What if the story of the Chinese balloons served to distract from a huge environmental disaster?
As the US government allocates millions of dollars to treat ballooning as an existential crisis, a small Ohio town finds itself engulfed in what truly feels like the apocalypse. Perhaps on purpose, all the drama of violations of US airspace by Chinese spy ventures has meant that what is becoming one of the worst environmental disasters in living memory has been overlooked.
The chaos began early last week when a train of more than 100 cars derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, near the state border with Pennsylvania, home to some 5,000 people. The accident caused fifty of the hundred boxcars to roll off the rails. Twenty of the train's boxcars carried hazardous materials, ten of which were itemized. Although the accident resulted in no fatalities, five of these ten cars contained pressurized vinyl chloride, a highly flammable carcinogenic gas.
NEW TOXINS IDENTIFIED—“We basically nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open,” said Sil Caggiano, a hazardous materials specialist. Rail company Norfolk Southern is paying just $25k to the town, or ~$5 per resident.
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pic.twitter.com/7jVQaIFA1U— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) February 13, 2023
To deal with the instability of the scenario around the accident site, the Ohio Emergency Management Agency implemented the toxic gas venting plan with controlled combustion to avoid an uncontrolled explosion which presented the risk of catastrophic damage. “In the past two hours, there has been a dramatic change in temperature in a train carriage and there is now the possibility of a catastrophic failure of the tanker which could cause an explosion with the potential for deadly shrapnel that could travel up to a kilometer Gov. Mike DeWine warned in the statement explaining the decision to take action to avert widespread devastation.
However, the operation sent large plumes of smoke containing vinyl chloride, phosgene, hydrogen chloride and other gases into the air, while the flames from the controlled fire continued to rage for days. Phosgene, in particular, is a highly toxic gas that can cause vomiting and respiratory problems. The toxicity of phosgene gas is so potent that it was once used as a chemical weapon during World War I.
The hazardous airborne chemicals prompted officials to issue mandatory evacuation and shelter orders within a mile of where the train derailed. These orders forced nearly 2,000 residents of East Palestine from their homes. Despite the risk to public safety in the vicinity of the crash site, more than 500 people who fell within the parameters of the evacuation order refused to leave their homes. However, those orders were lifted on February 8, allowing residents to return to the area adjacent to the disaster.
After the controlled fire, local authorities received numerous reports from residents outside the kilometer radius of the evacuation area that the emergency posed by the disaster was far from over. A local farmer has reported the sudden death of many animals on his farm, Park Dairy. The farmer, Taylor Holzer, also works with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources as a registered fox keeper. As a result of the release of chemicals from controlled combustion into the air, many foxes on Holzer's farm suffered fatal effects due to the quality of the air surrounding the area.
“Suddenly, [a fox] started coughing really hard, then died,” Holzer recalled to local WKBN 27 News. “It's not the way a fox should behave. He is very weak, with a limp. The smoke and chemicals from the train are the only thing that can cause it, because it doesn't happen out of nowhere,” he added.
Dead fish are being pulled from rivers outside East Palestine, Ohio.
The trucks doing the work are labeled EnviroScience, an Ohio-based company that provides "time-sensitive solutions to environmental challenges."
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"The chemicals we are told are safe in the air are certainly not safe for animals…or for people." Holzer's concerns were echoed by reports from other residents who described similar conditions near their properties. One such resident is Katlyn Schwarzwaelder, a local animal shelter manager in nearby Darlington, Pennsylvania. The catastrophe prompted her to abandon her home, despite being more than 10 miles away from the controlled fire site. After fleeing to Boardman, Ohio, 15 miles away from the derailment, Schwarzwaelder said she received numerous reports of dead chickens, fish and other animals from friends and acquaintances. One affected resident told Schwarzwaelder that he let his two-year-old dog out to go to the bathroom, but never returned. When they went looking for the missing animal, they found it dead in their garden.
So there was a colossal chemical-environmental disaster in the USA, which would normally occupy the front pages of US, if not world, newspapers. Instead, thanks to the balloons, nobody talks about it…
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The article What if the story of the Chinese balloons served to distract from a huge environmental disaster? comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/se-la-vicenda-dei-palloni-cinesi-servisse-a-distrarre-da-un-enorme-disastro-ambientale/ on Mon, 13 Feb 2023 21:29:16 +0000.