. Very quickly, I learned that the labor shortages were nothing particular to COVID, that they had been endemic to the industry over the last several years, not due to any kind of pandemic, but due to an increasingly popular management philosophy that was spreading across the industry called precision scheduled railading, or PSR. And what this management philosophy basically does, these freight companies are run to try and do more with less. The more freight that can be moved with fewer people and fewer resources, the more profit these companies make. It's very upfront about this.

But workers have been sounding the alarm for years, saying that it is having a negative impact on safety, that it is making the system more fragile years saying that it is having a negative impact on safety, that it is making the system more fragile, and that it's making huge disasters like the kind we're seeing in Ohio now more likely to happen. Is PSR something that the company who owned the train in Ohio, Norfolk Southern, is this something that they had bought into that they were practicing? Absolutely. They were one of the, I would say they were one of the railroads most aggressively pursuing PSR. So in 2019, they announced basically like we're all in on PSR more or less. They wanted

to increase their profit margins essentially by 5%. And they wanted to do this in part by reducing their workforce by more than 3,000 people in less than two years. Industry-wide, the freight rail industry, according to U.S. government data, has lost about a third of its workforce, mostly through PSR initiatives. And the very practical effects here are workers don't have as much time or resources to do the jobs that they used to do. It's just all of these risk factors kind of snowball to make disasters more likely. The derailment in Ohio, have people you talked to made connections between this specific derailment and PSR as a possible contributing factor? Obviously, the NTSB is still doing their investigation.

I think everyone's very hesitant to say anything on the record that directly ties the two before we have a definitive conclusion on what caused the wreck. But the NTSB has already kind of identified this wheel bearing as a pretty significant, you know, factor in all likelihood, given that it was on fire before the train derailed. And then the question naturally becomes, you know, assuming we take it for granted that that is a major factor in the derailment. The natural next question is to ask, why wasn't this caught sooner? Why was this car that had something wrong with it allowed to go into service? And while we don't have any answers for those questions yet, we do have some good questions to ask, which is there are trackside monitors that are supposed to detect overheated wheels long before they catch on fire.

Obviously, car inspections are supposed to pick up on problems before the trains even get on the tracks. And so as we ask those questions, it's fair, I think, to point to some initiatives in PSR. For example, carmen used to have two to three minutes per car to inspect them. In these inspections, you're looking at dozens, if not hundreds of points of interest on the car to make sure that it is functioning properly. And the cars can be up to 100 feet long, and you're doing the inspection around the entire perimeter. Now they have 45 seconds, maybe even less at times. That's not even enough time to walk around a 100-foot car, much less inspect it. In terms of the Hot Wheel, why the trackside monitors didn't pick that up, there's been

some reporting the people responsible with maintaining those trackside monitors have been part of the massive layoffs. If they were functioning, they would have alerted a dispatcher to the fact that this train had a problem, and then the dispatcher to the fact that this train had a problem and the dispatcher would be informing the crew. Dispatchers have been tremendously impacted by PSR initiatives. They used to have a territory of a couple hundred miles. Now dispatchers will cover entire regions of the country. And then you have the crews on the train themselves. If there was an alert that went off for their train they used to be told essentially

to stop the train as soon as they possibly can and go inspect it now under psr they don't like stopping the trains along main tracks because obviously that means all the trains have to stop so what they will often do is if the problem doesn't seem like extremely urgent then they'll try and get the train to a siding or a yard or somewhere where it's not blocking the main line. It's an open question of, you know, what happened in this particular case. But one hypothesis I've heard is that maybe they knew there was a problem, but they were trying to keep the train moving because they were close to the rail yard and they didn't make it. Has the company Norfolk Southern, have they responded to these broader issues? I would say the short answer is no.

So I'm going to read you the statements I've gotten from the story I wrote two years ago about workers' concerns that something like this could happen. Norfolk Southern spokesperson Jeff DeGraff told me, our comprehensive approach mirrors that of the freight rail industry, including significant private investment, employee training efforts, technology implementation, regular inspections, and community outreach, which has led to dramatic safety improvements over the past two decades with respect to train accidents and employee injuries. I just want to be clear about one thing, Aaron. You know, earlier when you were talking about how Norfolk Southern was one of the companies is like, we're all in on PSR. You were talking about their goals to up their profits.

