Krissy Ferguson has not lived in the only home she has ever known for more than a year, ever since a train derailed less than a mile away, releasing toxic chemicals into the creek that runs beneath her basement.
When President Joe Biden visits East Palestine, Ohio, on Friday she has a simple message for him: ‘If I get to meet President Biden, what I want to ask is, please help those that need out to get out.’
Norfolk Southern, the rail company whose train was responsible, insists that it is safe for families to go home after it spent more than $100 million on clean-up operations.
But Ferguson, 49, said no one knows what the long-term health implications might be nor can anything erase the nightmares that wake her with images of her aging mother and step-father dying from toxic exposure.
She wants the train company to buy her house so that she can put the whole episode behind her.
Krissy Ferguson’s East Palestine home stands right above Sulphur Run Creek, which was contaminated when a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed less than a mile away
Ferguson has been repeatedly told her home is safe enough to return to, yet the Environmental Protection Agency has put signs around the creek warning people to stay away
And she said she was grateful for the president’s visit, so long as he used it to listen to residents and not just hijack the disaster as a backdrop for his campaign.
‘I’m saying we have screamed at the top of our lungs,’ she said. ‘Seems we have cried to anyone that would listen. We need help.’
A year on and she and her parents and daughter are living in a rented house to avoid the watering eyes and burning throat they experienced at home. Norfolk Southern is footing the bill.
The derailment forced thousands of people from their homes close to the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.
Almost all have moved back. But a year on and residents still have worries about the lingering effect of toxic chemicals that were spilled and the way emergency workers treated hundreds of thousands of pounds of vinyl chloride, a carcinogen.
Responders used a controlled burn to incinerate much of the dangerous load and avert the risk of a deadly explosion.
But that has raised more questions about the unknown compounds left behind beneath the plumes of thick black smoke.
In a village that was already being hollowed out by economic stagnation, where its main street seems to have as many empty storefronts as stores, it only increased the sense of a community being left behind.
Adding to frustrations was the absence of Biden, a president who long saw himself as ‘working class Joe’ and has embraced the idea of being ‘consoler-in-chief.’
President Joe Biden is due to visit East Palestine, Ohio, on Friday to see for himself the clean-up efforts. Residents say they are still suffering the ill effects and need more federal help
Their lives changed on Feb. 3, 2023. A photograph taken from a drone shows portions of a Norfolk and Southern freight train that derailed outside the village of East Palestine last year
Sulphur Run Creek flows through a culvert beneath three houses on the edge of East Palestine
Ferguson’s parents moved into the home in 1970. Today it is empty like the neighboring houses
Instead, it was former President Donald Trump who highlighted the plight of the blue-collar village. He visited three weeks after the derailment — arriving before Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
As well as buying Big Macs for first responders and delivering his branded water, Trump said: ‘What this community needs now are not excuses and all of the other things you’ve been hearing but answers and results.’
In contrast, Biden delayed. Officials insisted he would visit but never set a date. Until now.
Nor did he declare a ‘major disaster declaration’ that would have freed up more federal resources for the effort to get the community back on its feet.
On Friday, Trump supporters plan to greet Biden’s visit with a demonstration. A day earlier, a truck drove up and down Main Street with two ‘F*** Joe Biden’ flags fluttering in the breeze.
Jess Conard, whose house backs on to the rail tracks, sees things differently. She has no time for the cynicism of some locals who say Biden is only coming because it is an election year.
Her four-year-old son was diagnosed with asthma after the controlled burn sent its black cloud into the sky.
‘This is not a political issue. This is a people issue,’ she said. ‘And we need to recognise that there are serious medical concerns for the people in this community and surrounding areas that have been impacted.’
‘East Palestine Strong’ are dotted around the village, this week joined by Valentine’s greetings
She switched her career from being a medical speech language pathologist to campaign for reductions in the use of plastics.
In a letter to Biden sent Thursday, she and dozens of other campaigners demanded more federal help, conducting indoor air testing of homes, providing long-term medical help, and stumping financial resources so that families like the Fergusons could afford to move away.
She said she wanted the disaster in East Palestine to be a catalyst for change, reducing the amount of hazardous materials that were transported on rickety lines.
For its part, Norfolk and Southern said it had met its obligations with a program that seeks to make up the difference if residents find they are unable to command market value when selling their homes.
‘The air and water have been monitored since the derailment in and around the community continuously and it remains safe to return home,’ said a spokesman.
That is not good enough, said Conard.
‘I think I think Norfolk Southern is doing what they have been told to do,’ she said. ‘I don’t in any way think that they are making it right, which is what they vowed to do.’
Conard and other campaigners sent a letter to Biden Thursday outlining what the federal government could do to ensure the safety and security of people in East Palestine
A large plume of smoke rises over East Palestine, Ohio, last year after a controlled detonation of a portion of a derailed Norfolk Southern train to burn off hazardous chemicals
Ferguson had always known her house was built above Sulphur Run Creek, named for the way sewers would run into it. She would play in the culvert as a child and as a mother with her own child.
Occasionally the basement would flood when water levels rose.
‘We dealt with it. We knew not to set stuff on the ground, set it up high,’ she said. ‘But the water wasn’t contaminated then. It didn’t make us sick.’
Since the disaster, she cannot bear to be inside the cosy two-story building.
‘I would get a tingling in my lips and tongue. I would stumble and stagger staggered, like I was drunk for you weren’t drinking anything. And your eyes would water,’ she said.
The toughest part of staying away, she said, was the impact on her mother, who has Parkinson’s disease, and her 90-year-old stepfather, who was confused by the rented accommodation.
She just wants to get them settled somewhere permanent, somewhere far away from the scene of the derailment and its aftermath.
‘I can’t live here anymore,’ she said, her eyes welling with tears. ‘It’s not safe.’