Residents displaced and affected by the recent Norfolk Southern derailment disaster near East Palestine, Ohio, are being treated to emergency cash payments by the railroad. They insist it’s just for initial inconvenience expenses but local lawyers say be careful about taking the checks. You don’t want to sign away all your rights for a few quick bucks.
Residents soothed with money
Residents of towns in Ohio and Pennsylvania are glad to hear that the railroad is coming across with some fast cash. They pulled $1,000,000 out of the bank and are handing it out in $1,000 checks, to start with.
It’s pretty clear to NTSB investigators that Norfolk Southern is going to bear full responsibility for the derailment. The final report isn’t out yet but initial ones focus on an overheated axle. Compounding the axle problem, a critical sensor apparently didn’t sense the danger in time to prevent horridly toxic devastation.
Norfolk Southern issued a press release explaining to residents they “provided families with reimbursements and cash advancements for lodging, travel, food, clothes and other related items.” They didn’t forget about the local retailers.
Fish are dying. Animals are dying. East Palestine is dying. People are next.
And the climate alarmists haven’t said a single word. It was never about the environment.pic.twitter.com/t0e231oZeC
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 15, 2023
“The railroad company is also in the process of contacting and meeting with local businesses to provide aid.” That isn’t the end of their community assistance. They’re trying to make friends before they get sued.
Along with offering residents money to cover short term needs, they “donated $220,000 to the East Palestine Fire Department to replace Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) air packs, which allow firefighters to breathe compressed air when responding to fires.”
They also started passing out more than 100 air purifiers for home use. Larger, professional grade models are “being purchased for the East Palestine municipal building in coordination with the City Manager.” They also “coordinated and funded cleaning and air monitoring services for the East Palestine Elementary and High Schools.”
The company deserves credit
While they’re sure to be slammed for allowing the tragedy to happen in the first place, Norfolk Southern deserves credit for the community support efforts they’ve taken so far. It shows “good faith.” Whether they actually end up making local residents “whole” again, after all is said and done, is something which will take years to actually determine.
Along with the direct relief payments, the company is “developing a charitable fund to support the East Palestine community.” Their release notes that “this goes well beyond an initial contribution of $25,000 to the Ohio Red Cross to support the shelter established at East Palestine High School.”
They’re also shelling out for a whole bunch of environmental monitoring. It appears that their investigators are well aware of the “Toxicant Induced Loss of Tolerance” issues which are likely to plague residents of the community for years to come. To make the EPA happy, they already “completed more than 340 in-home air tests.”
— Kilgore Trout (@Kilgore73862013) February 14, 2023
They report another hundred scheduled while emphasizing that “monitoring has not shown any detection of substances related to the incident and does not indicate a health risk.” Based on current guidelines and regulations, the sufficiency of which hasn’t been conclusively established, in the light of recent TILT research.
Despite the massive clouds of toxic volatile compounds released into the air, with more dumped into the ground, “thousands of data points have been collected during outdoor air monitoring in the community and continues to indicate no risk to health from incident-related substances.” It may smell like burning tires doused in chlorine to local residents but that will pass.
They “sampled the Village of East Palestine’s drinking water supply wells, drinking water system, and private wells in areas potentially impacted by the incident. Sample results will be available in the next week.“
