Still no plans for Biden to visit East Palestine

The White House said Monday there are still no plans for President Joe Biden to visit eastern Palestine, Ohio — even though he promised to visit the scene of the train derailment.

“I have nothing to report on a planned visit by the president,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked at her press conference.

Biden said last week he would visit the area, which suffered a toxic chemical spill following the rail accident and faces a lengthy cleanup, at “some time.”

“I’ve talked to every official in Ohio on an ongoing basis, both the Democrat and the Republican,” Biden told reporters after meeting with Senate Democrats, asking if he was coming. “We’ll be there at some point.”

But no trip has been announced.

The Biden administration, especially Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, was heavily criticized for its slow response to the accident.

It’s been 31 days since 5,000 people were forced to evacuate and tens of thousands of animals died after a The Norfolk Southern train derailed, spilling hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, soil and water around the small Ohio community.

In the following weeks, the authorities carried out a large-scale clean-up.

More than 700 tons of contaminated soil and nearly two million gallons of fluid have been collected from the derailment site, Ohio officials said, with much more to be cleaned up by order of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, urged Biden to visit eastern Palestine.

“He should come, there’s no question about that,” DeWine said in an interview with Fox News. “The president must come. The people want to see the president. He should be there.’

“I have nothing to report on a planned visit by the president,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked at her press conference

Buttigieg has become the scapegoat for the administration and has gone on the defensive about his agency’s response.

He visited eastern Palestine on February 23 – 20 days after the accident.

Former President Donald Trump had visited a day earlier where he accused the Biden administration of “indifference and betrayal” to the community.

Buttigieg admitted to CNN on Monday that he should have come sooner. But he claimed his conservative critics were feigning outrage at the city of 4,700, where the median household income is $46,000.

He called Trump’s visit “slightly maddening — to see someone who has tried a lot to break not only rail safety regulations, but also the EPA, which is the most important thing standing between that community and a total loss of responsibility for Norfolk Southern.” , undermine and then show stopped handing out bottled water and campaign swag?”

The Feb. 3 derailment sent dozens of cars — including some carrying a total of 1.6 million pounds of hazardous chemicals — off the rails in the city on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.

Five tank trucks contained nearly 900,000 pounds of vinyl chloride, a cancer-causing industrial chemical linked to liver damage at high levels of exposure.

The derailment caused a fire that lasted for days. Firefighters used more than a million gallons of water to fight the flames, which also contributed to soil contamination.

A giant plume of smoke from the aftermath of the incident could be seen from miles away

The chemicals on board the train were vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, benzene residue, glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate and isobutylene

Last week, Biden ordered officials to go door-to-door in eastern Palestine asking residents to fill out surveys, fearing an emerging public health crisis.

The EPA gave residents complete freedom to return home, and independent testing supported these findings.

But residents aired their frustrations with state and federal officials and a Norfolk Southern representative at a town hall meeting last week.

Homeowners complain of many medical problems, including eye and skin irritation, nausea, and headaches.

The decision to conduct a controlled burn to facilitate cleanup led to fears among residents that they were being exposed to high levels of vinyl chloride, a colorless gas that burns easily and is associated with an increased risk of several forms of cancer, including brain, liver and lung cancer. .