Ohio Residents Suffer While Politicians Play The Blame Game

Residents of East Palestine, Ohio are still reeling with the impacts of the recent train derailment and subsequent chemical spill in their town, and relief is virtually nowhere to be found. Politicians are busy trying to blame each other's Party for what happened, but these residents aren't interested in the blame game. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins talks with reporter Louis DeAngelis from Status Coup News about what is really on residents' minds right now.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The situation on the ground in East Palestine, Ohio has certainly not gotten any better, I would say, since the train derailment just a couple weeks ago. And while most of the national media at this point is kind of focused on who's to blame, is it Buttigieg? Is it the CEO? Is it Trump? Is it Biden? Who the hell knows? The situation on the ground remains the same. We have people that are suffering. And with me now is Louis DeAngelis with Status Coup News. Louis, you've been on the ground, you've been on the ground for quite some time. You already have a trip planned to go back to East Palestine. I've watched your stuff on Status Coup. You've been talking to these people. And a lot of these folks, they're not worried about the blame game right now. They're more worried, what the hell am I gonna do? My life has been turned upside down.

Absolutely. You're right there. I spent about a week on the ground in East Palestine, home for a little bit of a break right now. But I've been staying in touch with residents day and night on the issues that they are still having, the answers that they are still not getting from officials on the ground in East Palestine. And you, you put it well, a lot of these folks are in just an absolutely impossible position. They are, many of them are getting sick. Many of their children are getting sick, experiencing all sorts, all sorts of health conditions that they had never experienced before this. You've got otherwise ordinarily healthy people ending up with everything from issues with their eyes and throats when they're near some of these places, including in their homes, if they live near where the actual derailment happened.

You have folks getting bloody noses constantly, diarrhea. We've got reports of folks that I've talked to who had blood in their stool. All sorts of things. Rashes, folks ending up in the hospital with, with breathing issues and needing nebulizer treatments, who were otherwise entirely healthy before this. So the impossible position that these folks are in are, number one, stay in East Palestine and risk the potential health effects that might come with this, both in the short term and then the, the scarier element of this is in the long term. Some of the chemicals that were found on board this train and that were created as a result of the controlled burn of this train that didn't look very controlled to me and a lot of the other folks that we've, we've talked to, cause all sorts of things ranging from cancers and other dangerous things down the line in the future.

So their option is that, or to, you know, try to leave. The unfortunate reality of trying to leave is if some of these folks are fortunate to own the home that they live in, I don't know about you, but I'm not looking to buy a house in East Palestine right now, especially with everything that's going on. I don't know that that situation is gonna change any time in the short term or even in the longer term looking 1, 2, 3 years down the line based on everything that's happened here. So, you know, this isn't a wealthy community. This is a lower income community. Leaving without selling your house and trying to buy a house somewhere else or pay rent isn't an option for many of these people. And unfortunately, at this point, the railroad is done paying for hotel stays because the area has been deemed safe by officials. Although even that has been contradicted on many occasions at this point.

Yeah. That, that just blows my mind. I mean, you know, you made a great point.