This Rail Company Got Away With Poisoning an Entire Town

“There’s an unwritten law of big business in America - if you have enough money, you can get away with almost anything.”

By Brock Hrehor, More Perfect Union

Recently, the freight rail giant Norfolk Southern announced its acquisition by Union Pacific in an $85 billion deal. On top of being the largest freight rail merger in history, this deal could mean lower safety standards and less oversight for a company that was just at the center of a massive derailment scandal.

Back in 2023, a Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. The company insisted the only way to avert an explosion was for local authorities to conduct a controlled detonation, releasing vinyl chloride—a known carcinogen—into the air and potentially poisoning thousands of residents. The detonation turned out to be completely unnecessary. Norfolk Southern, investigators found, misled authorities to make it seem like the only option.

More Perfect Union recently went back to East Palestine, where residents are still facing health issues like rashes and respiratory problems as a result of the chemical exposure. Experts say they could feel the impacts for years.

“I think there’s often a misunderstanding that when a toxin goes away, the injury goes away. But when the hammer that hit a person’s head goes away, the problem from that doesn’t go away,” Dr. Beatrice Golomb, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, told More Perfect Union.

When the train derailed, Norfolk Southern alleged that an explosion was inevitable and that the only remedy was a “vent and burn”—a last resort procedure that involves releasing the chemicals into the air in order to avert a total meltdown.

But a yearlong investigation conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board found the procedure “unnecessary,” and that the company provided incomplete and misleading information in order to pressure decision-makers to greenlight the procedure.

“Unfortunately, while they’re making these decisions, the temperatures of the cars are starting to trend downward. That is indicative of a commodity that’s stabilizing,” Jared Cassidy, safety lead at SMART-TD, the largest rail union in the country, told More Perfect Union. “We were heading in a good direction. And they decided to do the vent and burn anyway.”

Letting the derailed trains cool down could have meant averting the ensuing health crisis. But the vent and burn let Norfolk Southern resume their operations more quickly.

“When you look at the railroad industry, there’s always something in the back of every decision they make — and that’s a profit margin,” said Cassidy.

Norfolk Southern has since retracted many of the promises it initially made to residents in a bid to “make it right.” The company withdrew its promise to East Palestine School District to rebuild athletic facilities and a wellness center, now the subject of a multi-million dollar lawsuit. It also helped block the Railway Safety Act, a bipartisan bill that would have implemented stronger safety standards for trains carrying hazardous materials.

Now, the company is set to be bought out by fellow freight rail giant Union Pacific—the sector’s largest buyout in history. Historically, rail mergers have resulted in lower safety standards and an uptick in crashes, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Regulators and labor unions have decried the merger, arguing it would further undermine safety in an industry that’s already under-regulated. SMART-TD is challenging the tie-up and plans to take the case to the Surface Transportation Board.

Though Norfolk Southern has moved on, residents will see the impacts for generations.

“I kept thinking we were getting closer to justice and accountability,” said former resident Jami Wallace. “But every time something comes out, it's more lies, more betrayal from our government.”

Watch our full report below:

Reporting by John Russell and Josh Hirschfeld-Kroen. See below for a full transcript of the video.

—

JAMI WALLACE, former East Palestine resident: Actually, my heart’s kinda pitter pattering - just sitting here with these memories and looking around.

JAMI - it’s making the hair stand up on the back of my neck and I feel like I might puke. This is what they did to us, this is what they did to our community. And it all started right here.

JOHN RUSSELL, More Perfect Union: The last time I was in East Palestine, things were…pretty different.

CELLPHONE FOOTAGE: Look at those flames. Look at that shit.

JR: I’m from this county - I went to their high school dances, barbecues, and I was there, a few weeks after the derailment, to document the unfolding man-made disaster.

WOMAN AT PUBLIC MEETING: Do I have to wait until i have cancer or my kids are sick before you guys are gonna do anything

EAST PALESTINE RESIDENT: Why the fuck would you let Norfolk do that? Why would you let them clean up their own mess?

JR: Now, more than 2 years later, East Palestine is quiet.

JAMI: It’s the twilight zone. It’s like living on this movie set, this fantasy world.

JR: But behind the scenes, a much bigger scandal is still unfolding.

