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Resident seeking answers in East Palestine

Mayor leads Q&A

Residents take to the bleachers at East Palestine High School gymnasium Wednesday evening for a session led by Mayor Trent Conaway and involving environmental experts and state representatives. Staff photo / Allie Vugrincic

EAST PALESTINE — An information session Wednesday evening that was designed for people to go from table to table talking to experts about the Feb. 3 derailment of part of a Norfolk Southern train turned into an impromptu question-and-answer session about 20 minutes into the meeting.

From the middle of the crowded East Palestine High School gymnasium floor, a man let out a sharp whistle and shouted, “Listen up everybody! This is not what we came here for!” He added that everyone who had come expected “a whole lot more,” before turning over the event to East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway.

The people who had been passing from table to table receded to the bleachers and waited for information as Conaway quickly was encompassed by a swarm of media.

“I want my citizens to feel safe. I don’t care about anything else,” Conway said. “I don’t want 50 cameras around me. I want to be watching a basketball game here, watching my kids play in the gym.”

Conaway said he has spoken with Norfolk Southern every day since the derailment and that the railroad has been working “tremendously” with the locals, “but they should, because they’re the ones who screwed this up.”

He said with the experts behind him, he was going to get the answers to the people, because they were scared. In attendance at the event were the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, United States EPA, Columbiana County Health District, Columbiana County Emergency Management Agency, Ohio EMA, Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Ohio Department of Agriculture and East Palestine officials, according to a list put out by the Columbiana County EMA.

QUESTIONS

Outfitted with a microphone, Conaway began the session anew, taking questions from those in attendance one by one.

Residents quickly asked how evacuation radiuses had been set, how long the Environmental Protection Agency would continue to test the air — the EPA has up to this point reported no dangerous levels of airborne chemicals — and what was being done to address physical symptoms apparently linked to the chemicals released in the derailment.

A question that eventually was raised — emphatically — was why Norfolk Southern was not in attendance. Conaway explained that railroad officials had been invited, but they had decided Wednesday that they “didn’t feel safe” attending the information event.

Butyl acrylate was what killed around 3,500 fish in waterways in and around East Palestine, a member of Ohio EPA’s emergency response team said in answer to a question. A car carrying around 30,000 gallons of the chemical broke open, he said, adding that it is lethal to fish, but not to people.

During the session, a woman took the floor to ask media to give a fair representation of East Palestine, saying it was not a poor, helpless community.

“We are a community that a disaster happened to, and we didn’t know how to respond to it,” the woman said. She was met with applause.

Also met with applause was a little boy who took the microphone to ask if children should feel safe outside when they could smell chemicals in the air. An environmental expert told him that the level of chemicals that can produce an odor isn’t the same as the level that can hurt people — meaning if was safe, even if he could smell it.

The information session in the packed gymnasium ran well past its scheduled 9 p.m. finish.

STORIES

An hour before the session began, residents of East Palestine and the surrounding areas and curious people from as far away as Canton or Pittsburgh formed a line outside the gym entrance that stretched down the sidewalk along Reid Memorial Stadium.

Ray and Judy Hall, who live less than a mile from the site of the derailment, said they came wondering why the list of hazardous materials carried by the train wasn’t more readily available for first responders the night of the accident. Ray Hall, who works with hazardous materials at his job in Salem, said a list always should be availble so first responders know what they’re dealing with.

The Halls were among those evacuated that night — they sat in their car in a parking lot in Columbiana until around 5 a.m. because they didn’t know what else to do, Ray Hall said. When they were evacuated a second time a few days later, they went to stay with their daughter in New Middletown.

“To be displaced from one’s home is an experience neither one of us wanted to have,” Ray Hall said.

Speaking with a rasping voice, Joe Dinello, whose home is about a half mile from the derailment site, said he and his wife have had health problems since the derailment. They went back to their house the day after the initial evacuation to grab items belonging to their niece and grand-niece, who were visiting from Maryland.

Dinello said his eyes burned and that he and his wife have had trouble breathing and had bloody noses since. Despite the evacuation order being lifted days ago, they and their small dog still are staying in a hotel out of town.

“I ain’t slept since it happened. I’m a nervous wreck,” Dinello said.

He said he came to the information session to find out if the Federal Emergency Management Agency or another organization would be providing housing for people who couldn’t go home.

Greg and Traci Mascher and their granddaughters who they raise, Kayton, 8, Raylix, 7, and Brayla, 9, also attended Wednesday’s event.

While the family hadn’t been in the initial evacuation zone the night of the Friday (Feb. 3) train derailment, someone knocked on their door that Sunday (Feb. 5) and told them to leave. That was the night that at least one car carrying vinyl chloride became unstable due to a change in temperature, threatening a massive explosion.

The Maschers stayed in a hotel in Beaver Falls, Pa., for two nights before Traci Mascher’s cousin offered to let them stay in her cabin in West Virginia. It turned into a little vacation for the girls, Greg Mascher said. He and Traci hadn’t sent them back to school since. The girls had rashes that the Maschers believed were related to the derailment and chemical releases, they said.

“Everybody is scared and nobody knows what to do,” Traci Mascher said.

They added that as lifelong residents they used to find the sound of the frequent trains comforting, but now when they hear them, they “cringe.”

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