After over a year, President Joe Biden has announced he will finally visit the eastern Ohio community that was devastated by a fiery chemical train derailment in February 2023.
The disaster displaced thousands of residents and left many fearing long-term health effects from the toxic chemicals that spilled when a Norfolk Southern train derailed and caused a massive fire.
A White House official said Wednesday that Biden will visit East Palestine in February. A date for the Democratic president’s trip to East Palestine next month was not given. It is not expected to happen before Saturday’s anniversary of the derailment.
The Feb. 3, 2023, disaster forced thousands of American families to flee their homes near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. Area residents still have lingering fears about health effects from the toxic chemicals that spilled — and burned — in the derailment and from the vinyl chloride that was released a few days after the crash by emergency crews that could be smelled in the air for miles.
Biden’s year long absence had become a subject of constant questioning at the White House,. Residents in East Palestine have said they felt increasingly abandoned. Some have said they felt forgotten as time marched on and as they watched Biden rush to the scenes of other disasters, such as the wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui and hurricanes in Florida.
Former President Donald Trump visited East Palestine only a few weeks after the disastrous crash and criticized the federal response under Biden as a “betrayal.” He also donated cleaning supplies and Trump-branded bottled water. Trump currently is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.
Trump criticized Biden on his TruthSocial app for planning to visit “a year late, and only to develop some political credibility because EVERYTHING else he has done has been such a DISASTER. I know those great people, I was there when it counted, and his reception won’t be a warm one.”
The Biden administration has been forced to defend against criticism by both local leaders and members of Congress, who have demanded that more be done.
As of last week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said she had no news about any visit to East Palestine by Biden and said such a visit wouldn’t be “appropriate” or helpful.
“When it is, when it is appropriate or helps … the community for him to be there, obviously, he will be there. He’s done that,” she said at her press briefing last Friday.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s in a rural area, urban area, suburban area, red state, blue state, the president has always been there to … assist and be there for the community,” Jean-Pierre added. “So when it is helpful, he certainly will do that.”
Biden has not declared a federal disaster in East Palestine, which remains a sticking point for residents of the heavily Republican area. Such a declaration would unlock additional federal funding and assistance that people could apply for to help rebuild their lives.
Instead, Biden ordered federal agencies to hold Norfolk Southern accountable for the derailment and appointed an official from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to oversee East Palestine’s recovery.
Norfolk Southern has estimated that it will cost the company more than $1.1 billion to remove all the hazardous chemicals. Insurance will likely cover much of that, but the total is expected to grow.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article