JAMI: Every one of these little stories, in and of itself, is shocking, but the totality of it…we have been stabbed in the back by everyone.

JR: Do you think Norfolk Southern paid as big a price as you did?

CHRIS ALBRIGHT, East Palestine resident: You gotta be outside your mind. You must be outside your mind!

JARED CASSIDY, SMART-TD safety lead: I wish there was one smoking gun here - the problem with East Palestine is there’s about 30 smoking guns.

JENNIFER HOMENDY, NTSB chair: There are no accidents. This derailment was 100% preventable.

CHRIS: I’m a Trump supporter - he needs to make this right. He has the ability. The opportunity to.

JAMI: We lived right over here, in this house on the bottom. I brought my daughter home from the hospital here. It was our little piece of country in the middle of the city.

JR: Jami Wallace had plans of raising her daughter in East Palestine.

JAMI: Every single happy moment in my life was spent right here in this town.

JR: But on February 3rd, 2023, all of that changed.

NEWS FOOTAGE: Fifty train cars derailed, causing a massive fire.

NEWS FOOTAGE: Five of the cars that derailed were carrying vinyl chloride.

SOCIAL MEDIA: That’s all of the poisonous gas right there, just leaving our town.

JAMI: I saw that big mushroom cloud, it was like that big dark cloud over the whole community.

JR: That mushroom cloud was the result of a controlled detonation, carried out by the railroad company, Norfolk Southern. 1 million pounds of toxic vinyl chloride were burned, released into the air, and spread across 16 states.

JR: What really sticks in your mind about that whole experience?

JAMI: The fear. The panic, the not knowing.

JR: But just 2 days later, residents were told that it was safe to return home.

JAMI: The EPA was saying everything was fine, and as soon as I pulled into the driveway, you can see, it runs along the creek, I get out of my car, can’t breathe, coughing, skins on fire, I look over at this creek here, and this is sulfur run, the most contaminated creek in town. And instantly I knew something wasn’t right.

JR: Jami didn’t stick around much longer - she took her daughter to a rental outside of town. But most residents did stay, trusting state officials who said that it was safe.

JR: When you heard that at the time, did you believe it?

CHRIS: Absolutely - it’s our government. They’re not gonna lie to us, why would they put us in danger. They’re telling us it's safe, it's safe.

JOHN: Chris Albright lives with family, a half-mile away from the tracks. Just two weeks after the derailment, his symptoms started setting in.

CHRIS: I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t walk from here to the door without stopping.

JR: Chris had been healthy and active his whole life. But by the middle of March, he was diagnosed with severe heart failure.

CHRIS: I really thought I was gonna be dead soon. I really thought I was gonna be dead. With my health condition, there was no way I could stay in the house. There was absolutely no way.

JR: So he and his family packed up, and moved to a hotel outside of town.

CHRIS: We had one room. That’s what we lived in for four months.

JR: How did it come to an end? Was it safe to go back or something?

CHRIS: No. We ran out of money. When we left I had $40 left in my savings account. $40. I’m still suffering health effects, and they want me to go back to this house that I know is not safe to go back to.

JR: To this day, the EPA and the state of Ohio still claim that East Palestine is safe. But in just the last 2 years, hundreds of residents have reported getting sick.

SOCIAL MEDIA USER: Look at my eyes. I look crazy.

SOCIAL MEDIA USER: My skin has been red like a lobster.

NEWS FOOTAGE: Federal workers actually got sick while they were serving in East Palestine after that derailment.

NEWS: They showed symptoms similar to what other people have been talking about.

JAMI: I have been diagnosed with asthma. I have periodontal disease and my teeth are falling out. And that’s just what I know of.

DR. GOLOMB, UCSD professor of Medicine: We sort of heard the messaging that everything was fine, at the same time that people were reporting they were sick. And we thought, we’ve seen this movie before.

JR: That’s Dr. Beatrice Golomb, a professor of medicine at University of California, San Diego. She’s currently conducting a large-scale health study in East Palestine.

GOLOMB: I think where claims have been made that residents are all safe, it’s been based on a lot of presumptions. The safety for many of those chemicals is simply not known. There’s often no or very limited human testing.

JR: And even if it is true that East Palestine is now safe, that doesn’t erase the toxic exposure that already took place.

