EAST PALESTINE, Ohio – The superintendent of the East Palestine City School District said Norfolk Southern Corp. has broken its promises and “repeatedly failed” to compensate the school district more than two years after a tragic train derailment and fire devastated the community.
“Unfortunately, the negative impact is still being realized more than two years later,” James Rook said during a virtual news conference Wednesday afternoon. “Norfolk Southern has broken its promises and has repeatedly failed to make the school district whole.”
The allegations serve as the basis of a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio on behalf of the school district by attorneys Ashlie Case Sletvold and Caroline Ford of the law firm Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise.
“Simply put, we filed this lawsuit because Norfolk Southern lied,” Sletvold said during the news conference. “It lied to the East Palestine Board of Education and to the children of East Palestine.”
On Feb. 3, 2023, Norfolk Southern railcars carrying toxic chemicals derailed as it passed through the small village of East Palestine, creating a huge fireball and forcing the evacuation of nearly the entire community. Concerned that one of the railcars could explode, a decision was made to vent and burn off gas from the car, sending a cloud of toxic fumes into the atmosphere.
Sletvold said the train disaster was “entirely preventable,” and that the decision to initiate a vent-and-burn plan on one of the railcars was done to clear the tracks as quickly as possible so Norfolk Southern could resume operations, and not in the interest of public safety.
“If Norfolk Southern had not released and burned the toxic chemicals it derailed – which we now know was calculated to reopen the tracks as quickly as possible, not to prevent an explosion – we also might not be here today,” she said. The decision left the schools facing financial instability.
Meanwhile, Sletvold said in a statement that Norfolk Southern has enjoyed more than $16 billion in profits since the derailment, “a windfall it achieved because it pawned off the costs of the trainwreck on this community while hoarding its profits.”
According to the complaint, Norfolk Southern failed to fulfill its commitment to reimburse emergency response costs, including the use of school facilities by emergency personnel as an incident command center and for housing and transporting residents displaced by the mandatory evacuation orders.
Norfolk Southern also failed to fulfill its promise to build a community wellness center at the school, with an estimated cost of more than $30 million, according to the contractor Norfolk Southern hired for the project, the lawsuit said. The company has also failed to make up for lost operating expenses to the local schools stemming from the derailment’s impact on property values and resident income on which the schools’ operating budget relies, court papers say.
The claims include negligence, strict liability for ultrahazardous activities and breach of contract, the lawsuit noted.
Rook said Norfolk Southern has yet to reimburse the school district for costs associated with virtual learning, which it incurred in the wake of the train disaster as the schools were ordered shut down between Feb. 6 and Feb. 10, 2023. Also, Norfolk Southern used the school district’s buildings as an emergency response center, he said, for which it hasn’t repaid the school.
“Norfolk Southern has still not paid the school district for the use of our facilities and the costs associated with the initial emergency response,” he said. “But perhaps most concerning is the complete disregard and abandonment of a $30 million community wellness and athletic complex, which was initiated, developed and promoted by Norfolk Southern.”
Rook said the school district was directed to engage corporate partners and host steering committees relative to the design and function of the project, “all under the guise of Norfolk Southern making it right.”
A federal jury decided last week that Norfolk Southern was solely responsible for a $600 million settlement that the company agreed to pay residents affected by the disaster and that the company that owned the railcar that caused the derailment – GATX – was not liable.
Pictured at top: A black plume rises over East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 6, 2023, as a result of a controlled detonation of a portion of a derailed Norfolk Southern train. The train derailed Feb. 3. (AP Photo | Gene J. Puskar, File)