DeWine Provides Update on Cleanup Efforts After Train Derailment in East Palestine Transcript

… Local state and federal officials regarding the train derailment in East Palestine. Speaking today will be Federal Railroad Administrator, Amit Bose, the Region Five U.S. EPA Administrator, Debra Shore, CDC ATSDR, crew Lead, Jill Shugart, Region Five Administrator, Thomas Sivak. And finally, Governor Mike DeWine and First Lady Fran DeWine. Available for questions. We’ll have Andy Wilson, the Ohio Department of Public Safety Director, Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, who is the Ohio Department of Health Director, Anne Vogel, Ohio EPA Director. East Palestine Mayor, Trent Conaway, and East Palestine Fire Chief, Trent Drabick. After remarks, we will open it up for questions. I ask that you state your name and your affiliation. And with that, I’ll turn it over.

Good afternoon. Thank you, governor DeWine and the First lady, for joining us this afternoon. I want to thank the residents of East Palestine for having us here. We are here to serve you and ensure that we are doing everything in our power to make freight rail safer for your community and communities like yours across the country. I am grateful to FEMA for organizing these daily briefings, as well as Peggy Clark and Brian Rutledge with the Columbiana County Emergency Management Agency for working with FRA to bring this vehicle behind me here today. I also want to recognize the bipartisan group of senators, including Senators Brown and Vance of Ohio, who announced important legislation this morning to help advance rail safety and accountability, Justice Secretary Buttigieg asked Congress to do.

(02:24)
A lot of the specific parts of their bill stemmed from the three part drive that the Secretary announced a little over a week ago to increase freight rail accountability and improve safety. Following the February 3rd Norfolk Southern derailment, I want to thank the FRA staff who were on the ground that first night and the team who were here supporting the National Transportation Safety Board investigation in the initial days.

(02:56)
I fully recognize this derailment continues to upend daily lives. The needs of East Palestine and the rail safety needs of all communities is at the top of my mind. The U.S. Department of Transportation will continue to use our tools to hold Norfolk Southern accountable for the derailment and to improve freight rail safety across the country. Last Wednesday, alongside colleagues from the DOT’s Pipelines and Hazardous Safety Materials Administration and others, I joined a planned inspection of the tank cars involved in the derailment. Secretary Buttigieg went to the derailment site and got an update on the investigation from the National Transportation Safety Board last Thursday. Department of Transportation continues to actively support the NTSB-led investigation of the derailment and our work here in support of East Palestine continues as well. Today, with the help of specialized vehicles like the one behind me, FRA personnel are kicking off a nationwide focused inspections on routes that carry high hazard flammable trains and other trains carrying large volumes of hazardous materials. It’s going to start right here in East Palestine. These inspections will use a combination of human inspection and technology combined. We need to keep our nation’s railroads safe. Our focused inspections will be multifaceted. We will evaluate the conditions of track quality using our automated track inspection program, signal and train control infrastructure and systems, operating practices, dispatch and crew, mechanical equipment, including tank cars used to transport hazardous materials and hazardous materials packaging, and other aspects of compliance included in the pipeline’s Hazardous Material Safety Administration guidelines.

(05:07)
Taken together, these are critical components of maintaining a safe and reliable rail network for the people working on railroads and the many people that live near them. Today’s initiative is complimentary to FRA’s existing regulatory inspection oversight and enforcement programs, and this focused effort will start again here in East Palestine and then expand to communities across the country. Working with the Pipelines Hazardous Material Safety Administration, FRA is identifying and prioritizing the routes that carry hazardous materials using a combination of visual inspections and automated track inspection technology to assess rail infrastructure, that detects potential safety concerns, and prevents potential derailments.

(06:03)
The initiatives make good on one of the key Department of Transportation actions in Secretary Buttigieg’s three part drive I mentioned earlier. In addition to the focused inspections, prioritizing hazardous materials routes, FRA also issued a safety advisory just yesterday about hot bearing wayside detectors. On Monday, secretary Buttigieg called on the class one railroads, including Norfolk Southern to join FRA’s close call reporting program and more actions are coming on the way to advance DOT’s number one priority, safety.