GOLOMB: I think there’s often a misunderstanding that when a toxin goes away, the injury goes away. But when the hammer that hit a person’s head goes away, the problem from that doesn’t go away.

JAMI: Look at 9/11, it took how many years before their illnesses started showing up - and when they say no one died. No one died yet.

JR: Dr. Golomb’s study is still ongoing, and it could be years before residents know the full effects of the toxic plume that engulfed their town. But there is one thing we do know, thanks to a recent investigation into Norfolk Southern, which revealed that all of this, the mushroom cloud, the sickness that followed, all of it was unnecessary.

JAMI: They lied - we didn’t need to blow those trains up. They lied.

JARED: They were making this pitch that an explosion was inevitable, but the science of this proves otherwise.

JR: Jared Cassidy is the safety lead for the largest rail union in the country. And he was part of a major federal investigation into Norfolk Southern’s crucial decision to conduct a vent and burn.

JARED: When you look at what’s in place in East Palestine… we have cars on fire - we have a derailment that has caused catastrophe across an entire community. And so now you have the commodity - the oxyvinyl that’s starting to heat up - it's becoming unstable.

JARED: The railroads call into the war room all of the major players that are part of the emergency response. Which did include the governor, it did include state police, it included the volunteer fire chief.

JARED: And the railroads make the pitch that “look, this is the situation. The temperatures are rising, we believe that polymerization is imminent. And the best course of action is to do a vent and burn.”

JARED: But outside of the room is oxyvinyls. The actual producer of the commodity. The one that understands the volatility, and all of the reactions that can take place. And they’re not being allowed a meaningful voice into the conversation.

JARED: And so the railroads just keep pushing this, “hey its in trouble, its in trouble, its in trouble.”

JARED: And ultimately, it’s the volunteer fire chief, is the one that makes the decision. But because he’s out of his lane, if you will, he’s relying on the railroad’s information.

KEITH DRABICK, East Palestine fire chief: We were told based upon the conditions at hand, we only had 13 minutes.

JARED: And so the folks that are responsible theoretically for the decision making don’t have the education or the information they need to properly consider what’s being thrown at ‘em. And they rely on the railroads that “hey they’re telling me the truth.”

JARED: And unfortunately, while they’re making these decisions, the temperatures of the cars are starting to trend downward.

JR: It’s going down, the line’s going down.

JARED: It's going down. That is indicative of a commodity that’s stabilizing. The fact is, we were heading in a good direction. And they decided to do the vent and burn anyway.

JD VANCE: Thank you chair Homendy for being here and for all your work.

JR: In March of 2024, after a year-long investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board confirmed what many people had feared.

HOMENDY: In order for polymerization to occur, which was Norfolk Southern and their contractor’s justification for the vent and burn, you would have to have rapidly increasing temperatures or some sort of infusion of oxygen, neither of which occurred.

HOMENDY: Oxyvinyls was on scene. They believed polymerization was not occurring and there was no justification to do a vent and burn.

JARED: What you had was a railroad that was trying to rush the clean up, trying to prioritize the movement of trains above all else. And so they manufactured a story that ultimately was proven to not be true.

HOMENDY: There was another option - let it cool down. It was cooling down.

JARED: When you look at the railroad industry, there’s always something in the back of every decision they make - and that’s a profit margin.

JD VANCE: This is a really, really troubling set of circumstances - this town very well may have been poisoned to facilitate the rapid movement of freight.

ALAN SHAW, former Norfolk Southern CEO: I want a response from Norfolk Southern that we can look back five years from now, 10 years from now, [and] we can be proud of how Norfolk Southern responded. But more importantly, the folks of East Palestine can be proud of how Norfolk Southern responded five years from now, ten years from now. And we’re on that path.

JR: In the 2 years since the derailment, Norfolk Southern has promised to dedicate millions of dollars towards “making it right” in East Palestine.

JAMI: They gave us the old train depot, that’s been sitting there dilapidated for years. I think they spent 1 million to renovate it.

CHRIS: We had the street fair that one year - they paid for all the rides for everybody, nobody had to pay for anything.

JR: But many of those promises have fallen short.

ALAN: I made a commitment that we would set up a regional training facility near East Palestine - and today, we kept our promise.

JAMI: They were supposed to have the training center and pay for the upkeep of it and everything - that’s completely gone.

