Sil Caggiano, a hazardous materials specialist who works for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has been fairly open with the press on how he understands what just happened in East Palestine, Ohio:
“We basically nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open.”
On February 3rd, 2023, about fifty train cars from a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. At least ten of these cars were carrying a toxic cocktail of a variety of hazardous chemicals. A “controlled release” of the chemicals was conducted by the state, meaning these toxic chemicals were burned off into the atmosphere. This release created a deadly geyser of smoke which rose into the sky to spread poison for “hundreds of miles” according to officials. This is an event that will affect health throughout the US and Canada, if not the entire planet.
The derailment in Ohio is a full-scale toxic disaster. The Ohio river is reportedly full of dead fish and animals both wild and domestic are dying. This is within days of the derailment and burn off. Caggiano (EPA) recommends that all residents “get a health checkup”. Had he left it there it would have sounded like the generalized statement of a man who didn’t know what to say, but he added that everyone was going to want to have a record of how their health is right now to compare it with a later date. He said, “We will be dealing with this 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the line”.
Railway workers and their unions had been actively trying to prevent this exact disaster. They referred to it as a “ticking time-bomb”. Rail workers have seen a dramatic increase in both the number of cars per train and the tonnage of the load. This is happening over the course of the last decade which also offered a decrease in maintenance and inspections with an increase in pressure to shave time from hauls. Combine this with the fact that they cut 22% of their workforce since 2017. Employees are exhausted and overworked in general. They don’t have days off or sick leave though their job is to safely transport pure death on faulty brakes.
Norfolk Southern itself made 12 billion in revenue in 2021. They use these profits to lobby against safety regulations and buy politicians rather than simply do a good job at being a railroad company and an employer.
Though no human was killed in the derailment, the death toll is coming, and everyone knows it. Meanwhile politicians block a safety rule that would expand the use of better braking technologies in order to please the lobbyists who develop and run their careers. A former federal safety official has reportedly stated: “There will be more derailments and more releases of hazardous materials.”
While railway workers and their unions struggle for greater safety, specifically to replace braking systems from the civil war era, railroad administrators seek to further decrease the frequency of brake inspections. There are currently five railroad unions all in agreement that this reduction will “only deliver yet another financial windfall to rail carriers by eliminating inspections, testing and repairs, and deferring routine maintenance”.
There is a report that a right-wing journalist (from NewsNation) was arrested and held in a jail cell for five days for doing a live newscast during a governor’s speech. Norfolk Southern and their union busters are under rightful criticism from journalists across the political spectrum. It is likely, judging from this incident, that other journalists and vloggers are also being confiscated from the streets.
There must be silence surrounding the fact that there are answers to these problems. There must be silence around the fact that workers know their jobs and what they require to do them well. There must be silence around the fact that workers want to do a good job. There must be silence surrounding the power the labor force has to meaningfully undermine the ruling classes.
Listen to Secret Antenna’s last episode:
Fight Like Hell by Kim Kelly (briefly) and A Radical Conversation with a Union Organizer.
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