It’s been three years since a Norfolk Southern “bomb train” carrying toxic chemicals derailed in the small town of East Palestine, OH, on the night of Feb. 3, 2023. Three days later, Norfolk Southern pressured local authorities to make the disastrous and completely unnecessary decision to empty five giant carloads of vinyl chloride into a ditch and set the contents on fire. The “controlled burn” of vinyl chloride released a massive black chemical plume into the air and exposed residents in East Palestine and the surrounding areas to deadly toxins in one of the worst industrial disasters in US history. Three years later, residents in East Palestine and the surrounding area are still suffering the toxic fallout.
While Norfolk Southern, opportunistic politicians, sensationalist media outlets, and most of the public have moved on and forgotten about the mass poisoning of these residents, we at TRNN have not forgotten them, and we won’t give up on them. I’ve been interviewing and filming reports with residents in and around East Palestine for the past three years, including for our Izzy-Award-winning documentary Trainwreck in ‘Trump Country’: Partisan politics hasn’t helped East Palestine, OH. To commemorate the three-year anniversary, I have compiled here all of my original reporting for TRNN on the Norfolk Southern train derailment and chemical disaster in East Palestine.
Please I beg you, don’t forget about the people affected by this disaster. Listen to their testimonies, share their stories everywhere you can, keep fighting to hold their poisoners accountable. Because what happened to them is a national tragedy and a humanitarian outrage. Because they are working people just like you and me, they are our neighbors, and they did nothing to cause this disaster, even though they are the ones paying the ultimate price for the corporate greed and government negligence that did. And because what happened to them could happen to any of us as corporations and the government continue to turn more of the US into a “sacrifice zone.”
2023
- East Palestine, Ohio: A hell of Wall Street’s making
- ‘This was preventable’: Railroad workers explain how Wall Street caused the East Palestine derailment
- East Palestine, 100 Days Later
- East Palestine residents have been left behind—and they’re running out of water
- He tried to raise the alarm about railroad safety. Then he got fired.
- Without action, East Palestine will happen again
- East Palestine residents still need help—the labor movement should be an ally
- The US government has abandoned East Palestine
- They were just another East Palestine family—until Norfolk Southern set off a bomb in their lives
2024
- One year later, East Palestine residents want Norfolk-Southern held accountable
- A new coalition demands healthcare and justice for East Palestine
- East Palestine residents demand fully-funded healthcare
- From East Palestine to Pike County: Ohio’s ‘sacrifice zone’ communities gather in Toledo
- Trainwreck in ‘Trump Country’: Partisan politics hasn’t helped East Palestine, OH (DOCUMENTARY)
- ‘Let’s unite!’: Poisoned residents of America’s sacrifice zones are banding together
2025
- ‘I had to move away from everything that I ever had’: Chemically exposed residents of East Palestine, OH, and Conyers, GA, have been left behind
- Corporations and the government are turning the USA into one giant ‘sacrifice zone’
- A billion-dollar company poisoned my home and destroyed my town
- An industrial disaster wrecked my home. Now I’m living out of a hotel.
- Residents in this small town ‘left for dead’ after industrial disaster
- They poisoned a whole community. The EPA helped cover it up.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.