Former EPA contractor says agency took 5 days to deploy chemical detection plane in East Palestine

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1. US EPA wasn’t in charge of the response until AFTER Norfolk Southern lied to Ohio EPA and the governor about the threat of polymerization to get them to let them blow it up. Ohio EPA was supposedly providing the Incident Commander. The local Fire Chief thought he was in charge. Norfolk Southern just wanted everybody to leave them alone so they could get their track back open ASAP. US EPA was relegated to just running the air monitoring system. Ohio EPA absolutely did not want federal help and made a request for EPA to stand down its commanders (to which EPA, for some reason, agreed) . Consequently, the ASPECT resources were never ordered by Incident Command. Under the National Incident Management System, the IC or UC (Unified Command – what should have been operating) is responsible for resource ordering. If no one orders a $100,000/ day aircraft, it doesn’t fly.

   It wasn’t until after the cars were blown up that EPA forced its way into the response command and the plane was launched.

   WeLL tHeY ShoUlD hAVe SenT iT ANYWAY!! To do what? Fly around randomly collecting data that no decision makers are going to look at? Lots of tax dollars flying out the window. Unclear if NS could be forced to pay (since the IC didn’t order it….)

   Tons of mistakes here at all 3 levels of government and outright deception on the part of NS, all in the name of their profits. The locals trying to throw their weight around when they’re Clearly out of their league in scope and scale, Ohio EPA’s arrogance to think they have the experience and skill sets and expertise to manage an incident like this with an unresponsive railroad, and EPA’s abdication of its responsibilities to bring in those management resources that it absolutely has in its emergency management division.