NEWS CLIP: East Palestine school district is the latest to sue Norfolk Southern.

NEWS CLIP: The lawsuit claiming the railroad broke a $30 million promise to rebuild athletic facilities and the wellness center.

JR: But there was one promise that Norfolk Southern couldn’t walk away from: a class action lawsuit, which yielded a $600 million settlement for residents within 20 miles of the derailment.

CHRIS: That’s a lot of money, it is. $600 million is a lot of money. Not when it’s divided up between how many people.

JR: According to the settlement, anyone within 2 miles of the derailment can theoretically get up to $70,000 per household for property damage, and up to $25,000 per person for health problems.

JAMI: So you say 70,000 per household [gasps ironically]. Let’s break that down. That’s in the 1-2 mile zone. So my household of 4, that would have been $17,500 a piece. But wait, we rent a hotel for 6 months, they’re deducting all that…we’re gonna get zero.

CHRIS: Over four months in the hotel, with food, we ran up over $35,000. We have to give that back.

CHRIS: We might get $35,000.

JR: Seems like a dumb question now, but is that enough?

CHRIS: [laughs] that’s not a drop in the bucket.

CHRIS: $35,000 towards cancer treatment. Burn it. That’s not gonna do anything. That’s not gonna do anything.

JAMI: You ask people around town - not one person will say “I took it because it's a good deal.” They took it because they want to get out. I mean, you know the people I know - some of them haven’t had $1000 in their bank account in their life.

JR: $600 million is one of the largest settlements in Norfolk Southern’s history. But the company expects most of those costs to be covered by their insurance. So the final cost will be a fraction of the annual revenue for the $62 billion company, which saw its stock fall on February 3rd, 2023, only to completely recover in the months that followed.

CHRIS [speaking about lawsuit]: They wanted to get it done, shoved under the rug, shut us up. And move on.

JAMI: They took away my home town. And they walk around and they made money? What stops them from doing it again? Because it will happen again.

JR: Basic question - are we any safer today than we were when the train derailed in East Palestine in 2023?

SHERROD BROWN, former senator: No we’re not. And we’re not partly because congress never passed the Railway Safety Act.

JR: That’s Sherrod Brown, the former senator from Ohio. In the wake of the derailment, he and JD Vance teamed up to draft what could have been a historic piece of legislation.

NEWS ANCHOR: The Railway Safety Act would boost safety for trains carrying hazardous materials.

SHERROD: It shouldn’t take a train derailment for elected officials to put partisanship aside.

JR: The disaster in East Palestine drew attention to an alarming fact: the railroad industry is extremely unregulated. Local officials don’t even know about the contents of the trains that pass through their towns. And there are 3 major derailments, on average, every single day. Critics in the industry blame a practice known as Precision Scheduled Railroad, or PSR.

JARED: They’re cutting these people down to the bone and forcing them to work to the absolute max, they’re not letting them have adequate sick time or rest time. It’s just trying to do more with less, and that’s the bottom line of that.

JR: PSR is all about moving trains from point A to point B with as few stops as possible. Over the years, that’s resulted in larger trains.

SHERROD: You see these huge trains that are bigger than you can imagine, when they’ve jumped the tracks or they’re lying on their sides

JR: And smaller crews.

SHERROD: The railroads insisted they only needed one person on a train, although they want two people in a cockpit if they’re flying on their corporate planes, so…there’s more than a little hypocrisy there but…what else is new.

JR: The Railway Safety Act was designed to eliminate many of these risks.

SHERROD: The railway safety act would have made sure that there were at least two people driving these trains. It would have required the railroads to notify communities when they were coming through with hazardous material.

JR: But the railroad industry had a different plan. In just one year, the five largest carriers spent an estimated $17 million dollars lobbying to block the bill. And they were successful - the Railway Safety Act never made it to the floor of Congress.

SHERROD: These guys are so effective at corporate lobbying - there was overwhelming support for this bill from the public.

JD VANCE: I’m a republican - and I worry that there has been a movement in my party in response to the legislation that I’ve proposed that would not hold Norfolk Southern or the railway industry accountable.

JARED: Basically what they’re saying is “we don’t feel like we should be a regulated industry. We should have the freedom to do whatever we want.”

