On the evening of February 3, 2023, residents situated around the Ohio-Pennsylvania border were settled in for a typical chilly Winter night, completely unaware that their lives and surroundings would be changed permanently in a matter of minutes. On that evening, in the small town of East Palestine, Ohio, only several miles from the Pennsylvania border, a 150-car Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in spectacular fashion. Residents of East Palestine who live near the train tracks have described the event as “seeming like a terrorist attack,” filling the skies with enormous fireballs and turning a peaceful February evening into a cacophony of twisted metal and distressing explosions.
And just like that, thousands of innocent people became subject to perhaps the greatest environmental disaster within American borders in decades. Families who had settled in one community for 50-plus years were suddenly faced with the decision of evacuating their homes or risk staying and possibly facing prolonged toxic chemical exposure. Then, on February 6, a “controlled chemical burn” was performed on the site of the derailment, allowing Norfolk Southern to clear the tracks and resume scheduled rail operations. However, the controlled burn wildly compounded the problem, releasing massive amounts of the toxic chemical vinyl chloride into the air, where it eventually will come back down and settle into the soil and water, an enormous source of concern for residents in the area.
A fairly sizeable region of the country has now been rendered a toxic wasteland, and there doesn’t seem to be any recourse for those affected or any punishment for those responsible. It’s a tale that’s sadly growing painfully familiar in modern America, just substitute out the names, industry, and circumstance. The intensity and frequency of malfeasance by corporate actors only increases every year, but it often feels like these cataclysmic events can only be addressed with a whimper. The government, which in theory exists to put a check on powerful corporate actors, has become so thoroughly co-opted that it now essentially acts as the counsel to corporations, helping them dodge any potentially nasty repercussions. The Norfolk Southern train derailment is so stunning because we see it in such naked terms: the inability to help people even in the slightest whose lives have been ruined through no fault of their own.
Norfolk Southern has taken a series of steps in recent years to essentially ensure something like the catastrophic derailment in Ohio would happen in the near future. If one looks at it cynically, it seems like derailments are built into their business plan as they have calculated that dealing with derailments is less expensive than updating its infrastructure. In a 2021 Associated Press article, derailments like the one in East Palestine were foreshadowed. As the article details, “Even as railroads are operating longer and longer freight trains that sometimes stretch for miles, the companies have drastically reduced staffing levels, prompting unions to warn that moves meant to increase profits could endanger safety and even result in disasters. More than 22% of the jobs at railroads Union Pacific, CSX and Norfolk Southern have been eliminated since 2017 when CSX implemented a cost-cutting system called Precision Scheduled Railroading that most other U.S. railroads later copied. BNSF, the largest U.S. railroad and the only one that hasn’t expressly adopted that model, has still made staff cuts to improve efficiency and remain competitive. The railroads acknowledge they have cut staff, lengthened trains, and made other adjustments to reduce spending, but they are adamant none of the changes increase dangers. Regulators at the Federal Railroad Administration say they are tracking the changes and that the data so far does not show the new operating model is unsafe. But unions counter that with the stakes so high any time a train derails, the new system is risky.”
“Every time the wheels come off the rail, it’s kind of like buying a lottery ticket to the big disaster,” said Jason Cox with the carmen division of the Transportation Communications Union in the 2021 AP article. Unfortunately, the residents in Ohio-Pennsylvania seem to be holding the winning lottery ticket to the big disaster, and there aren’t any solutions on the horizon for them. Shockingly, the chemicals being carried on the derailed train, most notably vinyl chloride, were not classified as high-hazard chemicals, thus it was not being regulated as a high-hazard flammable train. Documents show that when current transportation safety rules were first created, a federal agency sided with industry lobbyists and limited regulations governing the transport of hazardous compounds. The decision effectively exempted many trains hauling dangerous materials — including the one in Ohio — from the high-hazard classification and its more stringent safety requirements. Amid the lobbying blitz against stronger transportation safety regulations, Norfolk Southern paid executives millions and spent billions on stock buybacks — all while the company shed thousands of employees despite warnings that understaffing was intensifying safety risks. Norfolk Southern officials also fought off a shareholder initiative that could have required company executives to “assess, review, and mitigate risks of hazardous material transportation.”
Following the derailment, more scrutiny was placed on the 2017 decision by the Trump administration to rescind part of the rule that would have required railroad companies to update their braking systems. Currently, many trains are outfitted with braking systems from the Civil War era, over 150 years ago, and there was a push in 2014 for rail companies to use Electronically Controlled Pneumatic brakes, which would reduce train stopping distances by as much as 60% compared to older systems. But the lobbying groups of the rail companies pushed for the rule’s repeal, stating that the costs would not be worth any potential safety benefits. The industry-wide effort worked and essentially made the government completely bow to their wishes. Ultimately, a derailment like the one in Ohio would have been substantially less severe with the updated braking system.
The Trump administration rescinded the rule, but the Biden administration came in and neglected to fix anything. It is pretty much bipartisan consensus in Washington, D.C. that both parties will largely act as friends, enablers, and co-participants in allowing absurd corporate malfeasance. The two parties work in concert in not preventing these abuses. President Biden still hasn’t visited the crash site in the over two months since it happened, which is simply inexcusable. It’s reached the point where it’s comical to expect either of the two major political parties to do anything for the average person; they’re both completely corrupt and self-serving. There is a giant environmental disaster several hours from Washington, D.C. and the President can’t even be bothered to visit the site. It’s stunning to think about.
As more reports from East Palestine, Ohio, come in, it becomes more obvious how severe this disaster is and will continue to be. Residents who have stayed in town are reporting chemical burns, constant sore throats, headaches, vomiting, and other illnesses while just going about their days. Residents who have left the town are quickly facing severe financial problems after prioritizing their health, making it more likely that they will simply have to return to their contaminated residences. More harrowing than the crash itself, which is obviously terrible, is the realization that our government is incapable of addressing systemic problems anymore. The East Palestine derailment is simply a microcosm of what happens when the government allows corporations to essentially own it. Norfolk Southern and its executives should be facing serious repercussions, even the possibility of nationalization, but the government is more interested in finding ways to help the company out of the mess it created and doing nothing to help the people needlessly affected by the disaster resulting from gross negligence.
What is the point of the government if it essentially rolls out the red carpet for massive corporations? What does it say about the role of a president if he or she doesn’t even feel the need to visit an environmental catastrophe only hours from Washington, D.C.? Every year, it seems the government washes its hands of more and more of its actual purpose until it has become fully fused with the corporations it is supposed to regulate. Both parties have teamed up to allow the rail industry to not follow proper safety protocols, not invest in updating its infrastructure, and focus on profit to the detriment of every other aspect of its business model. And now a community has been completely ruined, thousands of people are left with nowhere to turn, and very few people in Washington, D.C. actually care. The rail companies and executives are certainly not unique as that is how any corporation and its executives will move forward if the government allows them to act with total impunity. This is a failure of the government, not corporations, as corporations are always compelled to follow the bottom line. It’s up to the government to place checks and balances on corporate actions, but the American government no longer does that, and we’re seeing the fallout become more obvious with each passing year.