(06:48)
FRA will continue to use all tools and resources available to support the secretary’s three part drive. We will continue to take steps to ensure the highest level of safety, and so that no community experiences what the people of East Palestine are going through right now and have endured in the last several weeks. Again, we are grateful to the bipartisan group of senators for introducing new legislation today. We look forward to working with Congress to do more on this important issue. Before I turn it over to the EPA regional administrator and FEMA, I want to say thank you to our federal, local, and state partners on the ground and to all of you for doing your part to get out accurate and timely information. We look forward to the continued collaboration. We stand ready to be of further assistance to the community. Thank you.

Thank you, director Bose, and good afternoon everyone. I’m Debra Shore, the regional administrator for U.S. EPA Region five. I’ll start with a brief operational update. EPA has conducted 585 home reentry screenings to date, and continues air monitoring at 16 stations within the community. There have been no exceedances for residential air quality standards, and outdoor air quality remains normal. EPA’s continuing to offer the air screening service to any resident within the evacuation zone who wants a screening. I encourage anyone who hasn’t taken advantage of the service to get in touch with us. Tomorrow evening, Thursday, is our next public meeting and resource fair at the high school. From 6:00 until 9:00 PM we’ll be holding a resource fair in the gymnasium to give folks a chance to talk one-on-one with staff from EPA, from HHS, from the Ohio EPA and other agencies.

(09:07)
At EPAs request and per EPAs order, Norfolk Southern will attend tomorrow’s town hall. From 6:30 to 7:30, we’ll provide a response update and a Q&A session in the auditorium. And out in the parking lot, we’ll have the TAGA Bus so people will get a chance to take a closer look. I talked about this bus yesterday. It’s the Trace Atmospheric Gas Analyzer Mobile Laboratory, which can conduct real time air monitoring and sampling analyses during the removal of contaminated waste. Within hours after the derailment, EPA began conducting stationary and roaming air monitoring and sampling in the community. And now as

… we transition to the longer term remediation phase. EPA will also be using the Taga bus, which will conduct realtime air monitoring and sampling analyses during waste removal. This means we don’t have to send samples away for analysis, we can analyze them right here as we collect them. Yesterday we opened our community welcome center at 25 North Market Street. We had a great turnout and I know we’ve had many visitors today. This is a place where members of the community can meet with staff from EPA and other agencies, to get their questions answered and to learn more about services available to support the community. We’ll be open from 8:00 in the morning till 8:00 in the evening every day.

(10:54)
Later this week, we’ll be opening a new incident command post, outside of East Palestine near Columbiana. This will give us enough space to park all the mobile command posts and labs and trailers that we need to oversee this cleanup, without taking up your parking spaces and inconveniencing the residents of East Palestine. These past couple of weeks, we’ve all been working out of Centenary United Methodist Church. They’ve been extremely flexible and welcoming, but I know they’d like to have their building back. I want to assure you that even though we’re moving our command post, we are not leaving East Palestine nor the wider community. We won’t leave until the work is done. The welcome center will still be here and we’ll still be here. We’re committed to this community. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Captain Jill Shugart, and I am currently serving as the CDC ATSDR team lead here in East Palestine. Today, I’d like to update you just on a couple of things that we’re working on. So in coordination with our local and state health partners, we will be going door to door tomorrow in East Palestine, offering residents in certain areas the opportunity to take the ACE survey, our assessment of chemical exposures. We also are continuing to work with our local, state, and federal partners on community community engagement activities, such as those that Deborah just mentioned. We have staff available to provide public health information and also materials. And then finally, we have been working with local, state, and federal first responder leaders and first responders, to talk with them and prepare our ACE first responder survey that we will be finalizing this week. That’s it for us today. Thank you.

