similarly, this glazes on the hill in mont them may not freeze them, still follow up. the dark is a cold desert in the himalayas in home to many glaciers. people here have been demanding more protection for their land. they say increased human activity in the area like large developments and to resume our melting glaciers and threatening their livelihoods, these black unburned goblin, mind you, we are at 11215000 feet. so fuels gone bern, properly saw the fuels go up as suit which is black carbon and fly to the glaciers and cover them up with their darkish tinge, which means the glaciers absorbed the sun even more. the event has set a world record for the highest frozen lake, half marathon runners. hope this would inspire action against the biggest threat facing our planet. pardon me, admit that al jazeera ah,

the top stories around his era, russia's president has announced moscow will suspend its role in a treaty that limits stockpiles of nuclear weapons. vladimir putin made the comments during his state of the nation, addressed to the parliament. the 2nd new start agreement is the last remaining between russia and united states, which also spoke at length about russia's military campaign in ukraine, just days before the 1st anniversary of the invasion. interested in. yes, president joe biden says, vladimir putin was wrong about ukraine. wrong about nato and wrong about the ein will of america and keith speech delivered in warsaw. i'd reiterated his unwavering support for keith and said, nato is more united than ever you gardener would fracture and wire. instead, vedo was more united and more unified than ever, than ever before. he thought autographs like absolve,

rudolph leaders of democracy were saw and barely met the r rule of america. the measures everywhere the reviews are accept the world governed by fear and force. he far of shelven war was eventually led by a man whose courage would be ford's in fire and still president zalinski. rescuers again, searching for people trapped under rebel in took here and syria. after more. earthquakes late on monday, at least 6 people have been confirmed dead. the epicenter, the quake was in the turkish province of hut, i near the city of antique, yet billings that were already weakened, have now collapsed beneath his tremors. happened 2 weeks after massive quakes kill more than 40. 8000 people will notice krusik was panic across the border and syria . doctors in the north west of the country are again calling for urgent medical supplies. as the regents overwhelmed health systems, struggles to treat earthquake victims, the death toll from floods and landslides in brazil has risen to 44. 12000 people

are displaced or homeless up to massive downpours at the weekend. devastated coastal areas of sao paolo state rescue efforts are continuing with dozens of people still missing those, but up stories. do you stay with us? yeah, not as error. the stream is coming out next. i'm one, is he straight up to that with them? the american people as spoken, but what exactly did they say is the world looking for a whole new order with less america in it is the woke agenda on the decline in america. how much his social media companies know about you, and how easy is it to manipulate the quizzical look us politics? the bottom line? i welcome to the stream i met sabot, dean, thousands of people living near the sight of the train derailment and chemicals spill in. the us state of ohio are worried about their health and they're also

questioning the response and credibility of emergency officials and news of the toxic league in east palestine is unsettling. other communities along the country's rail network. today we examined the aftermath of the disaster and asked what's needed to improve safety. were joined today by ben ratner, a resident and business owner in east pallets, dean ohio julia rock is a reporter at the lever, who has covered the immediate aftermath of the disaster. she joins us from brooklyn, new york, san san car as senior vice president for programs at earth justice, a nonprofit environmental law organization. he is in washington dc. and of course, you can be part of today's conversation through our youtube chat, send us your questions and comments, and i'll put them directly to our guests. so much to discuss here, ben, i want to start by sharing with our audience a brief timeline of the events since the disaster happened on february. 3rd,

we saw the train derail near east palis, dean, ohio. on february 6th crews began and controlled release of the chemicals, many still reported smelling the chemicals in the air and experiencing headaches, as well as burning sensations in their throats. and on february 8, they were told they could return. but since then, people have pets. for example, including cats and birds, have fallen ill since the derailment with some dying unexpectedly after the control release of the chemicals. so it's estimated, for example, been the $3500.00 fish have died. we've seen all sorts of concerns from the human beings living there yourself included. could you take us back to what happened in that moment and how you reacted? yeah, it's something that i think you have me tell me a story. i appreciate that. something that i never would have expected to have happen in our little town here were actually at the high school basketball game.

