The U.S. government has specialized aircraft equipped with advanced sensors, and officials boast that they can always be deployed within an hour in the event of any kind of chemical disaster. But the last time the plane flew over eastern Ohio was four days after the tragic derailment south of Norfolk last year.
A whistleblower told The Associated Press that the Environmental Protection Agency’s ASPECT plane could have provided critical data about chemicals that spewed into the air around East Palestine as the wreckage burned and people were forced to flee their homes. He said it was sexual.
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The man who wrote the software and helped interpret data from the latest radiation and infrared sensors on planes was forced to blow up five tank cars and burn the vinyl chloride inside because of the plane’s sensors. He said it may have helped authorities realize that there was no such thing. It would have been able to detect the vehicle’s temperature more accurately than responders on the ground, who had trouble getting close enough to see it safely.
Whistleblower Robert Krutle poses for a photo on Monday, May 13, 2024 in Olathe, Kansas. Kreutl, who worked to support the EPA’s program to collect aviation data, questioned the agency’s efforts to collect data on private planes in the wake of the 2023 train derailment. East Palestine, Ohio. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
But the single-engine Cessna cargo plane didn’t fly over the train wreck until the next day, when a controversial vent-and-burn operation sent a huge plume of black smoke across the entire area near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. Met.
Robert Kreutl said that even if the plane had actually flown, only incomplete data could have been collected. Then, when officials later realized some of the mission’s shortcomings, they asked the company Kurtil worked for, Cullman & Company, to draft a flight plan and appear in a public records request. I asked him to go back and create a plan to make it look better. Kreutl said.
Kurtil said the team deemed the mission inconclusive because the two flights recorded only eight minutes of data and the plane’s chemical sensors were turned off over the stream. But he said that when the plane finally flew, there were so few chemicals detected that Environmental Protection Agency administrators changed the report and declared the vent-and-burn a success. Stated.
“We found the data provided by the two ASPECT flights to East Palestine on February 7 to be incomplete and irregular. We did not have confidence in the data. We could not trust it,” Kultil said. Stated.
Revelations about the use of ASPECT planes in the aftermath of the worst rail disaster in a decade are raising new questions about the effectiveness of the Biden administration’s touted “whole-of-government response” in East Palestine.
On Tuesday, the Government Accountability Project, which represents Mr. Kurtil and has criticized the EPA’s response in East Palestine, sent an affidavit to the EPA’s inspector general detailing his concerns and requesting a formal investigation. The group provided a copy of the affidavit, and Kultil agreed in advance to an interview with The Associated Press.
The EPA said in a statement Tuesday that there was not even a request for the plane until Feb. 5, two days after the derailment, and that the plane arrived in Pittsburgh from a base in Texas later that day. Although the flight crew determined that it was unsafe to fly on the day of the bent-and-burn due to icing conditions, it is unclear why the aircraft did not pass through the derailment site on its way to the scene. EPA response coordinator Mark Dano also said the agency believes it had enough sensors on the ground to effectively monitor air and water when the derailed vehicle burst into flames.
The agency said that for the first two days after the derailment, “air monitoring readings were below detection levels for most pollutants, except particulate matter,” and that “in the hours following the controlled combustion, “Air monitoring did not detect any levels of chemical contaminants of concern.” ” Officials say data collected from more than 115 million measurements since then shows no “chemicals of persistent concern” in the air.
But many of the town’s residents, who still complain of respiratory illnesses and unexplained rashes while worrying about the possibility of developing cancer, question the EPA’s assurances that their town and the streams that flow through it are safe. is holding. More than 177,000 tons of soil and 67 million gallons of wastewater have been removed as part of the ongoing cleanup, costing the railroad more than $1 billion.
The NTSB director said the agency’s investigation determined that a vent-and-burn was not necessary because the tank car was indeed beginning to cool and no dangerous reactions were occurring inside the tank car. (This is what a chemical company has tried to do) Tell the people involved. However, those who made the decision to blow up these tank cars said they were never informed of the decisions made by Oxyvinyl’s experts. Instead, they only heard about fears that the tank car might explode.
The EPA said the ASPECT flight in East Palestine was consistent with past missions and the aircraft collected the requested information, but it was inconsistent with Mr. Kurtir’s experience.
“The East Palestine derailment was the strangest reaction I’ve ever observed in over 20 years of the ASPECT program,” the Pentagon said after the 9/11 attacks demonstrated the need for security. said Kultil, who helped develop the program while working at . Such as aerial surveillance over New York.
Mr. Kultir, who resigned in disappointment in January, said he wanted to share his concerns about the mission in East Palestine. He said this incident was handled differently than the other 180 times the plane has been deployed since 2001. In some cases, planes were sent to political rallies and near the Super Bowl in case something went wrong.
“We want to fly over the train derailment within the first five to 10 hours after the accident, while the fire is still burning. Any plume would be a huge advantage. That big black plume… to collect data,” Kultil said. “EPA ASPECT’s plane should have immediately passed over the derailment site, but definitely should have done so before the vent-and-burn occurred. I think they chose not to know.”
Kroutil’s former boss, Rick Turville, is the program manager for Kalman’s ASPECT airplane data interpretation. He has complete confidence in Kreutl, he said. That’s because he is one of the world’s leading experts in spectroscopy and shares Mr. Krutle’s frustration that planes don’t fly faster. Experts hired by Mr. Cullman knew about the disaster in East Palestine, but could not act until the EPA deployed a plane.
“These types of fires, refinery fires and fertilizer plant explosions don’t happen very often,” Turvill said. “But when they do, you have to get there, and you have to get there right away. And that’s how you save lives.”
Fortunately, no one was killed in East Palestine, but the derailment threatens the lives of thousands of people, and there are lingering concerns about future health problems.
Paige Delgado, the EPA manager in charge of the program, did not immediately respond to an email Monday asking questions about her actions.
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Mr. Kurtil said authorities were concerned that chemicals could reach waterways and contaminate drinking water supplies in the lower Ohio River, but as the plane flew over streams in East Palestine, Mr. Delgado He said he heard that during the mission he ordered the plane’s pilot to turn off its chemical sensors. Krutil said a satellite link with the plane’s instruments confirmed those sensors were turned off.
The EPA’s official report on East Palestine Flight 2 includes photos of the plane flying over Little Beaver Creek after the aerial camera issue was resolved, but sulfur flowing right next to the derailment site. -No mention of Ran or the larger Leslie. A stream flowing through the city.