Thank you, Captain Shugart. My name is Tom Seavek and I’m the regional administrator for Femur Region five. I’m going to provide a couple updates for today. Earlier this afternoon, our teams were in the field handing out flyers out into the community. We were meeting the community where they were at. As of this afternoon, at two o’clock, our teams were able to flyer places within East Palestine to a 400 residents. And then also that brings our total in the last couple of days in a few days to 1200 flyers throughout the entire community. These flyers have a lot of information for the community. Air water, air water testing, soil sampling, and just general questions. If anyone has any questions, please call 866-361-0526. Again, that number is 861-365-0526. We are committed to the safety of the people of East Palestinian surrounding communities, and we will continue to focus on this effort for as long as we are needed. It’s not my honor to bring up Governor DeWine for the final comments.

Good afternoon everyone. Fran and I have spent the day here in East Palestine. I think this is my fourth trip back since the rail derailment. I just want to say that I continue to be impressed by the resiliency of the people of village, by their attitude and how many people are pitching in to really make a difference every single day, not just in the community, but outside of the community. Also, we had the chance to watch really almost all the operations that are going on today. And again, I was impressed by the magnitude of it and also impressed by the hard work that so many people are doing to make sure this is a community that is in fact safe and does in fact remain safe. Our Ohio team got here just a few hours after the derailment. We continue to be here.

(15:34)
I think the most important message I can convey to the people of East Palestinians is we’re going to stay here. We’re here, we’re with you, and we’re going to continue to work to get the job done. This is a great team effort, as you can see all the other speakers. We’re going to continue to play our part in this. Let me just maybe restate some of the goals that I have outlined as far as the State of Ohio and what we intend to do and what we intend to continue to do. Number one, we continue to hold Norfolk Southern accountable. Their railroad, their train, their responsibility. Number two, we intend to continue to focus on the safety of people East Palestinian every single day, and we will continue that every single day. We will continue number three to test the air. Number four, we’ll continue to test the water.

(16:45)
Number five, were appropriate we’ll test the ground, we’ll test anything else that needs to be tested. Number six, we will continue to report those results as we get them. We’ll continue to tell you what we know and we will tell you what we do not know. Seven and finally, we intend to continue to take a holistic approach to this community and the tragedy that they suffered, the trauma that they have suffered. By holistic, this is what I mean. When I talk to people in the community, the number one thing that is expressed to me is their desire to get back to where they were, get back to normal, live their lives. And that includes all the things I’ve said, but it may include other things as we look forward to go forward for this community to continue to thrive.

(17:48)
It is a great village, it’s a great community, they’re great people. We’ll continue to look at this from a holistic point of view. We’re going to continue to work with the Mayor. We’re going to continue to work with the officials to make sure that their wish of getting back to normal happens just as soon as that is possible. I have a few other items I would like to mention. From the first time I talked two Fire Chief Drabick and including today, when the Mayor and I and he had lunch, one of the things that he has continued to express to me is the desire for more training, specifically in regard to tragedies that might occur in regard to train derailments. This is something that I have talked to fire chiefs throughout the state, and they all have expressed to me a desire to see very specific training increase rather dramatically.

(18:56)
They’ve all expressed a desire to have the railroads that have unique knowledge about this to actively participate in that training. As a result of that, I talked yesterday to Alan Shaw. We went back and forth with a number of communications. Of course, the CEO of Norfolk Southern, about that desire. I’ve also talked yesterday to CSX CEO Joseph Henrich about that as well. He pointed out to me that this is their number one state in the union in regard to number of miles of rail. Both of them expressed a desire to work with us to dramatically increase that training. To state the obvious, most of the rail miles in this state are in rural areas. They go

Through village after village, after a small city, after a small city, as well as our big urban cities. The reality is, that in most of our rural parts of the state of Ohio, it is our volunteer firemen and women who are the most likely to be the first ones on the scene, and that is what we saw here. So the fact and the need to have them trained to understand more information and to have the railroad actively participate in that, this is a big goal of mine. And after these two very favorable conversations, we don’t have details yet to announce, but I’m very confident that we will be able to have announcement in the future about that. And this affects not just obviously East Palestine, but every community where rails go through. Let me talk for a moment about rail safety. The first thing I said, I believe when I was here, the first time after the derailment, was for the need for the United States Congress to take action in regard to rail safety.

