When Hell Came to Ohio: The East Palestine Train Crash

Discover the harrowing tale of the East Palestine train derailment that shook a small American town to its core. From the initial explosion to the aftermath, uncover the truth behind this catastrophic event.

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[Visceral_Biperfication_IX]

It is sad, as an Ohio resident, I got more information about what happened from a guy in Prague than my own local government. Thanks for your coverage!!!!

[bubbathedm]

My favorite part was when they shut down the water intake system on the Ohio river in Cincinnati and yet had the gall to tell us everything was fine

[gothicfairy]

As someone who lives in PA and at most 30 minutes away from East Palestine, this whole saga was wild. We had air and water warnings, could see the effects of the crash, and we got more information from our officials than the Ohioans did.

[GrumpyIan]

I remember this. The mayor said the water was safe to drink. The community disagreed, so he made a video fake drinking the water.

[stevenpotter]

I'm a US railroader, and you missed a lot of the most important info. NS knew about there was an axle overheating for a long time before accident. It triggered warnings at multiple previous defect detectors, but NS decided not to warn the crew. This is called a trending axle warning and crews used to be notified immediately by detectors, however to save money and prevent delays railroads no longer let detectors warn train crews of defects directly, except for the most extreme ones. Under the old system, that car would have been inspected by the crew and if visually defective or if overheated, would have set out from the train. If they couldn't find an issue it would have bern set out from the train anyways after the second defect detector flagged it. The crew was warned by the third detector when it was too late. This is what was told to me by an NS employee. I can't share too much do the fact that railroads fire their employees for speaking out too much. Most bad derailments today are absolutely preventable though. Trains are too long, training for crews is too short, and maintenance is terrible. But corporate profits are at all time highs.

[Ryutensie]

As a NE Ohio resident, glad you got many of the pronunciations correct both cities and counties. Also nice to see something more than a cursory glance at this incident.

[AaronScottLawford]

I think we will all know the outcome of some of the investigations. Corporate greed, lack of maintenance or time to do maintenance, crew push to rush, rush, rush to maximise profits and bullying to prevent people reporting issues or purposely hiring reports of issues.

[shanewilson]

I live about 100 miles directly downwind, that week at least, from this fire. Everyone i know had mild headaches clear up to the migraines i suffered for a week or so when this happened. No one slept because of a weird restlessness... it definitely was more severe than was claimed.

[steelvalleysportsmen]

I'm from the Youngstown area, this was awful. The rain afterwards left a white film on everything and some people said it felt funny on their skin.

[barrydysert]

Worst than you know!?!?
Worse than you know•

[AlexBaldwin]

Hey a Simon video I can add input on!!. I worked for Norfolk Southern for 8 years, quitting in 2022. I traveled through East Palestine almost on a daily basis traveling from Bellevue, Ohio to Conway, Pennsylvania. Once the class one railroads adopted Precision Scheduled Railroading they made many cuts to personal. They doubled if not trippled the length of trains, cut the inspectors that looked over rail cars, and gave them a time limit of 45 seconds per rail car. Any inspector will tell you that you need at least 90 seconds to see both sides if the car. I was a conductor, and knee it was only a matter of time before something like this would happen. Many railroaders tried to raise the alarm but nobody listened.

[madezra]

I work for an MSP Ohio nearby East Palestine and one of our clients offices is there. I had just started my first on-call shift ever for this MSP and it was a pretty quiet night up until about 9:20 PM when I started receiving alerts for their servers going down. I followed protocol and tried reaching out to the client. They didn't pick up so I left a voicemail and began tediously trying to troubleshoot and figure out what has happened. Not long after they call me back, and that's when they told me "Yeah a train just de-railed across from our office and everything is on fire, so I quickly ran down to the office and ripped out all our servers to take home. They're safe here with me now!" LIKE BRUH WHAT?! Dude I was actually GENUINELY concerned for his life and completely forgot about the servers for a moment. I kept asking him if he was okay and that we will do anything we can to help. We soon got off the phone and I notified our team. During this time news began blowing up and the scale began to became clear. I actually think our client is crazy!! But hey, I get it. That business is his life.

[nickolaiorlov]

ooooh i live there!!!
oh i live there...

[Aura-Of-Syrinx]

I still swear they are going to find shit in the water table in a year or two;
sometimes it takes a decade for problems to become noticeable

the fact they dumped it then burnt it in an unlined pit right there is absolutely INSANE

[jessicak]

As an East Palestine resident I'd never have thought that we'd be on one of Factboi's channels!!!

[musicalDrebin]

my greatest fear is one day Simmon will say the name of my town, followed by 'it was a sleepy little American town... until'

[miloanderson]

Remember kiddos, when the local, state and federal government says they’re here to help, everything is fine and don’t panic: they won’t, it’s not, and you should definitely panic.

[spencerclabaugh]

As an Ohioan thank you for this Simon.

[Joe_Dirt]

I live near by. Girlfriend and I went there last year. Train cars still there and roads still closed. A guest on Redonkulas explained that they cut the crew down to skeleton crews so bad that they can't actually run but are forced to to keep their jobs.

[JohnMassey-ql]

Great video Simon and crew! Chemist here. Phosgene was one of the gases used during WWI. Exposure to benzene can cause aplasic anemia