Were they successful in that? They were extremely successful in that. They reported record profits in 2022 of $4.8 billion from operations. And in March 2022, they announced a $10 billion stock buyback program. Okay. Another thing I wanted to ask you about here in Canada, most people listening are probably thinking about the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster almost 10 years ago. And so in that case... A train carrying 7.7 million liters of crude oil derailed, setting fire to the town. Hours earlier, the 72-car train had parked in Nantes, Quebec, picking up speed as it traveled 11 kilometers toward Lac-Mégantic. The aftermath, 47 people killed, about 2,000 residents forced from their homes, and the downtown core destroyed.

And I'm wondering, when you're talking to people who work in the railway industry, are they bringing up this case? Absolutely. They all know about Lach-Misch-Azik, which you'll have to excuse my pronunciation. They all know about it. They all refer to it all the time. I would say 50 to 80% of the interviews I've done on the potential impact PSR could have, workers warn that that is the worst case scenario. That is what we're trying to avoid. We don't want something like that to happen here. Interestingly, as I've talked to workers over the last couple of weeks, I would say the prevailing opinion is that the East Palestine derailment was probably not bad enough to result in the kind of change that they think is necessary to avoid the kind of disaster that you guys experienced up in Canada.

You know, it's interesting watching the political conversation that has ignited around this disaster, though, in the last week or so, because it does feel like it very clearly mirrors the conversation that we had after Lakhmaganti Kier. government for deregulating the industry, essentially. Criticism of corporate negligence, but paired with regulatory failure that the railway lobby had captured the government. Some changes were made, requirements for handbrakes and two-person crews, but I just want to mention for our listeners that a lot of people have still expressed serious concerns, including our Auditor General, who in 2021 released a scathing report saying that the government here had failed in implementing recommendations. And so tell me more about the conversation around regulation in the U.S. right now? You know, one thing we've seen is from politicians, right? Naturally, politicians trying to find someone to blame, whether that's the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, who took office early in Biden's presidency. But yes, I think the echoes are definitely similar. First and foremost, people are blaming Norfolk Southern. It was their train. It was their tracks.

It derailed. It doesn't seem very complicated in that sense. But then they're also looking to, you know, we have this regulatory state that's supposed to make sure something like this doesn't happen. There are three federal regulatory agencies that, to varying degrees, could have paid attention to this issue sooner, but didn't really seem that invested in it. And now we're seeing the consequences of that. And I think the biggest open question at this point is, what's the attention span of politicians and regulators

going to be on this issue? That's my biggest question, at least, because going back to in my first article on the subject, I quoted a union official who compared this to the Boeing Max scandal, you know, saying that what we're seeing at the freight railroads is very similar to the behavior that we've seen from Boeing over the last couple of decades that resulted in them building a plane that was not fit to fly and hundreds of people died as a result. of people died as a result. I look back at that and if you talk to anyone who covered that scandal, any reporters who are kind of aware of the regulatory fallout there, the US government lost its focus and did not implement any substantive changes as a result of those catastrophes. And Boeing mostly operates now in the same way that it did before. The Federal Aviation Administration mostly operates in the same way now than it did before. And so the question is, will we have the attention span on this issue this time to make sure that the railroads don't operate in the way that resulted in this derailment in the future? Or are we going to talk a big game now and the are the railroad companies just going to kind of wait it out and be able to go back to the status quo once people and politicians get distracted?

I think that's the biggest question in my mind at the moment. Yeah. And, you know, coming back to Lac-Megantic, you know, of course, 47 people died in that catastrophe. And maybe I'll just end this conversation by reading a quote from that 2021 report from our auditor general. We found that the transport department could not demonstrate the extent to which its oversight activities have improved the railway company's compliance with regulations that mitigate key safety risks. So that is 10 years on from that tragedy. Aaron, thank you so much for this. It was really sobering, but also very interesting. Thank you. You can say depressing. It's okay. Yeah, it was depressing.

Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you tomorrow. Thank you.