(21:12)
There is action going on in the state legislature, and I applaud that, but the reality is that with the preemptions that we’ve had over the years and the way the laws are today, if we want to make sure there’s action taken quickly and it’s universal throughout this country, it obviously has to come from the federal government. So I applaud today, Senator Brown, Vance, Casey, Fetterman, Rubio, Hawley, as well as Congressman Johnson, Congressman from this district, for their introduction of the Railway Safety Act. The items contained in that act are the things that, some of the things that we certainly need. I also know, and I also called initially on Congress to hold hearings. Those hearings are getting ready to start, and Vogel from our EPA is one of the people that’s been asked to testify, and I think this testimony from all the witnesses in these hearings are vitally important and the Congress and the American people will learn as we usually do from very open and very blunt and very candid hearings, and I applaud Congress for doing that as well.

(22:24)
One of our goals every day is to communicate to the people of the state of Ohio. We try to do that, again, telling them what we know, and what we don’t know every single day. We have been sending news releases out every day around five o’clock. I told my team after I’ve been looking at these news releases, I said, look, we need to get these out to anybody that wants to come. These are good, concise summary of what we know for the last 24 hours. And while the most important recipient is the news media so they can disseminate that out to the public, it’s also good, I think, if anybody who wants to get that. We’re sending these out now to, I think, about 700 different people. Actually, on another list that gets all our news releases, I think we’re up to about 11,000, but I want to make this very, very clear how people can sign up for us.

(23:18)
They can go up on the EMA page that is ema.ohio.gov/eastpalestine. That’s ema.ohio.gov/eastpalestine, East Palestine, one word. Or they can go up on the governor’s page as well. And that’s governor.ohio.gov. That’s governor.ohio.gov. You’ll see on both of those places where you can click and you can sign up and get these releases just focused on what is going on here in East Palestine.

(23:57)
I had the opportunity today, Fran and I did, to visit the school. And again, what we saw today I think is a real credit to this community. We had the chance to talk to a lot of children. We talked to Superintendent Chris Knipfer, and as well as principals, teachers, and I said, most of all the young people who were in school. If you did not know that this train wreck occurred, you would not know it by walking in that school. They were doing things that we would expect kids to do every single day in school, and I think very glad to be there. So again, that is a credit to our teachers. It’s a credit to our school superintendent, our principal, and it’s credit to our students and to their families. And we enjoyed being with these young people very, very much. We had a conversation about the upcoming track week.

(25:06)
We had a conversation about the upcoming play, Lion King. That’s what we expect when we go into schools, and that I think is very, very good news. Let me give a couple of test results. February 21, test results in regard to the village wells. Again, showing those are all clear. The private wells, we’ve seen an increase of 15 results come back, they’re all the same. So we now have 45 good ones that have come back. We will expect those results to continue to come back. Let me close with a couple other things. One, I’m trying to hold that, we had the opportunity to visit Salem Brightside, the Brightside Project. These are fellow members of communities in the county who are just doing phenomenal work, it is a nonprofit. They have focused since their inception on helping kids with food.

(26:14)
And they have really stepped up and are receiving gifts from people as far as they told us they had one group in New York send some money in, money’s coming in and help is coming in. But these people are the ones who are out in the front line and doing the Lord’s work, and I just want to thank them very, very much for that.

(26:36)
Let me conclude in regard to the issue of training, I’m announcing that our Ohio Public Utilities Commission has $800,000 in grant funding available to help our smaller departments pay for critically important training. Today through May 31, PUCO will be taking applications for their annual hazardous materials training grant program. Among the opportunities funded through this program, are rail, hazardous material response training is one of the things that you can use the money for, and hazardous material incident response. Ohio is obviously a central point in the United States for transportation. We don’t have to tell any of you that. These grants can help agencies execute real time, real world training scenarios that address hazmat spills. The money from these grants is from fines paid by hazardous material carriers and shippers. More information is available in regard to this money at puco.ohio.gov. Thank you all very much.