got home that night and start getting phone calls from people in the area asking for okay. and thats whenever you know, heard that there was a fire. i walked down there, i have a friend over there, so i can see the just the how the situation was and the safety situation and we'll try to get them to their house and fire fire department said we had to leave and they expanded their perimeter and i realize this was more than just a fire and a trainer. and what did you start to realize? i mean, i know for you specifically for people who don't know you and your family were extra in a 2022 movie adaptation of a novel called white noise in 1985 novel about basically this same story, a train the railings spilling chemicals, causing an airborne toxic event, and forcing sort of an evaluation. i'm wondering, you know, does life imitate art with art sort of imitating life for you? what is your worry right now? i mean, are you, are you experiencing symptoms yourself?

i think that the interesting tie in with the novel in the film because it speak to the level that these issues have been happening for a long time. and the safety of the railroad has been called in the question for a while. and, you know, using civil war era breaks and goes back to the mid eighty's early to hundreds. there were systems are antiquated, they need to be updated. and our legislators need to step in and make sure that's being done properly. julia hearing, been outline, has experience there. i'm curious what comes to mind. i mean it's, it's quite mind boggling the way that this is being discussed online, a lot of misinformation, but also a lot of outrage is the outrage appropriate i think our age is absolutely appropriate. you know, i've been a little bit surprised talking to palestine residents. i'm curious if this is your experience, been just about how much anger is directed towards the rail company. of course, it makes sense, but, but i think there were sort of a way in which this, this derailment played out, and people maybe experiences an unfortunate accident,

or were sort of more, more sympathetic to the company. and this, in my opinion is very clearly a story of corporate malfeasance. there's sort of no question but, but i've been surprised by, you know, sort of how, how widely that that narrative has been shared. i think, yeah. going on. now i was gonna say, i think early on in the source iterations that happen, the company at fault is generally the one control the narrative and they're kind of seen as the expert on it. and that in this situation is date. very dangerous. and also things that are talking about early on rather volatile chemicals, which they knew they could handle in a cheap, efficient way. things that they did not let out until the following week was the massive amounts of petroleum lube oil that were also spilled. and that's something that you know, can't be mitigated unless they are really working to rooms that soil quickly. and it's going to continue. so can see environment. and now i think that the real company not showing up for our town hall kind of gave everybody more of

a direction to direct their anger. and that's something that, you know, i think we needed, but it's also we need to look at a bigger picture here and make sure this doesn't happen again in the future. no. and we're certainly going to talk about that bigger picture. in the meantime, sam, based on what you just heard, i'm curious in terms of the lack of accountability. i mean, what do you say to people who are concerned? i like band people who have returned there, but who are either still experiencing symptoms or effects that they believe are related to the spell and sort of the general narrative that seems to be coming from the government, from authorities but know everything's fine. well, i sympathize with the residents and with the organizations on the ground that are trying to help because the railroad industry and the chemical industry have for a year is thought to limit information about the toxicity and hazardous nature of the chemicals that they're carrying. even the fact that they are carrying them through towns is often something the residents are surprised about until the very last minute. so when e, p a and other state agencies are saying the numbers that they're seeing in their monitoring are within acceptable minutes,

we accept the limits. you have to all recognize that the limits that are acceptable or limits that have been pushed and lobbied and aggressively influenced by the industries in question. so i would say i understand that the residents are concerned. say it again. bad. yeah. also their methods of testing. it's been, you know, there's johns hopkins professor that came out the other day in the article said they should be doing air sampling from multiple areas around the site. just air monitoring and the tools that they use for the air monitoring are not sophisticated enough to pick up the chemicals that we need to find in the, in our air. and obviously a lot of concern and worry hear from our panel. i do want to share with our audience, with some other residents have to say about their primary concerns. take a listen to this material can talk, but he can say, hey, i got a headache or i'm dizzy or light headed or my eyes are burning. nothing like that, i mean he'll start crying but it could be a number of things. we be president. we need fema housing. we're debbie

we we should not have been way back in the tell me until all this was done. you don't bring families back with their kids in their loved ones, then tell him to screw up with don't been when you're here that, i mean, you're nodding what comes to mind? what do you feeling? i think a lot of double talk early on and you know, people still go in there and i was there on thursday with the news crew. and especially when the trains come through there's are almost like acetone pain center that come out. and all those god noticeably ill, queasy, had to get out of there. i told the new guys, i need to get out here. your networks gonna yell at me. so that was something that it's still an issue now. and i think again, with a real company controlling the narrative, people didn't necessarily realize how serious the situation was early on. and i do want to also share the statement that we received from norfolk southern. we are

