EXCLUSIVE: Before Flint's Water Crisis, One Man Warned, "People Are Gonna Die" | FRONTLINE
September 5, 2019
9,713
208
13
2.28%
Search the Record
IndexedEvery word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
Frontline Episodes Around September 5, 2019
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
1:52Now PlayingEXCLUSIVE: Before Flint's Water Crisis, One Man Warned, "People Are Gonna Die" | FRONTLINE
YouTube Description
as posted by the channelThousands were poisoned by Flint’s drinking water. Matt McFarland, a foreman at Flint’s water treatment plant, tried to sound the alarm, a new FRONTLINE documentary exclusively reveals.
Subscribe on YouTube
“I remember specifically, the day before they actually flipped the switch, he called me and he said, ‘Tonja, contact everyone that you know in Flint, anybody you care about, and tell them, do not drink the water,’” Tonja Petrella, his sister, told FRONTLINE.
Petrella said that McFarland cautioned, “It’s not safe. We’re not ready,” and finally warned: “People are gonna die.”
McFarland passed away in 2016. But in an exclusive interview for the upcoming FRONTLINE investigation "Flint’s Deadly Water," Petrella spoke publicly for the first time about the concerns her brother shared in the run-up to the water switch.
“He would call me and he would just be so upset … I mean, he knew that they weren’t ready for this,” Petrella says in the above excerpt from the FRONTLINE film.
Tune In or Stream "Flint's Deadly Water" starting Sept. 10, 2019
FRONTLINE is streaming more than 200 documentaries online, for free, here
You can also tune in or stream on the PBS Video App
Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Major funding for FRONTLINE is provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation, the Park Foundation, The John and Helen Glessner Family Trust, and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation.
Guests & Subjects Covered
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.