Governor, any questions?

So we’re going to open it up to questions. I ask that you speak loudly, please.

All right.

My name is Stan Bony from [inaudible 00:27:57]. My question is for. [inaudible 00:27:57], real quick, the inspections that you’re going to undertake, the data that you collect from those, do you see them possibly being used to change laws down the road?

Absolutely. We use it for that purpose. We also use it for compliance and enforcement purposes as well. So it’s a combination of those, but absolutely we’ll use the data and information that we gather from that for our regulatory purposes and enforcement and compliance.

Governor DeWine, if I may, sir. Thank you. As an Ohioan, I want to personally thank you for stepping up to the plate, doing what you’ve been doing for the people of East Palestine.

Thank you.

[inaudible 00:28:45], appreciate that. 1,700 derailments happen in this country on average, have you reached out to the National Governor’s Association to collaborate with some effort, say, to Norfolk Southern or any other rail carrier, you guys got to get it together and stop having these derailments around the country, and if you have not done that, will you do that?

Yes. Obviously, Governor Shapiro and I have talked about this and we both are feeling this up close, but I can just tell you other governors are looking at this. They understand. What we as governors do if we see something happen in another state, we then think, okay, how are we going to deal with this? How are we going to maybe stop it from happening? But if it does happen, how are we going to respond? And I think as a governor, and I can’t speak for every governor, but I think it’s true for every governor, what we try to do is learn from every experience, whether it’s our own experience or whether it’s experience in another state. Again, if we’re talking about changing the law, Congress has got to do it, and I’m sure that other governors are talking to their members of Congress as well. So I appreciate Congress’s response.

Thank you so much.

Governor, my question is for you as well. Governor,

… why isn’t the US EPA, federal and other state agencies, which is responsible for protecting the people, not issuing warnings to keep people away from the contaminated creeks? If there’s even the slightest possibility that it could be dangerous, why is that not being done?

To stay away from what? I’m sorry.

To stay away from the contaminated creeks.

I think that’s being done. I would have to ask anybody else here who’s … Look, when we went up there today, I can just tell you the press was stopped. We had a pool camera. They were stopped from going in. They were not allowed to go in. People are not allowed to go into that area. If there’s a problem about the security, then we certainly will look at that. But I’m not aware of a problem in regard to security.

(30:49)
If you look at the different bodies of water, what we can tell you is, the further out you get, and I don’t know, Ann or if someone else wants to take that, the further out you get, you’re starting to see life is coming back. I mean, it’s the indication. But we know that we have certain areas, and Fran and I viewed this today, where they’re working very, very hard every single day to make sure that the contamination is taken care of and it’s gone.

And the follow-up question of that. Wouldn’t you want some kind of signage or some kind of order that would keep people away from those areas?

Okay. I’m not aware that’s a problem. Again, I’d have to talk to someone locally, maybe the mayor, about whether that is a problem. Look, there should be a signage. There should be whatever is necessary to keep people away. I totally agree with that. I was not aware if it’s a problem. If it’s a problem, we’ll deal with it.

Yep. Hi, Graham McCaid, former resident. I have a three-part question. I’m co-counsel with Motley Rice. Number one, FEMA, what’s your position-

Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Excuse me. FEMA, what’s your position?

What’s the ground rules here, guys?

These are for media questions.

Excuse me.

This is for media.

Are you guys going to be [inaudible 00:32:01]

Lawyers can talk to lawyers, and I’m not going to play lawyer. Thank you.

Next media question?

I’m Brenda Goodman from CNN, and I have a question for Dr. Vanderthal. I’ve been walking around a few of you today, talking to people about their health concerns, and I’ve heard from a lot of people that they’re wondering why the assessment clinic is just kind of a meet and talk about what you think your health concerns are and fill out forms how to be documented. They’re wondering why there isn’t testing available, blood testing, urine testing. I’ve met with a group of residents who are trying to figure out how to get their own testing, their own blood testing. Would blood and urine testing be available at this point? And should the state be [inaudible 00:32:49]?

