Residents who live near the Pennsylvania-Ohio border close to this month’s catastrophic train derailment told lawmakers horror stories Thursday of skin rashes, headaches, sick animals and an overwhelming sense of helplessness.
“The whole sky was black,” Darlington, Pennsylvania, resident Amanda Kemmer told a state Senate committee hearing in Beaver County, recalling the release of toxic chemicals that followed the derailment. “And then you get this chemical smell in the house.”
Ultimately, said Ms. Kemmer, a mother of four, “everyone had a headache and didn’t feel well and was sick to their stomach.”
The hearing by the Senate Veterans Affairs & Emergency Preparedness Committee, chaired by state Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin, lasted more than five hours at Community College of Beaver County. It came almost three weeks after the derailment of the Norfolk Southern train upended life for residents of East Palestine, Ohio, and neighbors in both states.
The committee’s two leaders voiced their displeasure with railway company Norfolk Southern. Mr. Mastriano pointed to an empty chair placed at the front of the hearing, meant to highlight the company’s decision not to attend. Mastriano later said the committee would likely vote to subpoena Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw to testify when lawmakers return to Harrisburg. The company had cited the ongoing investigation into the derailment in saying it would not join the hearing.
State Sen. Katie Muth, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said the catastrophe “is a result of corporate greed. Tenfold.”
Lawmakers also heard from a panel of state officials, including Randy Padfield, director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. Mr. Padfield said Pennsylvania officials were blindsided by a decision to do a “vent and burn” of five derailed cars containing the toxic gas vinyl chloride. Norfolk Southern and Ohio officials had described the controlled release of the chemicals as necessary to avert an explosion that could have sent dangerous shrapnel flying up to a mile.
But Mr. Padfield said his agency was originally told that only one tanker car containing hazardous chemicals would be subjected to that process. Norfolk Southern, he said, “failed to articulate their decision process for getting to that option.”
The hearing came during a series of rapid-fire developments in the aftermath of the Feb. 3 derailment.
The National Transportation Safety Board released preliminary findings of its investigation Thursday, saying the train passed through three temperature sensors designed to flag problems like the hot wheel bearing that eventually failed that day. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg also visited East Palestine on Thursday, a day after former President Donald Trump made his own appearance. And celebrity environmental advocate Erin Brockovich is scheduled to visit the Ohio village on Friday.
At the hearing, Richard Negrin, acting Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection, said water testing is ongoing on the Pennsylvania side of the border.
In response to a remark from Ms. Muth that groundwater contamination can travel seven to 10 miles, Mr. Negrin said officials believe there isn’t significant risk in Pennsylvania because groundwater generally flows east-to-west in the area — meaning toward the derailment site, not away from it.
Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding said test results will have a significant bearing on both production and “perception” of food in the area. A state database, he said, shows there are 400 farms in Beaver County with livestock.
Several first responders also testified.
Beaver County Director of Emergency Services Eric Brewer said it was clear as soon as Pennsylvania units arrived following the derailment that “this was large. No one agency was going to handle this.”
He said his agency didn’t have all the information that was necessary, but, “We did the best we could with the information we had.”
But it was the emotional accounts of residents — most but not all who live in Pennsylvania — that seemed to capture lawmakers’ attention most.
“I am heartbroken,” said Sheila Stiegler, who described herself as a wife, mother and grandmother who lives 15 miles northeast of the derailment site. “I am so very angry.”
The night after the derailment, she said, “there was a strange odor in the air.” Her family put livestock indoors, destroyed eggs as a precaution and grew frustrated when they couldn’t find information online from Pennsylvania officials.
She and others, she said, felt “abandoned” by Gov. Josh Shapiro.
Later, after the release and burning of chemicals produced a massive black cloud in the Beaver County sky, she noticed “tiny particulates like fine ash floating down through the air.”
She ticked off a series of questions for which she had no answers: whether milk and eggs from the farm were safe, whether her soil was contaminated, whether it was safe to grow crops, and, “Will my family be part of a cancer cluster in years to come?”
Kenneth Dunn of New Castle told lawmakers he enjoys hunting, fishing and boating, and since the derailment has seen banks of waterways “just covered with dead fish.”
He brought samples of dead fish from those areas, but officials would not allow them to be brought into the college gym where the hearing was held.
Katie Schwarzwaelder, who lives close to the state line in Pennsylvania about 1 mile from the derailment site, said four dogs at her breeding kennel got sick as the catastrophe unfolded. She described evacuating as an ordeal, and said one building on her property has been filled with a “metallic chemical smell.”
And Lonnie Miller of East Palestine, a mother and small business owner whose home is about 1,800 feet from the derailment site, broke down in tears as she described explosions, fires and breaking out in rashes.
She asked lawmakers to consider how Norfolk Southern, only hours after the derailment, was already building new tracks near her home — even as the fires burned: “We just want some answers, OK?”
_____
