The Highwire with Del Bigtree - EXPERTS WEIGH IN ON EAST PALESTINE TRAIN CRASH

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

OSHA experts, Tammy Clark and Kristen Meghan Kelly, join Del in the wake of the chemical fallout from Ohio’s trainwreck, exposing the many layers of government and environmental regulation failures, and to provide their professional opinions on the serious magnitude of this disaster.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

One of the biggest stories this week and is breaking news every single day, even today, is this story. It was like something out of a disaster movie. A massive train derailment led to an explosion, causing ominous plumes of smoke to billow over the quiet village of East Palestine. Five of the train cars were carrying vinyl chloride, a highly combustible chemical linked to a higher risk of some kinds of cancers. Cruz conducted a controlled release of the carcinogen to reduce the risk of an explosion. The vinyl chloride in particular is highly flammable, and Cruz ignited it to burn it off in what they called a controlled environment. That in turn produced a huge plume of smoke, and with it serious health and environmental concerns. Now residents are reluctantly returning, with deep anxiety about the lasting impact of the chemical leak on their health.

Ashley McCullum, who shot this video of the February 3rd accident, says she's afraid to move back home. You can smell it in the air, and even this morning when I took my kids to school, people are complaining about health issues, and there are urgent questions about how their concerns were handled. I would be drinking the bottle of water, and I would be continuing to find out what the tests were showing as far as the air. That ain't no storm cloud.

That's the f***. from East Palestine. They're controlled bird. You could waited. You could have called the tanks. You could have transferred the contents. You didn't have to do this. You did it because of time and money.

The State's Department of Natural Resources reports nearly eight miles of waterways in the Ohio River are contaminated. You guys scooping out all the dead ones. At least 3,500 fish have died, and some residents say their cats. and chickens have died. Amanda Breschairs was going to feed her five hens and rooster this morning when she discovered them all lifeless, practically in the same position, with no signs of a predator entering their enclosure. I'm beyond upset and quite panicked. If we can do this to chickens in one night, imagine what's going to do to us in 20 years. There's been no independent testing, yet things are dying, and this community just doesn't feel they're being seen. They're being.

I would be alert and concerned, but I think I would probably be back in my house. You know, as I was watching that, and I think a lot of the questions around this story right now is this idea of a controlled release or controlled burn. They obviously decided to light all of these toxic chemicals on fire to somehow burn them out, then putting it in the atmosphere so that not only that one space, but now, you know, surrounding states. have got to be concerned of what's happening. And then when we look to our government, you know, why is it you decided to bring? Why can't we get answers?

Who made this decision? What was the rush? All of this, you know, are the questions that are taking place and causing town hall meetings that were going on. But I am done listening to the news in their perspective. I'm not sure where it's at. And so luckily, because of your support, we now are able to send in our own people. We sent Ben in one of our reporters and our favorite cameraman on the team. Full PPE, we even reached out to professionals to ask what he should be doing when he went there.

This is some of the footage that he brought back and this story from our perspective. Take a look at this. I do live here in East Palestine. I've lived here all my life. I am from East Palestine, Ohio. I live about 0.67 from around zero is what I'm calling it. I live just across the street from the intersection where all this is set place. So I watched it off of my front window.

It was in my house. I was cooking dinner. It was like any, you know, regular night. And I heard all the sirens, and I went outside, and we seen the big plume of smoke. The police came through 11 o'clock that night, told us we could evacuate. Wasn't that important. So we stayed home that night. Most of us residents didn't know that it was toxic, hazardous materials,

and we're out there, you know, watching what's going on with, you know, kids on our hips and whatever. and to find out days later that we were standing in basically a cloud of toxic material, it's just, it's scary. When the controlled release happened, I was sleeping in my bed, and they said, you know, you got an hour and a half, two hours to grab everything and leave. We were told to emergency evacuate because something was about to explode. And that you had to leave a risk dying, that's when the grim nature of the problem really sunk in.