Yes. So the assessment clinic is actually far more than what you have described. Every individual who comes in, every patient that is seen there, does in fact have a very extensive questionnaire that is completed with a healthcare professional to understand their background in terms of exposure and potential risks. That process absolutely does occur. But then they do go on to have a complete physical examination and evaluation by a qualified physician. That physician, depending on their medical history, and this is standard in medical care, makes an individualized decision with the patient regarding what appropriate next steps might be.

(33:31)
Now, in some circumstances that involves consultation in real time with a toxicologist, state or national toxicology experts. In other circumstances, it may involve recommendations for ongoing monitoring that could include blood work or other testing. And that is done in the context of their medical home. If they don’t have a medical home, we work to ensure that before they walk out of there, we’ve established them with a medical home regardless of their economic circumstances. And why is that important? Because when we look at the chemicals involved, especially the primary chemical, vinyl chloride, there is simply not a blood test that we can do or a urine test that we can do that would say, “Aha, you had an exposure.” That would be great, but that is just not the case.

(34:22)
So what we need to do is establish a plan for long-term evaluation in the context of their baseline medical health, and that we do with their primary care doctor. So there may, in certain circumstances, be a decision for a variety of testing. But that is done in the context of their medical home longitudinal.

Thank you, Doctor.

In your travels today, did you see anything or talk to anybody that you thought was alarming?

I have to say I really didn’t.

On the medical end.

Yeah, no. And I can tell you that I’ve been in this community many, many days and I have wandered around the town. I have spoken to more people now than I can keep count of. I’ve spoken to them about their medical concerns, the experiences that they’re having, and I feel very confident, first, that the air quality is exactly as we’ve described it. It is safe. It is good. I wouldn’t be walking around the community if I didn’t think so. I’m very confident in the water quality as we’ve measured it. And I understand the concerns, the health concerns, the anxieties people have, given what they have heard, especially some of the misinformation that they are getting from social media and other platforms.

(35:50)
That’s why our sharing of all the information we have in real time, the way that as Governor DeWine described, we are working very hard to do, is so important. Because it’s the best counter to fear and misinformation. And it’s also why I’m very proud of the work that we’re doing around our medical assessment clinic in partnership with the primary care physicians in this community and also our work to help link people who don’t have a medical home to a medical home.

And Doctor, to piggyback off of that, Markie Martin here with News Nation, we spoke with several families just in the past couple days who feel side effects and symptoms. And we know that EPA Administrator Regan reiterated what you just said yesterday, drinking water, breathing seems to be safe, but a lot of families want to know why, if that’s the case, they still feel burning eyes, itching skin, chemical dermatitis, et cetera. What do you tell those folks?

That’s why we want you to be seen in a medical site because the symptoms that they’re describing have a whole variety of potential sources. We need to understand what their exposure may have been and what the appropriate approach for treatment for them is. And what we’ve done is really take a comprehensive approach. We understand that what people are experiencing is real and we want to take their very real symptoms very seriously. But we want to make sure we’re arriving at the correct answers and working with their doctors to arrive at the best, most appropriate treatment plan.

We’ll take one more question.

I had another question. For whoever is testing the wells, is there … I spoke to a gentleman today who said that he got his well tested early on himself and the lab told him there is no EPA certified test for butyl acrylate. Is there an EPA certified test that labs can run to the detect butyl acrylate in well water?

Thank you for the question. So early on there was not. And actually our friends ATSDR, well, they were actually very able to quickly pivot and develop that health standard. So there is now. We know what levels are safe for human consumption.

Just to be clear, the private wells, because people are signing up for the testing, they are being tested for butyl acrylate and what else?

It’s panel of more than 120, I know that, of potential POCs and SPOCs.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

I have one more question.

This press conference-

I have more question.

Will continue.

I want to know what your opinion is on the new results from Carnegie Mellon and Texas A&M that says long term affects are dangerous.

This press conference is finished. We will hold these every day at four o’clock. Thank you.