Buttigieg will tell them to buy an electric car and move to a blue state.
This self-absorbed incompetent little fairy couldn’t care less. He’s probably still on paternity leave for babies that neither he nor his husband birthed.
Voicing their concerns at a town hall on Wednesday night, Ohio residents impacted by this month’s toxic train derailment asked where Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was.
“Where’s Pete Buttigieg? Where’s he at?” one man asked Mayor Trent Conaway.
“I don’t know. Your guess is as good as me,” the mayor replied.
He told attendees that Tuesday was the first time he had “heard anything from the White House.”
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan is on the ground in East Palestine on Thursday to discuss the agency’s efforts leading on the environmental response, a spokesperson for the Transportation Department told Fox News Digital in an email.
“Within hours of the derailment, DOT staff were on the ground to support NTSB’s investigation into the cause of the derailment — and we continue to support this effort,” the DOT spokesperson added. “Secretary Buttigieg has spoken with both [Ohio] Governor DeWine and [Pennsylvania] Governor Shapiro about DOT’s specific role in supporting the NTSB investigation. When the investigation is finished, Secretary Buttigieg asked about joining the governors in East Palestine to collaborate on steps to improve rail safety and hold Norfolk Southern accountable.”
The department had previously noted in an email that the National Transportation Safety Board is the lead investigator in the incident and that the Transportation Department is in a supporting role. It added that the Federal Railroad Administration and Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration were on the ground within hours of the derailment.
Biden turned down disaster relief:
The White House explained why it turned down Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s request for disaster relief this week in the aftermath of a derailment of a train hauling toxic chemicals.
A Biden administration official told Fox News Digital that it has provided extensive assistance to surrounding communities following the chemical release earlier this month in eastern Ohio. However, the official said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the agency that usually provides relief to communities hit by hurricanes and other natural disasters, isn’t best equipped to support the state’s current needs.
……”But what East Palestine needs is much more expansive than what FEMA can provide,” they continued. “FEMA is on the frontlines when there is a hurricane or tornado. This situation is different.”
It’s a derailment of deadly toxic poisons that got absorbed into the air, soil, and water. It’s a disaster, period. Thousands of dead fish are floating in the Ohio river, animals are dying, and people are getting sick, but this situation is “different”.
For its part, Norfolk Southern representatives avoided the townhall meeting they were supposed to attend and they’re throwing “inconvenience’ money at the townspeople.
East Palestine, Ohio is not a huge place. It’s a town of about 5,000 people not far from Pittsburgh. For many years, East Palestine was known as the place that produced dishes and cups and pitchers for America’s hotels. The enormous ceramics works there employed much of the town.
That’s all gone now. And predictably, East Palestine is a lot poorer for it. The median household income in the town is now less than $45,000. East Palestine is overwhelmingly White and it’s politically conservative. More than 70% of the voters in the surrounding counties supported Donald Trump in the last election.
That shouldn’t be relevant, but as you’re about to hear, it very much is. Eleven days ago, 150-car train derailed in East Palestine, and when it did, it spewed poisonous chemicals onto the ground and into the surface waters. After the crash, the Ohio state EPA found evidence of butyl acrylate in the Ohio River as well as in the creeks and streams that feed it. Now, this was a concern for more than simply East Palestine, given that the Ohio River supplies drinking water to about a tenth of the entire US population.
So this train derailment was an environmental disaster, not an “environmental disaster” like climate change is, but an actual environmental disaster, a disaster that’s hurting actual people.
And then it got worse. Several days after the derailment, officials decided it was a good idea to set fire to the spilled chemicals. And the result of that decision was a giant toxic mushroom cloud over the entire region. So given the evident crisis in East Palestine, how did the federal government and the Biden administration respond?
Well, under Pete Buttigieg, the Department of Transportation, which responds to train derailments, took decisive action. Pete Buttigieg announced something called Transit Equity Day. That’s yet another day that we celebrate race-based federal funding, that, despite the trail train derailment, does not apply to East Palestine because the people who live there are the wrong color. So instead, Buttigieg’s DOT announced an $80 million project to improve the roads in Philadelphia and $24 million for the roads in Detroit, both of which vote Democrat.
……So after that controlled burn of the deadly chemicals, officials told residents within East Palestine that if you live within a two-mile radius of the derailment, you had to shelter in place and keep your windows closed. Residents closer to the mushroom cloud were put up in a hotel. Within days, they were all let back into their home without the Department of Transportation in Washington saying a word. As one hazardous material specialist put it, “The whole town may be unsafe as a result of this.”
