A year on, a small town is recovering but health fears persist

>> Daily life largely returned to normal for most of the nearly 5,000 residents of East Palestine, Ohio, after a Norfolk Southern train derailed and spilled a cocktail of hazardous chemicals that caught fire a year ago, but the worries and fears are always there.

Some people still report respiratory problems, rashes or headaches, or say they feel ill whenever they return to the village not far from the Pennsylvania border. At least several dozen haven’t returned to their homes, concerned about chemicals like the vinyl chloride that was released and burned when officials blew open five derailed tank cars because they worried the cars might explode.

But others believe the EPA’s findings that their air and water are safe. They say they’re ready to move on and take advantage of all the money the railroad and governments are investing in the area.

They don’t want the derailment to define their town.

“We’re going to move forward with our lives,” said Village Council member Linda May.

It’s just harder for some residents to do that.

Misti Allison said that over the past year, her 8-year-old son Blake has asked whether he is going to die from living at their home, or whether one of the really bad nosebleeds he’s started having will ever stop.

“I remember once he jumped in a puddle, and he stopped and looked at me and said, ‘Is vinyl chloride in this puddle?’ And that is just so sad,” said Allison, who testified before Congress last spring about the derailment alongside the railroad’s CEO and later ran unsuccessfully for mayor to try to get the town to focus more on health concerns. “It’s really robbed our children of some of their childhood, and hopefully not more than just that.”

‘Scarred for life’

Sam Chirico said she’s still experiencing a rash that her doctors call chemical dermatitis. They’ve prescribed different creams and lotions that don’t seem to work.

Steroids did help, but as a diabetic they raised her blood sugar levels too much, so she stopped taking them.

“I’m kind of scarred for life,” Chirico, wearing a shirt that read “East Palestine Strong,” told The Associated Press inside her home just over a mile away from the crash site.