JAMI: As mad as I am at Norfolk Southern, I think I’m more pissed at my government.

JAMI: I used to be proud to be an American. What hillbilly isn’t? And now I’m not a proud American at all. I'm a really pissed off, upset, betrayed, lied-to American. And when you break my trust to the level of my child’s life? That’s my child’s life. What would you do?

JR: On the second anniversary of the derailment, Jami and Chris joined hundreds of other residents in filing a new lawsuit - claiming that Norfolk Southern, and multiple government agencies, had all failed to protect them.

JAMI: Every step of the way we’ve had to fight. And that’s what I learned - no one’s gonna fight for us, we have to fight for ourselves.

JAMI: Do you know how many politicians I’ve talked to? And how many promised they were gonna help.

JAMI: I didn't give a shit if you were a Republican or a Democrat. If you would talk to us, we talked to you.

JAMI: Fast forward, JD Vance gets elected Vice president. I’ve heard from none of them.

JAMI: We’re still sitting here sick. People are still here suffering. And where is he?

JAMI: At this point, you see the corruption, the lies from every one of our agencies - unless the president says “we’re gonna make this right for these people”, it’ll never be made right.

JR: In February, Jami wrote a letter to President Trump, calling on him to sign a major disaster declaration, and to deliver universal healthcare for anyone in East Palestine who needs it.

CHRIS: I’m a Trump supporter. But he needs to make this right.

CHRIS: He has the ability to say, you know what Biden, screw you, I’m gonna make this right. And still he hasn’t.

JR: When you get a minute, you’re alone, what kind of sticks with you about all of this so far?

CHRIS: When I get a minute by myself, I’m not thinking about this. I’m not. I’m thinking about going golfing tomorrow, I’m thinking about going fishing, I’m thinking about my family. Anything but this. Anything I can to not be a part of this anymore. There are times you need to step away, for your own health, for your own sanity you have to step away from it.

JR: It’s a lot of weight for anyone to carry - and for one person that I knew, it became too much.

COURTNEY MILLER, former resident: I just don’t trust their results. We’re all ending up sick, and they're telling us it's safe, and everything’s at a safe level.

JR: I spoke with Courtney Miller after my last trip to East Palestine - we texted back and forth, about how she was getting sick, and wasn’t getting the answers, or the help, she needed. But we were never able to connect in person. That’s because on August 21, 2024, Courtney took her own life. We paid a visit to her home, which sits next to the tracks, along the banks of sulfur run, one of the most impacted creeks in town.

JR: I’ve spoken to Courtney’s family - the wound is still too fresh for them to talk about on camera, but they gave me permission to quote their belief that Courtney’s passing was 100% related to the derailment.

JR: For the people of East Palestine, what happened on February 3rd, 2023 was a wound, one they may be dealing with for the rest of their lives. For Norfolk Southern, it was just another Friday.

JAMI: You’re from this area. When someone first says “sacrifice zone”. Well what the hell’s a sacrifice zone?

JR: That’s us.

JAMI: But we grew up here. When it’s all around you, I don’t think you even notice it until you step outside the box, and you look from the outside looking in.

CHRIS: There’s railways all around this country. If you ever noticed - they’re not in, like, the rich parts of town - they’re in our neighborhoods. They’re in the working class neighborhoods.

JR: There’s an unwritten law of big business in America - if you have enough money, you can get away with almost anything. And if you don’t have the money…well…

CHRIS [showing tattoo on his arm of his EKG]: That one there was when my heart was bad. And that’s just a reminder of what I’ve been through, what I’ve gone through. What I’ve beaten.

JR - What does justice for East Palestine look like for you, and how far are we away from that, right as we’re standing at ground zero right now?

JAMI: You know, I don’t know - I kept thinking we were getting closer to justice and accountability, but every time something comes out, it's more lies, more betrayal from our government….

JAMI: It’s gonna be hard to take this country back, it’s gonna take everyone of us. It’s gonna take people to realize that this could be my community.

JAMI: I know…that I'll never be able to move back here again…but you still just pray that one day, one day you might get your home back.

JR: Hi, thanks for watching our video. If you liked this story and you want more stories like this, be sure to like and subscribe to the channel to get more More Perfect Union in your feed. And if you have stories that you want us to investigate, drop ‘em in the comments below.