On 3 February, a freight train derailed near the town of East Palestine, Ohio. The crash upended and set ablaze 50 of the train’s 150+ cars. Despite the Norfolk Southern freight train trailing a mass of over 18,000 tonnes and having a total length of 1.8 miles, miraculously no one was killed in the crash itself. Instead, the damage has been paid by locals’ health and the surrounding environment: eleven of those cars were loaded with hazardous, carcinogenic chemicals.
The toxic clouds that billowed up from a derailed freight train in Ohio earlier this month are a chilling metaphor for the toxic greed that has infected so many of our big corporations.
EAST PALESTINE, Ohio The growing uproar over the massive chemical contamination of the air and water from the Norfolk Southern freight train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, shows once again the need to nationalize the railroads and run them in the public good, not for profits, Railroad Workers.