And for the first time since it started, I was actually scared. I have a limited background in environmental management. I have a degree in it, but I have a little knowledge is a dangerous thing sometimes because I realize what happened here. And some people might not understand the scope and magnitude of especially the controlled release. I think there's a lot of uncertainty right now for a lot of people. People just aren't sure what's in their water, what's in the air, and it causes a lot of anxiety. People just want to know if it's safe to be in their homes. I'm a mom of five boys and I actually have a one and a two-year-old and they are just brand new and I'm just so

terrified I can't even give them a bath since this has happened my little sister has horrible asthma she's been struggling she had to use her inhaler over 20 times in the last couple of days that's that's a lot for her I've had a terrible headache me and four of my family members are all covered in rashes respiratory symptoms sinus symptoms headaches blurred vision hearing is probably related to the sinus issues that they're having and it's sort of the day after the derailment so February 4th you know it could be anything but it also could be the hundred thousand gallons of hazardous material that was spilled out you know not even a half a mile from my home something that's alarming for me is just the change and narrative that we've

been seeing from different officials they're backtracking every day it's safe it's not safe it's not safe so that's concerning what I'm most worried about is this being brushed under the rug by my Norfolk. They're the big company. They should be leading the way. You haven't heard sight nor hair them. They ghosted us. The cleanup, the water, the the supplies for everyone. They should be paying out of pocket for this, especially with how much the company's worth. It's supposed to be cleaned up before they leave. There's no way in hell it's going to be cleaned up. I guess one of my biggest concerns for East

Palestine is if people do get sick down the road, are they going to have the help that they need to get better? Who's going to start paying the medical bells and when are we going to find out what exactly is causing the kids to be sick and how long is this going to last? Is it going to be a forever thing? Is she going to have perfect hearing again? Is her vision going to stay blurry? I was, had my camera with my daughter and was threatened to be arrested by the National Guard. When I was in a public place on a public easement, you know, the one reporter here was hauled off in handcuffs by the National Guard and the Columbia County Sheriff's Department. We're supposed to have a town hall this evening. I just found out that the

The format for that's changing. It's not going to be a town hall. It's going to be table set up to where you can go and ask questions. That doesn't fly. I don't see it going into a positive direction. I see what they were offered tonight. A thousand dollars pay off for the people that were in a one mile radius. That's residence views should be made aware every day what's going on.

You can see this line is almost a half a mile down the road. What does that tell you? People don't know what's going on. I'm questioning everything because I wonder if the evacuation was lifted so the trains could run more because less than an hour after that evacuation was lifted the trains are coming through like non-stop they couldn't come through here because it was an evacuation zone it wasn't our benefit that was for the railroad all we want is we want answers we want it taken care of cleaned up and we want to know 100% without a doubt that it is safe for us and our children it's important not to listen to everything that the media is putting out this isn't a poor vote on white trust town It is a very well put together town that is here for each other that are trying to make the best of a bad situation. I just think it's going to be devastating to this town for decades.

I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. It's really upsetting to hear residents talking and saying things like we are not being told what's really going on. They started the burn outside of my house before they asked me to evacuate. Are you kidding me? you know, and then we hear stories about, you know, one of those people saying I was, you know, shooting video of it and they threatened to arrest me. They did arrest a reporter that was trying to report on this. Folks, do we live in China? I mean, is this the United States of America?

We have freedom of speech. We have freedom of the press. And if I can't pull out a video camera standing on the street and show what is happening, I don't care if the President of the United States is in the shot, that is our freedom. That is the First Amendment right. we've got to start really calling every representative we have and say this idea that people cannot be documenting what's happening here in the United States of America are not allowed to put it on social media spaces

or tell whoever they want what they see and what their opinion is we are falling apart here as far as the dream is concerned of the United States of America and what our founding fathers dream this nation was supposed to be and remember they promised us and they said look if you ever lose a free press, if you ever lose your right to free speech, if you lose that fourth branch of government, which is the press, which is allowed to ask any uncomfortable question they want, if you start arresting reporters, then this is game over. It's over. The dream of this country is falling apart.

