The citizens of East Palestine, Ohio are not among the favored groups of Americans. There is no stage on which the Biden Administration can place their altar to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. If only the town could boast of a few Pansexual LGTBQIA, multi-racial locals, little Pete Buttigieg would have hopped on a government jet to attend the Town Hall last night. As our Kim told you, the meeting devolved into finger pointing with no answers. And then, it got worse.

Dithering Pete Buttigieg had this to tweet the night before the town meeting:

“In the wake of the East Palestine derailment and its impact on hundreds of residents, we’re seeing lots of newfound or renewed (and welcome) interest in our work on rail safety, so I wanted to share more about what we’ve been doing in this area,” Buttigieg tweeted at the beginning of the long thread.

“We are making historic investments on rail safety through funding in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, work that accelerates this year and continue in the years to come,” he continued before listing billions in grants and proposed rules and regulations.

That’s so not helpful to the people of East Palestine. That’s not helpful to the 30 million people in the Ohio River Basin. Instead Pothole Pete was looking to dunk on Ted Cruz:

Glad to see newfound bipartisan agreement here. We could start by discussing immediate steps Congress could take to address rail safety & reduce constraints on USDOT in this area. Give us a call, we can do some good work. https://t.co/aqepKENjZz

— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) February 15, 2023

East Palestine Mayor Trent Conway was at the Town Hall last night and Pete Buttigieg’s absence was noticed:

The Mayor of East Palestine DID decide to take questions at the “open house” last night. Resident: Where’s Pete Buttigieg? Where’s he at?
Mayor: I don’t know. Your guess is as good as me. Yesterday was the first time I heard anything from the White House. @LucasFoxNews pic.twitter.com/TXuKFPg9Cx

— Dagen McDowell (@dagenmcdowell) February 16, 2023

The 4700 residents of East Palestine don’t matter. They are powerless. They have a median household income of $44.5 and a 46% unemployment rate. They are mostly White and mostly Trump voters. They’re Appalachians. Sorry. They don’t matter. None of the people in Eastern Ohio, Western Pennsylvania or North West Virginia matter. The people down river on the Ohio in Louisville, Kentucky don’t matter. They don’t move the approved narrative forward.

When I am faced with an issue in which I am not a subject matter expert, I call someone who is. Enter Sil Caggiano, retired Battalion Chief and Hazardous Materials Expert:

Earlier on Wednesday, the World Socialist Web Site spoke with hazardous material expert Sil Caggiano, who refuted this claim. In his 39 years of responding to train accidents and derailments, Caggiano said he had “never heard of a railroad company actually detonating their own containers.”
He continued, “I’m not saying it has never been done. But I have not seen it in any case studies, and I’ve looked at pretty much any spill that has occurred, any incident involving rail cars. What basically they did was take one car, which could have blown up and ruptured one or two more and turned it into a for sure thing.”

Asked why the railroad and state officials knowingly risked the lives and health of the town’s residents, he said, “Because the alternatives to what they did would have taken too long and cost them too much money. If they had put the fire out, they would still have had to handle every one of those containers and its content as hazardous waste, all non-marketable, and they would have to have gotten rid of all that contamination. This way, they don’t have contamination anymore. It burned up and it spread over God knows how much. They got off very cheap in my book.”
Caggiano served as the battalion chief at the fire department in Youngstown, Ohio, before retiring two years ago after 39 years of service. He also sat on the state Hazardous Materials/Weapons of Mass Destruction, Technical Advisory Committee, which oversaw the equipment and training of all of Ohio’s Haz Mat teams.

-snip

Referring to his widely publicized comment that “We basically nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open,” Caggiano told the WSWS, “The reason I said that is based on that guy’s video of the cloud and stuff precipitating out of the cloud. It reminded me of disaster movies, where you see the nuclear winter. Everything is falling out of the clouds—that is what it reminded me of. Yes, that’s what we did. We didn’t use a nuclear weapon, but we did nuke them with chemicals.”
Describing the chemicals on the trains and the health threats from burning them, he said, “Vinyl chloride and ethylhexyl acrylate are cancerous. Vinyl chloride when it burns breaks down into phosgene, which was a World War I killing agent, a choking agent, it sinks to the ground and it would go into the foxholes. Butyl acrylate is flammable and causes skin, eye and respiratory irritation, just like vinyl chloride. Ethylhexyl acrylate, another colorless liquid that they use in plastic production, produces hazardous vapors and kills fish. Ethylene glycol monobutyl, another colorless solvent used in the paints and plastics industry, is acutely toxic and can cause permanent injury. It is highly flammable, and again, the vapors can irritate the eyes, the nose and can cause congestion, headaches and vomiting.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, EPA Administrator Michael Regan, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and White House Resident Joe Biden, you built this. Andrew Whelton, Perdue University Professor of Engineering added this about all of the new combinations made by the explosion:

Today, the Tribune Chronicle printed an open letter from the President and CEO of Norfolk Southern:

We will not walk away, East Palestine.
When I visited East Palestine last week, you told me how the train derailment has upended your lives and how concerned you are about the safety of your air, water, and land. Many of you have also reached out to Norfolk Southern to share your fears, your anger, and your frustration.
I hear you. We hear you.
I know you also have questions about whether Norfolk Southern will be here to help make things right.

My simple answer is that we are here and will stay here for as long as it takes to ensure your safety and to help East Palestine recover and thrive.
Our work is underway. Crews are cleaning the site thoroughly, responsibly, and safely. Our Family Assistance Center is helping community members meet immediate needs. Together with local health officials, we have implemented a comprehensive testing program to ensure the safety of East Palestine’s water, air, and soil. And we have established a $1 million community support fund as a down payment on our commitment to help rebuild.
But our work is far from over. As we continue site clean-up, the NTSB moves forward with its investigation, and necessary environmental testing is carried out, I promise to keep you updated every step of the way.
I know there are still a lot of questions without answers. I know you’re tired. I know you’re worried. We will not let you down.
Alan H. Shaw

So much shine.

And, as I finish this another train has derailed. This one in Van Buren Township outside of Detroit. Their Rep is Debbie Dingell (D). We will see how much more care Michigan gets.

BREAKINGNEWS:#Train carrying hazardous materials just derailed in #Detroit, #Michigan.
These trains derail all too often in the US#trainderailment #TrainDisaster #disaster #Biden #USA #ChemicalDisaster #Chemical #BREAKING pic.twitter.com/ggGlvVCDZa

— Tw¡tter_Trends (@Twetter_Trends) February 16, 2023

Paging Pete Buttigieg

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