East Palestine mother’s message to Biden: Don’t use my village as a campaign stop, just help me find a new home after a toxic chemical spill left me afraid for my family

Krissy Ferguson hasn’t lived in the only home she’s ever known for more than a year, ever since a train derailed less than a mile away, releasing toxic chemicals into the creek that runs beneath her basement.

When President Joe Biden visits East Palestine, Ohio, on Friday, she has a simple message for him: “When I meet President Biden, I want to ask you: Please help those who need to get out.”

Norfolk Southern, the railroad whose train was responsible, insists it is safe for families to go home after spending more than $100 million on cleanup operations.

But Ferguson, 49, says no one knows what the long-term health consequences could be, and nothing can erase the nightmares that wake her to images of her elderly mother and stepfather dying from toxic exposure.

She wants the train company to buy her house so she can put the whole episode behind her.

Ferguson has been repeatedly told her home is safe enough to return to, but the Environmental Protection Agency has posted signs around the creek warning people to stay away.

And she said she was grateful for the president’s visit, as long as he used it to listen to residents and not simply hijack the disaster as a backdrop for his campaign.

“I say we screamed at the top of our lungs,” she said. “It seems like we cried to anyone who would listen. We need help.’

A year later, she, her parents and daughter live in a rental house to avoid the watery eyes and burning throat they experienced at home. Norfolk Southern foots the bill.

The derailment forced thousands of people to leave their homes near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.

Almost everyone has moved back. But a year later, residents are still concerned about the lingering effect of the toxic chemicals spilled and the way emergency responders handled hundreds of thousands of pounds of vinyl chloride, a carcinogen.

Rescuers used a controlled burn to burn off much of the dangerous cargo and avert the risk of a deadly explosion.

But that has raised more questions about the unknown compounds remaining beneath the thick plumes of black smoke.

In a village already hollowed out by economic stagnation, where the main street seems to have as many empty storefronts as shops, this only reinforced the sense of a community left behind.

Adding to the frustrations was the absence of Biden, a president who has long considered himself “working class Joe” and has embraced the idea of ​​being “consolation in chief.”

President Joe Biden will visit East Palestine, Ohio, on Friday to see first-hand the cleanup efforts. Residents say they are still suffering the adverse effects and need more federal assistance

Their lives changed on February 3, 2023. A photo taken by a drone shows parts of a Norfolk and Southern freight train that derailed outside the East Palestine village last year

Sulfur Run Creek flows through a culvert beneath three homes on the edge of East Palestine

Ferguson’s parents moved into the house in 1970. Today it stands empty, like the neighboring houses

Instead, it was former President Donald Trump who highlighted the plight of the working-class village. He visited three weeks after the derailment, arriving before Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

In addition to buying Big Macs for first responders and delivering his branded water, Trump said, “What this community needs now is not excuses and all the other things you’ve heard, but answers and results.”

Biden, on the other hand, postponed it. Officials insisted he come, but never set a date. Until now.

Nor has he declared a “major disaster declaration” that would have freed up more federal resources for efforts to get the community back on its feet.

On Friday, Trump supporters plan to greet Biden’s visit with a demonstration. A day earlier, a truck drove up and down Main Street with two “F*** Joe Biden” flags flying in the wind.

Jess Conard, whose house borders the railroad, sees things differently. She has no time for the cynicism of some locals who say Biden is only coming because it’s an election year.

Her four-year-old son was diagnosed with asthma after the controlled burn sent a black cloud into the sky.

‘This is not a political issue. This is a people issue,” she said. “And we must recognize that there are serious medical concerns for the people in this community and surrounding areas that have been affected.”

‘East Palestine Strong’ are spread across the village, this week accompanied by Valentine’s greetings

She switched her career from medical speech therapist to campaigning for the reduction of the use of plastics.

In a letter to Biden sent Thursday, she and dozens of other campaigners demanded more federal aid, conducted air tests in homes, provided long-term medical assistance and cut funding so that families like the Fergusons could afford it. could afford to move.

She said she wanted the disaster in eastern Palestine to be a catalyst for change, reducing the amount of hazardous materials transported on rickety lines.

For its part, Norfolk and Southern said it had met its obligations with a program aimed at making up the difference if residents find they can’t claim market value when they sell their homes.

“Air and water conditions have been continuously monitored in and around the community since the derailment and it remains safe to return home,” the spokesperson said.

That’s not good enough, Conard said.

“I think Norfolk Southern is doing what they’re told,” she said. “I don’t think in any way they’re going to make good on what they promised to do.”

Conard and other campaigners sent a letter to Biden on Thursday outlining what the federal government could do to ensure the safety and security of people in East Palestine

A large plume of smoke rises over East Palestine, Ohio, last year after a controlled explosion of part of a derailed Norfolk Southern train to burn hazardous chemicals

Ferguson had always known her house was built above Sulfur Run Creek, named for the way sewers flowed into it. She played in the culvert as a child and as a mother with her own child.

Occasionally the basement would flood as the water level rose.

‘We handled it. “We knew not to put things on the ground, but to put them high,” she said. ‘But the water was not polluted then. It didn’t make us sick.’

Since the disaster, she can no longer bear to be in the cozy two-story building.

‘I got tingling in my lips and tongue. I stumbled and staggered as if I were drunk, for you drank nothing. And your eyes would water,” she said.

The hardest part of being away, she said, was the impact on her mother, who has Parkinson’s disease, and her 90-year-old stepfather, who was confused by the rented accommodation.

She just wants to settle them somewhere permanently, somewhere far away from the site of the derailment and its aftermath.

“I can’t live here anymore,” she said, with tears in her eyes. ‘It is not safe.’