So many of the stories that are happening this week, and really, obviously, over the last couple of years, really has got to make us think it is time to get in and get our government back to where it belongs, which is working for us on our leash. I'm not on your leash. You don't get to tell me what I do with my life. You don't get to tell me what I get to shoot with my video camera. I tell you what you're allowed to do. You work for me.

And that's the truth. We've got to get back to it. Now, there's a lot to this story, but I want to get to the part of it. I'm not hearing a lot about, which is what about these toxic chemicals? What are they? What would be the best way to protect these people?

And are they protecting themselves appropriately? Is it time to go back to their homes? Should they be, as you see in those videos, just standing in line, walking around without any mask or whatever. Obviously, our reporter was one of the only ones there, like, you know, with full protective gear. So to get to the bottom of many of the questions that I have, I am joined now by our favorite OSHA specialist, Tammy Clark and Kristen, Megan. Thank you, too, for joining me for this very important conversation. Yes, well, hello, and thank you, Del, for having us. It's always a pleasure to be with you.

Yes, thank you. This is a topic that, you know, we've been very vocal a past three years about, again, improper messaging, improper control measures, and lack of conveying a proper risk. So at this point, we're starting to realize these alphabet agencies either need to be privatized or stop allowing themselves to be controlled by lobbyists and bureaucrats. Yeah, it's out. Basically, they've been captured, just like the medical systems that we watched over COVID, right? It's a regulatory capture. It's amazing as I watch this footage. And I think that. that we couldn't get on planes without masks, couldn't walk in restaurants, all this inane things you've been on to the show talking about before, going to restaurants,

take it off, now you can sit down, all of this circus things going on. Now you have toxic chemicals floating in the air, and as far as I see in all of that video footage, no one is even wearing a simple mask or a respirator of any kind. And my understanding is even the people cleaning up the site aren't wearing PPE, which makes me think about,

you know, Chernoble, or even when we saw the nuclear meltdown in Japan and Fukushima, these governments, I think, actually say to the workers, don't wear any protective gear because you're going to scare everybody else. We see that happening in communist nations, and I'm wondering, is that happening now? Do you, I mean, from your perspective, should these people be out there without any protective gear?

Let's just start with those that are working the site and digging through this rubble and pulling dead fish out of the river. When I see footage of them not wearing any protective gear as an OSHA specialist that's designed and knowing when someone should be wearing protective gear, what is your opinion on that? Yeah, well, I'll start because Ben, actually, your camera person on the ground there reached out to me yesterday. And we had a good conversation about PPE. And he told me there is nobody wearing any PPE, even the people who are doing the cleanup. He said they're not even wearing a handkerchief over their mouth and nose, which, as we know, wouldn't do anything.

The point is nobody is wearing any protective equipment. And we know as experts who teach, train, educate, you can't even put a shovel in the ground and unearth any contaminated soil unless you have been through 40 hours of what's called Haswop or training, hazardous waste operations and emergency response. No contractor can even clean anything up, any EPA contaminated sites or brownfields or anything like that unless they've had 40 hours of training. And then it's a full hazmat suit and respirator, Tyvec suits, everything. So there's no decontamination process.

There's no PPE. Even those doing cleanup are not being properly protected. But we know that this is a very dangerous area. And we have heard from people on the ground. We've been doing a couple of Twitter spaces and things like that. And we know from those in the area that their eyes are burning, their throats are dry. We've heard in the segment that you showed the rashes people having rashes and coughs and things like that. We know that they're being exposed and yet nobody is in PPE. Now,

this is the thing that, you know, Bennett actually sent us a copy or a photo of the respirator that he was wearing and we looked it up and it is, it's protective for him. It's protecting him from, you know, dual purpose protection, not exactly what we would want him to be in, but it is protecting him sufficiently to be there on the ground doing, you know, camera work and things like that. But what these cleanup professionals need to be wearing, is a fully encapsulated SCBA, which is a self-contained breathing apparatus, full enclosure.