……if this affected the rich or the favored poor, it would be the lead of every news channel in the world. But it happened to the poor benighted town of East Palestine, Ohio, whose people are forgotten And in the view of the people who lead this country, forgettable. So no big deal.
The hazmat specialist in that video, Sil Caggiano explained to local media that it’s such vinyl chloride on the train, that’s not the only threat. There’s also ethylene gas and we’re quoting. “You’re looking at five, 10, 15, 20 years down the line until you see potential long-term effects. This stuff seeks low lying areas. It could be in sewers, it could be in nooks, crannies and crevices. Of course, that’s how poison gas works. Ask anyone in Verdun.
Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) and Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) made the feckless decision to allow the EPA to conduct a “controlled burn” of the chemicals in the derailed cars. Shapiro said that the vent and burn operation went “as planned,” and that “no concerning” air and water quality readings have been detected.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
500 tons of toxic chemicals.
Anyone who thinks the environment is safe where the chemicals were spilled and burned, should go to East Palestine, take a big gulp of the water, a deep breath, and walk around in the soil a while. That includes the railroad CEOs like Alan Shaw.
BTW: The company conducting the water testing, the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health (CTEH),was hired by Norfolk Southern and has been known to serve corporate interest instead of public health.
A citizen of East Palestine described an interaction with a CTEH contractor and an EPA official that came to test the air quality at her home:
We were told by Norfolk personnel that the agency coming to our homes to test was from independent laboratories. Now, what I can tell you first hand is that we had a gentleman from CTEH, which is the so-called independent laboratory, we had spoken to him very informally, and he said, “we follow around the railroad when they make mistakes, and they are happy to have us here.”
When CTEH came to our facility to test our air, they had not offered water services at that point in time; they handed me a contract that essentially said that I needed to hold Norfolk, their affiliates, including CTEH, harmless of any future liabilities.
I didn’t sign it, but unfortunately, 340 other residents did sign it. That’s where my heart just breaks for these people because we don’t know the long-term repercussions of what these chemicals can do in our air to our environment to our businesses and they’ve signed their rights away in the hopes that they are getting help and the right answers from these organizations.
CTEH the affiliate of Norfolk that came to test the air was followed by the EPA. We asked if the EPA can come into our kennel and can they test themselves because they are a government organization that has the ability and they have the testing equipment with them and the answer was absolutely not.
……the EPA is not testing homes and businesses and instead recommending residents sign contracts with CTEH, a consulting firm hired by Norfolk Southern with a controversial reputation.
The contract:
“Biden would rather help out someone who breaks into the country illegally than the people of East Palestine,” he said. “Remember, Democrats moved heaven and earth for a Venezuelan migrant? They will buy them a culturally appropriate piece of food, put them up in a posh hotel here in Times Square, give them phones, X-Boxes, plane tickets, even lawyers. Democrat mayors will even sleep overnight in a sleeping bag in Brooklyn just to make some illegal feel more comfortable. See, it’s not so bad, even I’m doing it,” referring to a recent public relations stunt by New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
“But when our own citizens get toxic chemicals spilled all over their town, they light the chemicals on fire and make them sign lawsuit waivers and then no show at the town hall that way in 10 years when they get cancer they can’t sue them? We have spent billions helping illegals but we’re going to stiff red-blooded Americans in Ohio and then claim we care about the forgotten men and women of this country? Pretend to care about the working man? Pretend to care about the environment? It doesn’t matter what Democrats say. Just watch what they do and right now they aren’t doing a thing,” Watters said.
The Daily Wire noted that several first responders who worked the crash site have reported symptoms such as a “bad cough, headaches, sore throat, and diarrhea.”
The EPA chief pledges to hold train company accountable. Just great. The EPA is a corrupt polluter that has never been held accountable for the disasters it created. EPA Administrator Michael Regan has the gall to say that the East Palestine folks should ‘trust the government‘.
This disaster is going to cause health problems for the town and surrounding areas for a long time.
The lawsuits will be huge.
Related post:
Related articles:
https://kanekoa.substack.com/p/east-palestine-toxicology-test-relies
https://www.foxnews.com/us/national-guard-called-assist-aftermath-ohio-train-derailment
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/us/ohio-train-derailment-east-palestine-thursday/index.html