‘Think we’re dumb hicks’

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — Residents reeling from the Norfolk Southern train crash and chemical spill feel left behind by the government.

“Local officials and [Ohio] Gov. [Mike] DeWine have been telling us it’s safe to go home. But how do they know it’s safe? They don’t . . . They think we’re all dumb hicks who voted for Trump and they can pull anything over on us,” said Lindsay Johnston, 26, whose family has been staying with relatives and in hotels since the crash. “They do know we can’t vote against them if we’re dead . . . It’s not surprising [President] Biden chose going to Ukraine over us. Why would he care about us? He knows we’re not going to vote for him.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg made the trip to the town Thursday, 20 days after the disaster, following huge backlash aimed at the Biden administration for seemingly ignoring the spillage. He arrived a day after former President Donald Trump landed and distributed pallets of Trump-branded water.

Johnston, who is married with two little girls, Paisley 4, and Cora, 1, fled the house she and her husband bought just three years ago hours after the Feb. 3 disaster because it’s located in the “one-mile zone” surrounding the rail crash site, where 1.1 million pounds of toxic vinyl chloride were spilled and later burned, sending black plumes of smoke into the air and contaminating soil and water sources. The two have only gone back a few times to pick up things since.

“Every time we’ve been back, we get rashes and sore throats,” Johnston said. “My husband had trouble breathing for three days the last time.”

Though DeWine and the EPA told residents it was safe to return to their homes five days after the derailment, the data they were using came from tests paid for by the railway company.

“We have a 27-year mortgage on a home we might never be able to live in again — or sell. And it’s like no one cares,” she added.