They would actually look like they were walking on Mars if they were wearing the appropriate equipment. But what would that do? That would terrify the people who have been told that they can go back into their homes and it's safe. I mean, to begin with, they weren't evacuated before they were exposed. Then they were told the shelter in place,

but they were not told how to shelter in place. They have no education or information. It is just egregious. Again, more of violence. violations, more revisionism, more like Kirsten said, of these Alphabet Soup agencies that are not following their own standards and protocols for liability issues. And it's actually mass negligence, and it's going to lead to great harm. I mean, I don't know how much you've looked into it, but we, you know, we hear about, you know, one of the major chemicals, this vinyl chloride,

I believe it's called, but my understanding is that there was other trained cars with other chemicals. Have you guys, are you aware of any other chemicals? And do you have a sense of what these chemicals are and what types of health concerns they carry with them? So, Del, the biggest issue that I had is that it's multiple. We got to zoom out for a second and look at anytime rail cars are transporting hazardous materials, they're supposed to make sure that the areas based on population that they're going through, the local community, the fire department, because not every fire department has been hazmat responded,

trained team. So they had to be aware of the hazard that's coming through their town. Based on the amount of cars and the amount of cars that had hazardous materials, they somehow thought that did not have to labor lists in the proper hazardous classification. So that's issue number one. The second is, is I'm so incredibly infuriated. I understand the inability for a lot of people to understand the decision making of why they did a control burn. I wasn't there so I can't Monday morning quarterback, but I can tell you doing C-Burning response for nine years in the military. I responded to these issues. I managed the decontamination line with Norfolk Southern in the city of Chicago as a civilian

working for the federal government. So you have to look at not just instantaneous dose, but if there's going to be a greater hazard, if that thing was going to be pressurized and explode outward, you would have had shards of metals and the plume would have gone outward and created a greater hazard. So of course, in a situation where you have an event like this, in a perfect world you want people to evacuate but at a minimum with the technology we have there should have been an emergency system broadcasted over phones like an ambroller and the tv to shelter in place seal up your windows turn off your h-back system give people an idea to use wet cloths and not put them on their face but kind of you can get wet blankets and put them over you this is what we do in real war theater

but what i really want to in this time that we have dealt is address the lack of proper response i am seeing that people are saying that they're using direct reading instrumentation like multi-rays and different things through rovers you have to do upstream downstream upwind downwind soil sampling you don't just test instantaneously you have to calculate a t w a time weighted average and we are talking about cumulative dose and synergistic toxicity and the best way for me to convey that to the average person is in an occupational setting when we're dealing with has just noise say there's four employees one is using a one is doing something and they're all creating noise, but it's not necessarily at the action limit of 85 DBA.

But cumulatively, they're going over 112 and you can have hearing loss in that moment. So this is the same thing. We are dealing with chemicals that came out days later, 10 days later. These chemicals are mutagenic, turetogenic, so if you are expectant mother, pregnant or nursing, this is extra hazardous to you,

and they're not talking about how these chemicals, have the same target organs. If they're saying that's below the threshold, which they're conflating terms because they don't expect you to have resources like us to explain this to you. There are action levels, permissible exposure limits, and then there are at five parts per million

at any dose that is instantly IDLH. That is immediately dangerous. You can die. And we saw that through dogs, cats, foxes, chickens, and through aquatic life. So I am irate that we are not having the community had conveyed information if you were pregnant, nursing, using tap water to create, you know, bottles with formula, you are the most at risk, COPD asthma. Again, exposure groups. Just like we

talked about through the pandemic, it's not one size, it's all you have to do, individual health risk assessments. This is absolutely criminal. I'm irate because I trained for this for 12 years. I have extensive response. I'm the person out there with a piece of equipment called a hapsite that can do direct reading instrumentation. And until these levels, are actually continuously you test until you get to the answer you want. Then you come back. These people are in grave risk. I'm not trying to overinflate this,

but people in my profession, aside from us, today are finally speaking up. Tammy, what, you know, for those people that, you know, are in Ohio right now, anywhere near this site, what would be your recommendation for them right now as far as how they should be handling their home if they're in it? should they be wearing, you know, a mask of some sort? What is your, you know, from an OSHA perspective and where are you at? What would you advise right now? Because this whole thing seems so early.

