Train Derailment Leaches Poison Into Ohio Town

On February 3rd, a train derailed due to an apparent mechanical malfunction and got absolutely f*cked. This issue was exacerbated by the fact that five of the train cars contained vinyl chloride, a HIGHLY toxic substance, which led to residents of East Palestine, Ohio and the nearby area (including about 20 people over the Pennsylvania border) being told to evacuate immediately.

In order to prevent the vinyl chloride from spreading out of control, the decision was made to do a “controlled burn” of the substance. While this may have alleviated some concerns about combustion, it’s not exactly a win.

One TikTok nerd helpfully summed up why this is such an enormous disaster:

Burning off the vinyl chloride releases, among other things, hydrogen chloride, which has a tendency to bond with water, including that in the atmosphere. So this burn put acid. In the clouds. Acid. Clouds. Acid. Rain.

ACID RAIN.

This is not “all better.”

Residents have been allowed to return home, but the situation hardly seems safe. People have reported symptoms apparently associated with the smorgasbord of toxic chemicals released into the air, ground, and water; similar reports have been made about animals becoming ill and/or dropping dead.

There’s simply no way of knowing just how bad the fallout of this disaster will be, but “catastrophic” seems to be an understatement. Which begs a serious question: Why are we only just now starting to hear about this, when it happened a WEEK AND A HALF AGO?

The prevailing answer has been that the media was too busy covering the Chinese spy balloon, but. . . that’s not really an answer. We never conceded an inability to pay attention to more than one breaking news story before, why start now?

As if it weren’t suspicious enough, a reporter from NewsNation, Evan Lambert, was arrested during a press conference being held by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine about the disaster.

NewsNation correspondent Evan Lambert was charged with criminal trespass and resisting arrest Wednesday after authorities said he was told to stop his live broadcast and then refused their orders to leave the news conference with Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.

Lambert said afterward that he was just trying to do his job.

Body-camera footage released by the Ohio State Highway Patrol showed Maj. Gen. John Harris Jr., commander of the state’s national guard, talking with a camera operator before a state trooper motioned to stop the live shot. Police said Lambert was talking loudly while on the air from the back of the gym where DeWine was speaking at the same time.

DeWine has said he had no knowledge of what was happening until after the fact, and the arrest will be investigated by the Ohio attorney general.

Is this an(other) example of cops escalating a situation because they didn’t like how they were being spoken to, and nothing else? Maybe. I don’t want to believe it’s so insidious as to be a cover-up for something yet to be determined, and I’ll need a lot more proof before I start to entertain that possibility.

But this is an absolutely devastating catastrophe that could have life-long negative consequences on the local community, and the fact that we’re only just now starting to hear about it is weird. I want to know why this wasn’t breaking news when it happened. I want to know what the AG finds out about Lambert’s arrest. I want to see an exhaustive report on how this happened and find out whether burning off the vinyl chloride was really the best option.

For now, I have nothing more to say, except that my prayers are with the lives affected.