Rail workers warned us about a preventable disaster like this.
Some of the news from the Ohio Valley
This is where I scribble a little about the last week around here. Warning: may include righteous anger and typos.
As I rolled past the “Welcome To East Palestine” sign this week, I thought about the last time I was there. It was a sweethearts dance at the high school circa 2006. It wasn’t my school, but in a small rural county, sometimes you find a sweetheart at another tiny high school in the middle of nowhere. She’s usually hanging out at the county fair. Mine was.
This visit was a lot less fun. A Norfolk Southern train carrying volatile toxic chemicals derailed and exploded… AHEM… underwent a “controlled release”, as the company, authorities, and mainstream news media have deemed it.
I had to sneak into town. Cops blocked off the main roads, and it turns out that I don’t pass for “the press”. It could have been my mullet, Carhartt, and a bag full of clearly amateur video gear. These are the trappings of a man who is less mainstream media and more… barely influential 32-year-old with an axe to grind on TikTok.
The county mounties forgot that I learned the backroads around here as a raging 16-year-old hormone monster on the way to a sweethearts dance. I snuck past the roadblocks.