The fact that within inside of two weeks, we are sending people back to what is clearly an open investigation site. As you're saying, multiple different chemicals. And my question is always, what is the, you know, synergistic effect of these chemicals mixing with each other, burning with each other? I mean, okay, they're in different train cars. Have we ever put all these elements together in one place? What is that doing? But what just for the very basic and not, I'm not here to try it. We don't want to like overly alarm people.

I don't want to stress them out. But I also, you know, think what would be the minimum that I should be doing? Let me just put the government aside and the news that's lying to me and not warning me of anything. What is it that I should do right now to take care of myself in this situation until they really do have the answers? Well, that's a great question, Dell. And to be honest with you, the exposures have already happened. Not that cumulative exposures down the road will not continue because that cumulative buildup from the exposures is going to cause the long-term issue. So the acute exposure has already happened. So I don't want to scare people, but that's like what's happened has already happened. So moving forward, if you are able, I would tell people this is ground zero. If you are at all, able, I would completely relocate. Now I know that that's not possible for some people. If you are not able to relocate and that's just absolutely not a possibility for you, you need to begin proper cleanup and that requires proper PPE. So they need to be wearing gloves when they're touching surfaces.

Beautil gloves. And let's remember too that the air that they're breathing is still contaminated. We are still getting reports from people who are saying their eyes are burning, their throat are reporter Ben said exactly that. He said he's at a place where they were turning the water, I guess, trying to oxygenate the water. And he said while he was shooting that at that moment, he left because he did feel burning in his eyes. Yes. And people just walking down the street are saying that this is why I told Ben, you need to be wearing chemical goggles and the respirator cartridges that he's wearing. We looked up and it is protecting him from multiple volatiles gases, things like that. But, you know, people need to be decontaminating and they still need to be sheltering. in place by turning off their HVAC systems and they need to be covering their vents. When they're indoors, they need to try to seal. Like this is what has irritated us and angered us from the beginning. People were not evacuated. Then they were told to shelter in place, but they weren't told how to shelter in place

and what that means and what that looks like. So covering vents, proper cleaning, proper contamination, using proper PPE, the butel gloves and proper respirators and things like that. Now, the problem is you can't just slap a respirator on. people. I mean, that you've got to go through and you've heard us talk about this. On this show, you've got to go through the medical clearance, the fit testing, the, the fit factors and all of that. And sometimes, you know, people are not clean shaven. That's one thing I told Ben, make sure you're clean, shaven every day before you wear that respirator. You're

not going to get a proper seal. So if you're not wearing the proper PPE, you're not properly and now we've got a lot of contaminants on all surfaces in all homes because people were not told how to shelter in place properly. And all of that is inside of everybody's homes at this point. So babies crawling on the floors, I would absolutely not allow babies crawling on floors. I would absolutely make sure that you are, you know, proper vacuuming with a hepa vac. I was just going to say that. I mean, you're vacuuming. Most vacuums are just like atomizing this stuff back out of your carcass into the air. You're blanked to me. You know, I've had a fire in my house. You know, Jen Sherry just had her house burned down on Christmas Day. When you look,

when you go through those events, you realize even the things you think are safe and okay. everyone tells you you've got to get it professionally clean by people that know what they're doing. Your clothing has it in it. Your wallpaper. Your kids are touching the walls. They're taking these contaminants

that may have been contained at the site until these buffoons decided to light it on fire. Or maybe that was the right move. Let me ask you that really quickly, Megan, because you were in the military. You said there are moments where you have been involved in the decision to, you know,

