I think it was an impossible call to make and the product of a bunch of terrible circumstances and prior decisions. Additionally the response team was probably motivated to act instead of wait for the situation to develop unpredictably and they were reading a climbing temperature. If they believed it was avoiding an uncontrolled explosion where the was no idea how the rail car contents would release then it could be the right call in hindsight. I can see not wanting a big plume of that uncombusted stuff releasing, persisting and causing acute and chronic harm. I cannot argue anything about the call to burn it or not that sounds like a terrible choice.
My point is the rush to resume normalcy and choose the risk of false negative reassurance when its clear this is not a well thought out procedure is terrible. Testing for raw components alone neglects the entire set of potential contamination and routes. Also is a one mile radius evacuation adequate for an open burn like that? I don't know what is but it'd be nice to have support to leave for a time if living on the outside margin of "might not die depending on wind direction".
The story coverage in newspapers is decently good I don't think anything is being swept under the rug. But the official response and effort to put the threat in the past seems like damage control to exit the news cycle vs having any concern whatsoever about the people that live there. It is a poor populated area of the country and it is acceptable to open burn a million pounds of chlorinated petrochemicals. I know this happens in different ways under environmental permitting all over the US like in the gulf, etc. so its not unique. Still its terrible.
And the state and local officials are handling the media coverage and disaster response while the US federal government is shooting down multiple balloons out of the air with $400k missiles in the great 2023 balloon wars. It is absurd.
My point is the rush to resume normalcy and choose the risk of false negative reassurance when its clear this is not a well thought out procedure is terrible. Testing for raw components alone neglects the entire set of potential contamination and routes. Also is a one mile radius evacuation adequate for an open burn like that? I don't know what is but it'd be nice to have support to leave for a time if living on the outside margin of "might not die depending on wind direction".
The story coverage in newspapers is decently good I don't think anything is being swept under the rug. But the official response and effort to put the threat in the past seems like damage control to exit the news cycle vs having any concern whatsoever about the people that live there. It is a poor populated area of the country and it is acceptable to open burn a million pounds of chlorinated petrochemicals. I know this happens in different ways under environmental permitting all over the US like in the gulf, etc. so its not unique. Still its terrible.
And the state and local officials are handling the media coverage and disaster response while the US federal government is shooting down multiple balloons out of the air with $400k missiles in the great 2023 balloon wars. It is absurd.