I think it's not very clearly understood, and for the most part, the damage is done. Air quality is the measure the locals told EPA they were worried about (lol, of course), and they sounded the all clear. In terms of recovery, there's not much that can be done. From what I understand, the initial responders fucked up and tried to extinguish the fire with standard water, creating a different gas (phosgene, according to Reddit) that is probably the nightmare fart cloud pictured above. That shit is lethal, and probably what killed animals in the area. That lethal cloud delayed hazmat response. The remaining cars were intentionally burned to avoid the stuff getting into the water, where it's more toxic (from what I understand, the gas form would dissippate, but in water it turns into something worse, or is held in suspense longer). Also, by not burning it, the pressure would have caused the tanks to explode, sending God knows what into the air AND water, not to mention blanketing every individual for a few hundred yards (if not miles) directly. The burn allowed them time to evacuate, but I'm not clear if they had already sounded the evac order or not. The burn was the best of a bunch of bad options with a literal bomb ticking. This is a cascading set of failures starting from Trump repealing Obama-era mandates, shitty corporate governance, poorly trained responders, lack of containment measures, and engineering failures all around. I dunno what Secretary Booty Egg would do about it, other than some talking points after the investigation concludes. The class-action lawsuits stemming from this are going to be pretty potent, and it wouldn't surprise me if they are tied to legislation. From what I understand, (and I may do some digging at work later to see what the actual reports were) this kind of thing can't be pinned on a single thing, ie a breach of law or equipment failure. There WERE laws that would have prevented it, and the recent action to prevent these folks from striking now looks pretty fucking bad by comparison. I think making an example of the engineers or conductor onsite is overlooking the plethora of larger issues. For example, one of the reasons these folks wanted to go on strike was the list of safety concerns...near the top of the list was the mere seconds they have to conduct inspections. Another at the top of the list was essentially "corporate ignores safety and engineering constraints, putting more material (especially hazardous material) in the cars without adjusting timeframes or loads". They can get away with some of this because the spills are an insurance problem, not a sales problem. That said, addressing this kind of thing will take weeks, if not months. Testing for this kind of contamination is fucking HARD, because it's not just the initial contaminant, but a series of other nasty shit that this stuff can become or other nasty shit that this stuff can throw out of whack, depending on what else it's exposed to (fertilizer, pool water, pesticides, etc). And even if you find contamination, fixing it is even harder. It's not as simple as changing the filters in your water or sporting a KN-95. This is a pretty serious shit-storm, and the end result is folks in this corner of Ohio are going to have higher levels of cancer, oddball diseases and birth defects if they stay there. As far as what can be done about it...it's unclear.
That’s because they were arresting and silencing reporters trying to report on it. If DeWine had any balls whatsoever he’d order the charges dropped and fire those fucking cops.
Indeed; the tinfoil hat areas of Reddit are speculating that all of these balloons/ UFOs are just distraction from the chemical spill. I have to say that I'm kind of skeptical about the last three balloons, because the pertinent authorities are just like: "We shot down the objects that we tracked with our badass radar, but we won't be able to find the wreckage. Oh well." Don't worry, when the time is right for him to get the most positive exposure, he'll make a statement that this happened because there weren't enough LGBT/ minorities working on the railroad.
He's doing the whole "well, technically it's not up to me, but I encourage them to drop the charges" thing. And firing cops? No chance in hell.
Vinyl chloride is used to manufacture products (PVC), and can be a degradation product of chlorinated solvents like PCE and TCE, which were once widely used as dry cleaning fluids. It isn’t hard to sample and test for it- I do that frequently. I have samples at a lab right now that are being analyzed for volatile organic compounds, vinyl chloride being one of them. Finding it is one thing, but like downndirty posted, cleaning it up is another matter, particularly over a widespread area with multiple media (soil, surface water, groundwater) affected. Remediation will take years if the efforts are focused, decades if steps proceed like they usually do on contaminated sites.
It's pretty fucking dystopian that we can render a section of the country essentially uninhabitable and the end result is, "eh, whatcha gonna do? Capitalism, amiright?" I know there will be lawsuits, but years of lawyers getting rich before providing paltry payouts that won't be enough to actually relocate entire families from the area seems wildly inadequate.
This is EXACTLY the kind of shit the Russians would do ALL THE FUCKING TIME in the USSR days. Everyone thinks about Chernobyl when you mention "Russian nuclear disaster," but they had an unbelievable amount of fuck-ups that the outside world didn't hear about. Not only with nuclear, but also biological and chemical weapons as well. And when the accident was bad enough, the authorities would just move whole towns. There's a great book called "Uncovering Soviet Disasters;" it's hilarious reading about how incompetent the Russians were/ are.
There is no horrific torment or atrocity that you could cook up in the darkest corner of your mind… that Russia hasn’t already done to its own people for no reason at all. NO atrocity. It is a nation constantly monitored over by the purest evil mankind has ever spawned. They simply do not give a fuck about anything. And I’m being nice.
Yup, and if we're talking about a situation that's similar to something the Russians did under the USSR, then the words "dystopian hellscape" should probably be attached to it somewhere. It's just shocking that the response is anything other than literally everyone who signed off on this getting criminally charged by the federal government, and any monies that they were either directly or indirectly attached to get funneled into relocating all of the affected people. Instead, a whole bunch of people are, in the best case, likely to get $50k checks a decade from now and maybe health coverage of a few specific diseases that were linked to these chemicals (ignoring, of course, that we probably don't know all of the downstream health effects), and in the rosiest-tinted version of this, some legislation gets passed. The likelihood of anyone being made whole here or sufficient accountability by the parties involved approaches zero.
https://www-cbsnews-com.cdn.ampproj...istown-6-year-old-son-brings-gun-mom-charged/ Virginia needs to take a hint from Pennsylvania. The family of a 6 year old that actually shot his teacher hasn't faced any charges.
That was so sad to read, on so many levels. That poor little boy wasn’t even doing anything nefarious or violent, he assumed he was doing the right thing by taking it out of the house. Away from his idiot mother.
This is Shane Lamond of The DC police. He has been outed as the insider providing information to the Proud Boys and other hate groups on January 6th. He has plead the 5th, and therefore he continues to work as a cop with no reprimand whatsoever. just a few bad apples. Always.
I wonder if the boy really said those things. I read several other articles and they all say he was showing the gun off to other students. No others reported that angle of the story, that he was afraid to get shot so he removed the gun from the drawer.
It is a fact that the FBI was going in heavy on militia and KKK infiltration of Law Enforcement around the country, and then 9/11 happened and the government said "FUCK ALL THAT we got foreign terrorists to catch!". Cletus and Bubba cleaned up their act and they've been inside ever since.
Absolutely. I just think it's questionable that only one reporter is running with that narrative. I'm not defending guns here, I'm for way harsher punishments for people that allow children to get hands on an unsecured gun. Mine, that I consider for protection and want quick access to, stays in a locked pistol safe next to the bed, opened by entering a code. I trade off that quicker access for my kid's safety, as it should be. I think the family in Virginia should have been arrested immediately. Most six year olds don't explain their feelings well, particularly in front of a person of authority in an interrogation setting. The person probably had to ask leading questions to get more than shrugs and "I don't know". I imagine, from my experience, it went something like this... Adult:. Why did you take the gun? Child: I don't know. A: Is it because you thought it was cool? C: Yeah A: Or because you had a bad dream? C: Yeah The child is not at fault, no matter what he was feeling.