actively burn. Why is that decision? decision made because to me this looks like BP oil spill. The first thing you want to do is hide it and drop it to the bottom of the ocean. We can't do an investigation in what's there once it's burned. I don't know who's making this decision, but why within three days? That seems awfully quick. There must be some benefits to it. I mean, are they worried about groundwater? But why so quickly and why before you could even get evacuated? What are the thoughts that go into deciding to burn chemicals that are, you know, in a situation like this. What is the thinking behind that? Well, my first thought is the lack of communication to the public is not allowing me to provide

a proper answer, but I can tell you that I wasn't there. But we're dealing with a very, very volatile chemical makeup here. Actually, really quickly, I think we have a list of some of the chemicals we know. Let's just bring that list up so that we're aware of what we're talking about. This is from the EPA, and here is the list. Materials related to the incident were observed entering storm drains, multiple rail cars, tankers were observed, derailed, breached, and or on fire, then included, but nominal into the following materials. Vinyl chloride, ethylene, glycol, monobutile, ether, ethyl, hexyl acrylate, isobutylene, and butylacrylate. I have no idea what these things do. It doesn't sound good.

All right, so they decided all those elements are there. Let's just light them on fire. Yeah. So I air sample for these different type of contaminants. And that's another thing is there's too many doctors speaking about this and saying it's not bad. Well, unless you're an occupational health doctor, please take a seat because you don't study this in the average community. But we deal with this in a military and industrial settings. So these chemicals were very aware with. But what I'm saying is they're very volatile. And if you think about when you drop like a canister or a pop, how it kind of can explode, you know, if you shake it. So I need to know how pressurized these were. And the fire. departments and the hazmat teams are trained to do and figure out, you know, what is the risk here? Because again, in a perfect world, you want to cool them down, you sand, all these things. We are not always afforded that luxury to do things safer. And that is very honest, but I'm not defending what they did, but I'm saying I don't have the data of the direct reading instrumentation and how pressurize that was.

But if those had combusted outward, you would have seen massive loss of life because this would have been not created in the plume with perfect air conditions. It would have been an outward burst with an explosion with shrapnel and at the exact breathing zone. So you have instantaneous exposure. But one thing I want to say, Del, and I totally get you that we don't want to alarm people, but we also want to be honest in conveying the risk. Until proper information is shared on the type of sampling, which I've already noted that they have made mistakes on the sampling, you have to treat this as IDLH.

But if you are in your home, please take out, be very careful, take out your HVAC filters, One, they could be highly flammable. So I don't know what the weather is in Ohio, but if you turn your heat on, this is going to recirculate through your house. Put them in a trash bag. And when the time comes, if there is funds that are afforded or there's companies that offer discounts, you want to have these tested. The known chemicals are known so they can run panels. But they use GCMS. It's a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.

They can tell you the level. So down the road, if this is like an Aaron-Rockovid situation or there's litigation and settlements. This is your evidence, really. You're talking about you are backing up your evidence right now. Right, right. Very important. Yes, bagged your HVAC filters because that is the only representative instantaneous data on exposure that we have. And you need to get those filters out of your home anyway because they're just recirculating the highest concentrations of contaminants that happened early on. So I would also tell people in addition change those filters pretty much every day if you can for a little while.

It's all really important information. Again, I don't see what the rush is to get these people back into their homes. I mean, this is what drives me crazy. We are sinking billions of dollars into wars that have nothing to do with our nation at all, and we can't take care of our own. We are not capable of putting people within a mile or forget it for a five-mile radius there to say, we're going to put you in hotels all around the country. We're going to take care of you, fund you.

