‘I Feel Like I Don’t Matter’: East Palestine Waits for a Presidential Visit
Erica L. Green | December 28, 2023 | The New York Times
When Jessica Conard heard that President Biden would visit her community in East Palestine, she felt a sense of relief.
Mr. Biden’s presence, she believed, would signal to the world that nothing short of disaster happened here in February, when a Norfolk Southern train skipped the tracks and spilled thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals into the environment.
All these months later, she’s still waiting for him.
“I feel like I don’t matter,” said Ms. Conard, who has grown disillusioned with the president she voted for in 2020. She was particularly aghast that he flew past her town in September to join picketing union workers in Michigan, a key swing state.
The White House insists that Mr. Biden still plans to visit.
“The president continues to oversee a robust recovery effort to support the people of East Palestine, and he will visit when it is most helpful for the community,” said Jeremy M. Edwards, a White House spokesman.
But for many residents, Mr. Biden’s absence feels like disrespect. Despite years of promoting himself as “working class Joe,” Mr. Biden is widely viewed here as a Washington insider who is neglecting the catastrophe in their midst.
“I believe that it is political for him,” said Krissy Ferguson, who lives within a mile of where the train derailed, in a county former President Donald J. Trump won with more than 70 percent of votes in 2020.
“I believe that if we were in a blue area, he would have come, and that hurts,” she said.
The derailment almost immediately became a political flashpoint, fomented by conservative commentators who seized on the crisis to sow public distrust in the Biden administration. In the days after the wreck, Mr. Trump — Mr. Biden’s likely rival in the 2024 presidential campaign — visited East Palestine and handed out Make America Great Again hats, telling the crowd: “You are not forgotten.”
Administration officials have defended the government’s response to the derailment, saying the Environmental Protection Agency and FEMA have deployed a steady stream of resources and hundreds of staff members to assess environmental and health risks. Many remain on the ground, officials said.
Mr. Biden also signed an executive order in September calling on federal agencies to continue conducting assessments to hold Norfolk Southern accountable, and he appointed a FEMA coordinator to oversee long-term recovery efforts.
But he did not issue a disaster declaration, which would allow the state to tap into more federal resources to help with recovery efforts, such as relocation assistance, crisis counseling and hazard mitigation.