committed to east palestine today and in the future we will be judged by our actions. we are cleaning up the site and environmentally responsible way reimbursing residence, factored by the derailment, and working with members of the community to identify what's needed to help ease policy and recover and thrive. certainly sounds like they're doing all the right things. sam, what do you make of the statement? i mean, what's the actual ality compared to kind of what they have to say? i asked because there been a lot of people on twitter and even in our, in our youtube chat, just give me a 2nd to find the street. for example, david rhoda, you may know him. and julia thing, chemical lobbyist got obama officials to exempt the ohio train from the high hazard flammable train classification and its tough safety regulations. rail lobbyist then got trump to repeal a rule to 4th rail giants to start using better breaks 2 issues that played into what happened here. what do you make of their statement in light of those fact?

well, 1st of all, the tweet is, is precisely correct. and in the immediate aftermath of this, the train company kept pointing out that the regulations that were rolled back by the trump administration wouldn't have applied to this train. but what they failed to point out was that they had lobby to make sure that those regulations wouldn't have applied to this train. this is a story that we see throughout the chemical industries and high hazard high as their industries of all kinds of people. remember the deep water horizon incident? it's the very same story. and if the, if norfolk southern wants to be judged by its actions, i guess what i would ask is, let's see how they respond to calls for additional regulation. and legislation. will they lobby aggressively to prevent regulators from adding the regulations that are necessary to improve trans safety? will they continue paying the legislators and making the donations necessary to avoid any meaningful legislation? so i will judge them by their actions? absolutely, and everyone in this country should judge the company by the way,

it responds not just and critically to the citizens of east palestine, but also on the larger regulatory front. yeah. yeah. go ahead and 1000000000 dollars so you know, please, please back. we'll go real quick. yeah. 18. $18000000000.00 in stock buybacks in the past 5 years and no investment on safety. but that's just something i wanted to call attention to julia. yeah, i just wanted to jump in. that's a great point on, on the buybacks, and to add onto what sam was saying. you know, i've been covering norfolk southern lobbying efforts and the broader lobbying group that norfolk southern is a member of and the specific point that that's wrote it was tweeting about. and sam alluded to, is that there was an effort in the mid 20 tends to more strictly regulate trains carrying high hazard flammable materials like potentially vinyl chloride. although, as sam pointed out, thanks to the lobbying efforts of both the rail industry and the chemical industry,

the specific gas ended up not being covered by by the safety regulations. but there was sort of an effort. admittedly not, you know, the most expensive one by the obama administration to regulate these trains more strictly. railroads for the efforts, tooth and nail even fighting against safety technologies that they had previously bragged were very effective. and then some of the key parts of those regulations were repealed during the trumpet ministration. so, so there's a very recent history here of norfolk southern. it's interesting you bring up that statement, fighting against high profile efforts, make these trends carrying hazardous materials safer, subject them to more stringent those safety regulations and disclosure requirements . and you know, i want to broaden this conversation by bringing more voices into a live on youtube. people commenting a lot of emoji that you can imagine reacting very negatively. shocked, very horrified, but then some words derrick griffith saying we've had several such chemical

accidents in america and recent months, but the authorities continue to lie about the safety risks to americans. shelby staff saying living in ohio, and so unsettling. there was another explosion in the state last night, and stella dora saying, train, oper, operators, complain notified that particular runs here, were unsafe for a long time teams. their complaints were ignored. so people, boy think some of their concerns, some of the lack of trust we were talking about whether with local or federal officials. and i think that's very much at the heart of this conversation. i do want to share with our audience what sen sharon brown have to say about holding norfolk southern accountable. take a look. the important thing to me is that we hold as the administrator said that we hold norfolk southern accountable. that means accountable for the task for people to move back in accountable for all the clean up it will take weeks. i don't know how long, but at least weeks to assure people that the water safe in the air is safe and the soil is safe for their children for the 4000 plus residents here been. i'm