If my tax dollars can't do that in a situation like that, then I don't. don't know what the point of being taxed at all is. It just seems so egregious to me, the things that we care about and the things that we don't. I mean, hotels all over the country are filled with illegal aliens. I don't care what your perception is of that conversation, but we can't take care of American citizens that are sitting in a blast zone of known toxic carcinogens and chemicals. The whole story just reeks. And again, I just feel like, where is our government explaining what is going on here. Last thoughts as you were watching this take place. What is it that, you know, how do we deal with these things better? What is it the needs to happen in this country and in our

government, our regulatory agencies? Yeah, well, that's been something that we've been really blowing the whistle on for the last three years. The inept and corrupt, basically fascist collusion between our government, our corrupt government officials and agencies with the media with big tech, with big pharma, all for profit, putting the American people and our citizens at great risk of harm and violating the number one rule in our profession is do not create a greater hazard. So we were just listening as we were going over some new information, trying to keep up on everything that's happening with this. We were just listening to one of the top experts of the EPA tell a CNN reporter that when it is safe, they will send their scientists and their

cleanup experts in to do the cleanup. Look, I have that video ready to go. Let's go ahead and watch that now. I want to set this up just for a second because I was in New York when 9-11 happened. I was in New York City. My parents raised me probably the reason I'm doing this show. My parents raised me to question authority. I already had a gas mask that I keep with me wherever I live. I threw it on. I didn't know what was burning in the buildings. I called everyone I was supposed to be working in a restaurant that night. I called the local rental car place because I didn't own a car at the time and said, could I rent a van right now? And I was shocked to find that they were cheap. And so I rented two called all my friends. I'm leaving New York City. I don't know what's burning

there. In the end, you know, I was gone all weekend. I went to Newport to hang out and watch and see what was all about because my instincts are get out of there, figure out what's going on, watched it from afar, see how it all plays out. Now, when I came back to the restaurant, a lot of my friends were making fun of me. In fact, one guy was writing a comic strip, Dells Apocalypse, that I'm just, you know, panic-driven, and, you know, what were you worried about? Say, I'll tell you what I'm worried about. I'm worried about there's a biological weapon on those planes or some sort of chemical warfare.

We don't know. If we're being bombed, which is what that situation seemed like to me at the time, I don't know what's in there. And everyone's laughing. Every documentary I've watched, they interviews the EPA now. What's the first thing they say? In all honesty, we didn't know what was in those planes. We didn't know if there was biological weapons. We didn't know if there was chemical weapons.

We didn't know what it was. But you never told the people that. And so I'm wired to get the hell out of there. And when I see all of these people lined up to go to a town hall meeting, not wearing any masks at all, it just shows how complacent, how much we're trusting our government. And so to really bust it here in this story, you know, go ahead. Be overly fearful of them. Be overly anticipating what could possibly be wrong because our EPA lies to us.

Our government lies to us. And they're going to prove by what you just said, they lied to you based on what we know yesterday. They're sending you back to your homes saying, oh, drink the water, hang out, lay on the couch, let your kids crawl across the carpet because there's no problem. But here's what the EPA is thinking when it comes to their own staff. Watch this, folks. This is a mindblower. Do you have any sense, given that in your words,

this is an ongoing cleanup. Can you give them any sort of a timeline when you believe you can say to them definitively, it's safe? You know, Erica, what I'd say is this is a fresh accident. We understand the community's angst. We are on the ground. We will conduct the cleanup,

but we have to be able to get in and do the assessment. So as the conditions on the ground becomes safe so that we can put our scientists and engineers, not in harm's way, but in a position where they could do their work. We will be then in a position to provide those updates to the public as soon as we can. You know, we're going to keep the public updated. We have people on the ground now.

