There are two United States increasingly distant from each other. It is a political, social and material duality: that of the Republicans thrown into the mountains against the Democrats on the defensive; that of well-informed citizens versus those who consume and spread the craziest conspiracy theories; that of the first economy in the world compared to a country, the same, with an almost third world infrastructure. And all these fractures now emerge in the small town of 4,700 inhabitants that is East Palestine, Ohio, where the derailment of a train with toxic chemicals unleashed panic in a large part of the population and, after a few days of unusual media silence, has ended for becoming the scene of a great political and social anger.
The accident occurred on February 3 when the world was watching for the newly detected Chinese balloon in US airspace. That Friday, 38 of the 50 carriages of a Norfolk Southern train, eleven of them carrying dangerous goods, they came off the rails in that town on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.
Authorities evacuated the nearest population fearing a possible explosion of smoldering debris. To prevent it, the commanding engineers chose to release and burn the toxic vinyl chloride from five of the carriages, causing a controlled fire with a huge cloud of black smoke. The operation did not reassure everyone and it did offer the perfect image for some to mix the obligatory precautions with unjustified alarms; and, above all on social networks, with headless rumors; such as that the showy demolition of the Chinese balloon and three other unidentified objects were a set-up to cover up an "American Chernobyl." A Chernobyl with no deaths and, for the moment, with only a few dozen inhabitants who complained of headaches, nausea and itching.
Senior state and federal officials went to the area and held Norfolk Southern accountable while demanding that it expand its efforts to protect the land where hazardous substances had been spilled. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, promptly reported that airborne and drinking water source tests indicated no danger. And although at first, on February 15, he recommended drinking it bottled, he later insisted on the safety of the one that came out of the tap.
The latter did not matter to Donald Trump when, on February 22, he went to East Palestine to, loaded with thousands of bottles of water with his name, campaign as a candidate for the 2024 elections in a friendly territory that in the 2020 presidential elections. gave him, in that county, more than 70% of his votes.
The Republican leader accused Joe Biden of responding to the concerns of those affected "with indifference and treason." And, like others in his party, he chastised her for going to the Ukraine and Poland – for the first year of the war – instead of visiting the small town of Ohio.
Biden countered that federal rail safety officials went to East Palestine “two hours after the accident”; that, from Poland, he called "all the important figures from Ohio and Pennsylvania"; that it was Trump who, as president, struck down key regulations on train safety.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg traveled to town on Thursday. And, on Friday, the president ordered federal agencies to go door-to-door across East Palestine to care for families affected by the derailment. Biden added that for now he did not plan to go there.
The rapid expiration of news in the US – and around the world – may soon dampen the echoes of the disaster in Ohio. But for now the anger continues. Republicans in the House of Representatives launched an investigation Friday into Buttigieg's belated and what they see as insufficient response. And, in the civil field, the activist Erin Brockovich, immortalized by the film that recounted her fight against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company for a serious case of contamination, fed the flame of vindication of the town when she went there and spoke before some 2,000 of her inhabitants to encourage them to demand to be heard and distrust calls for calm.
Between 1990 and 2021, the United States recorded 54,539 derailments, at a rate of 1,704 per year and more than four per day. Last year the figure dropped to 1,044, eleven of them from trains with dangerous goods. It is to be hoped that the infrastructure law approved in November under the impulse of Biden will change this situation. America should not go off the rails.