curious when you hear a senator sharon brown there. does it kind of limit or less than your worries and concerns or what comes to mind for you? i know there are economic challenges on your mind now. moving forward, are people going to leave? are people going to sell their homes? i mean, where's your head at? was with the center in particular, he was the 1st one that put together. i mean, the town hall of these policy and events are espousing citizens to come for a small event. air, their grievances had an advisor. they're taking notes that report back to him, so that was good on his part. issue with the water is the city water table has not been effective yet, but there's hundreds of people in the area that live off of this open well water that's subject to run off for from these chemicals and from these oils. and it's the eventual long term effects for our city offers. but right now i think it's so

much it's up in the air. people definitely are mixed feelings about wanting to be safe and also feeling like they might have to leave. but this town deeply, deeply rooted, there's people that have been here multi generational for 4 generations. people growing up in their grandparents home. so it's hard for them to think about up routing. and then i'm also wondering who might buy that property? i mean, who's going to? yeah, i mean, we've seen this happen in flint who's feel safe selling a property to. they know that that happened here. they would be very hard for me to try to sell my house even if i want to go. and just kind of, you know, discloses information and hope that i don't get low balled on an offer. but even still, like i said, our roots are deep here and it's hard, hard to fathom leaving. and when we talk them about the public trust issues with officials, especially in a highly charged political landscape, i want to share with people. you know, there's this right when commentators do peter as who tweeted this out saying this is ohio's chair noble here. let me just make this a bit bigger for you there. this is a video, obviously he's playing, you know,

it's very dramatic, very shocking. but then we see, and i'm going to flip here to vox, this is an article, a headline thing. well, no, it's not a tre noble. you know, the rec, isn't environmental disaster. but what do you make of the sort of the way this is being discussed online, the alarm? rightfully but then also some of the misinformation or conspiracy that you will? sure. well, i think what matters is someone's perspective, i think for the residents who live there, it doesn't matter whether you describe it as sure noble or not. sure noble. it's a massive disruption. a huge public health threat. i don't think it's fair for anyone outside of that community to be judging how it feels for the folks inside that community. i do think that if your question is, how should we be responding? yes, a sure noble that requires a response from the government and from the rail industry. of course it does. we have massive amounts of rail traffic all around this country. currently,

the oil and gas and chemical industries are moving tremendous amounts of highly hazardous materials in train cars all around the country and simultaneously working to defeat meaningful regulation that would improve the safety of that. if that's not something that the american public politicians should get behind changing, i don't know what is and then i'm curious. i mean, we've seen so many different people commenting on this. for example, if you look at robert right here, tweeting thing, unionized rail workers warned of it taking time bomb. they called out ment mosley often overburdened workers. they watched him were safety regulations were blocked. now. toxic chemicals from ohio's trained d. relman could poison the area for years at the given moment. do you have faith that if area is in fact poisoned, that the clean up effort is one that the government or the local authorities are capable of doing in a way where the community feels invested involved and protected?

it's a very good question, i think just until recently that was very much up in the air and more towards the negative. i think just in a couple of days there's been a lot more of a response today. there was actually a pretty positive conference where everybody but basically just gang on, on norfolk southern from federal, e p a to state also pennsylvania governor. so i think that's something where people are, there's a lot more eyes on this. hopefully there's more independent testing and they said they're going to be watching the clean up and apparently it's not done properly. they're going to step in charge them triplicate of that and do it the right way. which sounds great, but i noticed the slow pace of our legal system and things like that. i'm not sure what kind of teeth that data threat house julia you were going to jump in if before you do, if i may, i want to share with you a tweet here that's quoting east pilot steve mer. trent conway, who was defending his statement when he said the biggest flap in the face he felt

was when president biden visited ukraine, while ohio is dealing with chemical fall out from the train derailment, he said he's very frustrated and still stands by those comments. now, mainstream media really focusing on bite and trip to ukraine. we're the point of discussion obviously. but if i'm not mistaken, president biden and pete booted as many people criticizing them for not talking about this or acknowledging it for more than a week. maybe 10 days. yeah, i think the, by the administration has, you know, an east policy problem on their hands and then may be a much bigger problem on their hands. you know, there's the media problem of neither biden, nor the transportation. secretary, people to judge said anything about east palestine, i think for 10 days, which is pretty wild and obviously contributed to the feeling and his policy. i'm sure ben could speak to of conspiracy and feeling a little bit abandoned if i,