And so we want to be transparent, Erica. So a couple of other real quick questions before I lose you up for timing here. You just said that as the conditions become safe, you'll send in your teams. Are there any areas at this point in time, which you believe are still unsafe? Well, you know, it's an emergency response. And so obviously, we want to be sure that we do not put any. anyone in harm's way, including our staff. So as we investigate, as we investigate and as we look at the site, we will determine when

and how we can get the appropriate staff in to do the appropriate testing. Oh my God, it's safe enough for you to go home and hang out next to the site, but not safe enough for us to send in our government staff to look into it while we tell you it's safe. We at the EPA have not proven that to a level that we would feel safe with our staff. Folks, this is the United States of America right now. These are your regulatory agencies. They should be risking their lives to protect you. Instead, they're protecting their lives and risking your life. Final thoughts from you too, because, I mean, I'm just going to get too heated if we stick on this subject much longer. I just want to say, I saw that and I,

well, I'm not shocked, but this is what we trained for. When they said the scientists and engineers, They're talking about people like Tammy and I. We train for this. We do tabletop exercises. We have fake triage patients come through and have to decon them from chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear attacks. We do that. And this is what we said from day one.

I said, when people said, where's the EPA? I said, they cannot come into your town because when you see them in full SCBAs or Tyvexu with 3M-7-800, organic vapor, acid, gas cartridge, P-100 filters, you're going to go, what in the apocalypse are these people? people wearing and why am I walking outside? So and this is improper risk communication and this is a massive tenet of public health and occupational safety and health and it was all abandoned and this is the real epidemic that we're seeing in this country is improper response and we are no better because we

train and set the regulations to ensure these proper responses are being conducted properly and the risk is being conveyed. Yeah and I would just say you know anytime we don't know Kristen referenced a term called IDLH. That means it's immediately dangerous to life and health. So we don't know what we were dealing with. So it should have been treated as an IDLH situation, which means everyone is evacuated and you do not go in unless you are wearing IDLH protective equipment, period. They know this. We know they know this because they've trained us on this. These are the things that we train for, that we practice for, that we educate on. So it was a huge, huge red flag when we

saw this and it was very angering to realize we are bringing hundreds of thousands of people across the border. We are sheltering them, housing them, feeding them, clothing them, letting them go to college for free for crying out loud. We don't do that for our own citizens. The government's not housing me and sending me to college for free. And yet we cannot take a town that is ground zero where there is probably the worst environmental disaster of our lifetime and evacuate those people. That's a small town. We could have easily moved those people, evacuated them, put them, up and provided proper communication and proper supplies and food and water for them. Instead, they're letting them go right back into an IDLH situation because it is unknown.

And it's horrible, but this is why we need to privatize these agencies. They've proven that they're inept. They're proven that they're corrupt. They've proven that the very things they were designed to protect us from, they are now actually doing. They are now guilty of revisionism, violating their own standards, putting the public at great risk of harm, creating greater hazards. So we need to take the power away from these people who have proven that they cannot handle it. I agree. And one last quick thing. I know we're short on time. I unfortunately have seen for decades people making snow cones out of snow. There's a huge weather

system that's going right through this area. Folks, that weather is not going to help this issue. It can further leach these contaminants into the brown water faster into the aquifers and all the navigable waters. Do not eat the snow and do not let your children play in the snow right now. The good thing about it is is what is in the air. It's going to be brought down to the ground, but now we're dealing with a possible down the road super fun site. So I just have to say that because somebody will try it. All right. Really very important information. Thank you for taking the time to join us and really alerting us to many of these inconsistencies. And I would just say, I thought we were supposed to always err on the side of caution.

Let's overreact and then find out what's going on. We just went through three years of an overreaction to a virus that has a death rate of 0.3, 5% at the very highest. And so, I mean, that's what we do. Let's overreact. And at the very least, why don't you tell the people to react exactly how the EPA is reacting, which is you're not going near the site yet and you're not going into anyone's home. And Pete Buttigieg, I don't want to hear you talking about this from the white. House or, you know, the Capitol, I want you on the ground. I want you drinking the water.

Everyone's telling us to drink and show me that you care and you're standing with the people and you think it's safe enough to stand on that smoldering pile of insanity. All right, thank you so much for joining us. Obviously, we're all heated on this as we should be. We will continue to check in with you as more and more develops in this story. Take care. Thank you. Great. Thanks, thanks, style. All right. Well, look, to get deeper into this,