EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — In East Palestine Thursday, longtime residents were not surprised by the revelation that the controlled burn of toxic chemicals in East Palestine last year following the train derailment and fire maybe didn’t need to happen.
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For over a year, the understanding was that those overseeing the train derailment and fire in East Palestine were faced with a binary choice of bad options. Vent and burn five rail cars carrying the dangerous vinyl chloride or risk having them explode. A decision that incident commander East Palestine Fire Chief Keith Drabick told our Tara Morgan last year they had just 13 minutes to make.
“There were some heated moments of conversation,” Drabick said. Still, the decision to vent and burn, which created a plume of smoke, sending toxins into the soil and creeks, was one he stood by.
“Every decision we made was tough but every decision we made throughout that process was done under a consensus of all organizations here,” said Drabick in May of last year.
But Wednesday on Capitol Hill, the chair of the NTSB, Jennifer Homendy, said it was a decision that was made with incomplete information. Chief Drabick and Governor DeWine, she said, were unaware that experts from the chemical shipping company were on the scene—but not a part of the process—that might have alerted them to this.
“There was another option: let it cool down. It was cooling down. We know for a fact that when that pressure release device went off that it had to have been above 185 degrees much later over the course of 22 hours that the tank car was cooling,” Homendy said.
She went on to say the other four cars carrying vinyl chloride had temperatures between 64 and 69 degrees. Holes were cut in all five cars to release and burn the chemicals, creating a plume of smoke over the village.
Homendy said the chemical shipper was on site and gave information to Norfolk Southern and its contractors that there was no justification for a vent and burn. But Homendy said they were left out of the room when the decision was made.
The fire chief was out of town and not available for comment, the city referred News 5 to the NTSB.
In a statement Thursday, the office of Governor Mike DeWine said, "NTSB Chair Homendy testified yesterday that neither Governor DeWine nor incident command were ever presented with a scenario from experts that a controlled vent and release was unnecessary to prevent a catastrophic explosion. They were also not presented [with] any scenario where, if officials did nothing, the train cars would not explode catastrophically.
“Governor DeWine spent hours with incident command and Norfolk Southern contractors on the day of the release and asked numerous questions to understand the facts. No one—not one single expert—opined that day about there being any other scenario occurring besides either a catastrophic explosion or a controlled release to prevent such an explosion."
As for the possibility of a third option, many here are not surprised.
“I’ve heard that over the last year multiple times,” said business owner Bob Figley, whose hardware store sits just across the street from the derailment site.
“Somebody told me that was close to this situation, that they were not in danger of exploding. That they just did this for the convenience of the railroad to get the trains running again.”
A claim was raised as well by Senator JD Vance, who asked if Norfolk-Southern did this “not because it was necessary, but because it allowed them to move traffic and freight more quickly?”
In a statement to News 5, Norfolk Southern said in part: “The final decision to conduct a controlled release was made by the Incident Commander, with input from multiple stakeholders, including Norfolk Southern and local, state, and federal authorities. The top priority of everyone involved was the safety of the community, as well as limiting the impact of the incident.”
Longtime residents, though, remain skeptical. “I think they just wanted to get the rail line open as fast as possible,” said George Bollinger.
Another who asked to just by her first name, Mary, said she’s lived in East Palestine for 66 years. News of another option did not come as a surprise. “No, there’s always another option they never tell anybody about,” she said.
