Pa. Senate committee hears 5 hours of testimony on East Palestine derailment

Lives were at stake and timing was crucial when Pennsylvania officials deferred decision-making authority to Norfolk Southern in the aftermath of the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment, according to testimony Thursday at a state Senate committee hearing in Beaver County.

About 50 Norfolk Southern cars, including 10 with hazardous materials, derailed Feb. 3. Early the next day, the rail giant proposed a planned burn — a form of detonation — on one of the cars with hazardous chemicals, testified Randy Padfield, director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency.

Then, Norfolk Southern decided instead to burn all five cars that had been carrying the toxic substance vinyl chloride. Padfield admitted Thursday there was “some confusion” about the different projections and scenarios each agency was using in the emergency response.

“Norfolk Southern (said), ‘We’re the experts. We have more than 200 years of experience on the scene and this is the only option, all right?’” Padfield recounted.

“I’m personally not comfortable with that … so there was a concern,” Padfield testified. “The (other) concern was, if we pushed back significantly … people’s lives hang in the balance and the train could explode catastrophically at any time. That was potentially what we would own.”

Padfield said he defended Gov. Josh Shapiro’s stance to go along with the planned burn for that reason.

State Sen. Katie Muth of Montgomery County, the Democratic chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs & Emergency Preparedness Committee, called the way events unfolded a “scary thought.”

“Norfolk Southern ends up being the one to make the decision. That’s really a scary thought, that the entity that’s trying to clean up their mess and protect their bottom dollar is making the decisions about an emergency plan,” Muth said.

Many people in the crowd applauded Muth’s comment.

Hearing testimony ran for about five hours at the Community College of Beaver County’s Dome Athletics and Event Center, about 25 miles from the derailment site.

State Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin County, who lost to Shapiro in last year’s gubernatorial race, started the hearing with a fiery tone.

“We’re sick and tired of politics and politicians. We want the truth. We don’t want pat answers, ‘Oh, it’s OK!’” Mastriano told the crowd of about 100 people. “It’s just not talk. It’s about facts. It’s about giving a voice to the people. Prove it to me that it’s safe. I don’t buy it.”

A panel of five, Cabinet-level state officials testified that they felt Pennsylvania often came as a second priority in the clean-up and evacuation plans. The mandatory evacuation area included everything within a one-mile radius of the derailment site, including a portion of western Beaver County with about 18 homes and two businesses in the area.

As for the different projections being considered in the aftermath of the derailment, Padfield said Pennsylvanian agencies used a model estimating that 70% of the vinyl chloride in the five derailed train cars would burn off as phosgene — a poisonous gas made by the reaction of chlorine and carbon monoxide. Phosgene has been used as a chemical weapon, most notably during World War I.

Norfolk Southern’s model, however, said less than 1% of the vinyl chloride would burn off as phosgene.

State officials in Pennsylvania and Ohio went with the 1% projection.

Padfield also testified that he and other officials first heard about the planned evacuation in the immediate area of the derailment through social media.

Richard Negrin, acting secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, said his department is testing the air and water within a two-mile radius of the derailment site. He said both stationary and roaming monitoring systems are being used.

Sampling the soil is next, he said.

The proceedings sometimes became combative.

“Mr. Padfield, I listen to you and it brings back (thoughts of) your leadership, or your lack of leadership, on Pennsylvania’s response to covid,” said state Sen. Michele Brooks, R-Mercer County.

“I think you are the face of Pennsylvania’s failed response to covid. I don’t have a lot of confidence in you,” Brooks added. “I wish I could be more diplomatic. But when you say, ‘We can’t do this’ or ‘We can’t do that,’ I say, ‘We should be leading here.’”

The committee also heard from a pre-selected “resident panel,” which included at least three families Mastriano had visited on a previous trip to East Palestine, Ohio.

Ashley Bennett, a mother of three, lamented that “residents were allowed to breathe in the toxins as if it were just a campfire” and added that she was concerned Pennsylvanians near the derailment site were being overlooked.

“We, and my children, are not lab rats,” Bennett testified. “There is no wall between us and Ohio.”

Lonnie Miller, a Pennsylvania native who has lived over the state line in East Palestine for nearly 30 years, said every day since the derailment has been like “a scene from a disaster movie.”

“You don’t know what to do. You don’t know who to trust,” Miller said. “We should not be going through this.”