Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has finally deigned to pay a visit to East Palestine, Ohio, as of Thursday morning, close to a full three weeks after the massive Norfolk Southern train derailment and the chemical fallout which has severely impacted the small town whose residents have been quite outspoken in their frustration, stating that the issue has not gotten its proper amount of attention from those within the Biden administration.
Both local and state authorities previously chose to order the evacuation of all residents that were situated within a mile of the incident area and initiated a controlled burn-off of the corrosive industrial chemicals on the train as a means to reduce the chances of an explosion that could have hurled shrapnel all across the small town. The main chemical which was worrying was vinyl chloride, a highly carcinogenic chemical utilized in the manufacture of PVC, which was released from a total of five train cars in the form of giant plumes of very dark and acrid smoke which were dense enough to see from areas of western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio.
Buttigieg finally made it out to East Palestine in the wee hours of the morning on the 23rd of February, as stated in a report from CBS News. The Biden administration secretary stated to the outlet that he did not pay a visit to the community at any point sooner because he wished to give the National Transportation Safety Board and all other federal agencies the workspace to “lead the safety work,” which he says is the normal operating procedure of anyone in his position. “But I am very eager to have conversations with people in East Palestine about how this has impacted them.”
This visit from the transportation secretary takes place just a single day after the arrival of former President Donald Trump who came down to hand out several pallets of bottled water, thousands of gallons of cleaning supplies, and multiple other goods intended to assist residents. The former president, who has already announced his campaign for a 2024 presidential run, drew the attention of the public to a number of criticism of the Biden administration’s handling of the ordeal.
Buttigieg, who has had to deal with a significant number of very high-profile infrastructure problems across his tenure, stated earlier this past week that he would be paying a visit out to East Palestine “when the time is right.” He contended via social media that “some in Washington” want this trip to the small town to be the “main focus so that there aren’t too many questions about rail safety regulation, who is for and who is against.”