if i martin. interject sorry, why would the federal government be that silent? i mean, where's the benefit? they just don't have the capacity or the transportation secretary pete, but it says, i mean, what do you think that's about is that negligence? i think there are a couple of possible explanations. you know, one is that there was news coverage of the event, but not very much in those 1st 10 days. there was, you know, great, great local media coverage in the very few national stories saying this derailment happened. but there wasn't a lot of sort of thorough contextual reporting on it, which i think allows officials to be let off the hook. i think, you know, there's, there's this other point which i, this is a good time to the other point. there are more than a 1000 train derailments happening every year and tens of americans live in evacuation jones for trains carrying hazardous materials. so if the bye didn't administration comes in and says, you know, this is

a disaster in east policy. in norfolk southern has been fighting safety regulations . they've been flashing their workforce is they've been spending all their money on my backs that points a finger at the administration as well to do something about it. right. and so i have to wonder if part of the silence was, you know, a desire on the part of the administration not to be held accountable as well. and i, you know, i appreciate a good sound. i, sam, i know you are going to jump in there. i do want to share very quickly video comment that was sent to us from chris tavin or where we had asked our community essentially what could have or should have been done to prevent this. and this was his response, we'll come to you on the back of that accidents like the trained realm in east palestine are absolutely preventable. rail companies, historically prioritized profit above workers and communities when it comes to safety and that must change. norfolk southern must stop fighting new regulatory requirements like updated electronic braking systems and wayside detectors. if accidents do occur, companies must provide all information to state and federal agencies immediately.

especially when hazardous chemicals are involved and allow emergency responders to be the leaders in the situations. lawmakers must hold norfolk southern accountable both for the impacts to families in the environment. in for obstructing real safety reform in the past are elected officials must act right now to prevent future disasters. some salient points there, but sam, i want to ask you, i mean, we heard from julia that thousands of do derailments. we know that this particular train in ohio didn't have the modern breaking system you through to. well, it's, it's october. sorry. the 3rd derailment is different from been there since october . great, you know, high or low. yeah. and you know, earth justice having filed the lawsuit with the department of transportation back in 2018 about this issue of modern braking systems. in part, i mean, i understand that they responded to you and you had appeal than now you just heard back anything you can share with us about what, what, what you know, well, what we do know is that the, in the immediate aftermath of this, we revisited our,

our request that the department of transportation strength in its rules about train breaking systems. we've heard back that they are going to consider that request and they're evaluating those options. people to judge also announced a $33.00 part plan. but unfortunately, one part of that plan is voluntary requests for the train industry to do some more . another part of that request is to ask congress to pass some legislation. and one of the things that we see across the board here is that the government agencies in particular that we're relying on to protect us have been systematically undermined through under funding and through demoralization at the hands of various political interests. we know, for example, that e p a is the lowest staffing levels that have been seen in decades. and that is at a time when as the other commentators and pointed out the threats to our health are even higher. not to mention the global concerns that we have as well. so it is

ironic that at the very time when we need all of these protections and we rely on these agencies to help us out, right. they are operating on sco and staff with minimal budgets while i run x one word, the governor use the word absurd in some of his comments. take a look. listen to why he had to say this train apparently was not considered a high hazardous material. tre, therefore, the railroad was not required to notify anyone here in ohio, but what was in the rail cars coming to our state, even though some real cars didn't have hazardous material on board? and while most of them did not, that's why it was not categorized as a high hazardous material train. frankly, if this is true and i'm told it's true, this is absurd. absurd is certainly one word here. you have some news if we thought this couldn't get worse. president well former president trump's visiting east palestine, ohio this week. not sure if that's going to help or hurt the situation. there are

perhaps revealing some of my skepticism. forgive me. i was just looking at you for your reaction. there been julia sam. yeah, thank you for sharing your insights with us. sadly, that's all the time that we have for today. but really an important conversation that as our guests said was not necessarily getting the attention it deserved perhaps at the beginning. but you can always find these important stories here with us at the stream. you can follow us online at stream god al jazeera dot com. thanks for watching. ah ah

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