We Don t Know What We Are Breathing : A Report from East Palestine

I thought we needed to get out. This is the end of it. The town s burning down, she said.

They saw dozens of railway cars strewn about like a kid s Tonka trucks, with flames and smoke shooting toward the sky. The blaze was so hot, Kugler said she had to remove her winter coat.

It was like a bomb going off, Kugler said. The cars just hitting and hitting it was this constant sound of them banging together.

While no one was injured or killed that night, the chemicals on board the train presented an immediate threat to the town. Most frightening was the flammable gas vinyl chloride, which causes headaches, dizziness, and in acute cases of exposure cancer. 

Fearing a massive explosion would send shrapnel and toxic fumes soaring for miles, nearly 2,000 residents, including the Kuglers, were evacuated. On February 6, Norfolk Southern officials set off a controlled burn. But even that sent a fireball into the sky, with a black mushroom cloud that looked like something out of Chernobyl. 

via www.thefp.com