One of those partial doomsday scenarios has happened, and it’s horrifyingly absurd: a small American town has practically gotten “nuked,” and the federal government led by Democrat President Joe Biden has totally turned a blind eye to it for three weeks now – possibly because it has occurred in a red state such as Ohio.
East Palestine, Ohio, has had an actual mushroom cloud over it, the kind you get after a nuclear explosion, with space photos stunning social media users – after a large freight train derailed near it, setting off fires and explosions.
What followed has been a disgrace regardless of party affiliation:
The Biden White House and FEMA snubbed Ohio’s pleas for federal help.
Biden’s lefty “superstar” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg ignored the crisis for 10 days, so even progressivists thought the federal government’s reaction was shameful.
Even Communist China made fun of America over it!
‘Pretty Much Nuked’
On February 3, a massive freight train of 150 cars, including 20 carrying hazardous materials, derailed on the Norfolk Southern Route near East Palestine, a village of 5,000 in Columbiana County, Ohio, 40 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Some 50 train cars derailed, including those carrying vinyl chloride, described as a “dangerous colorless gas.”
An ensuing fire after the train crash burned for more than two days, releasing phosgene and hydrogen chloride. That was followed by a controlled burn and explosions of several railway cars by state emergency responders from Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
That was after the train operator decided to release the dangerous gas as a way of preventing an even more “dangerous situation.” The deadly chemicals and fumes in the air forced the evacuation of locals.
The evacuees were told on February 9 that they were allowed to return, with Ohio and EPA officials assuring them their testing showed the air was safe to breathe.
Yet, some experts insisted that neither the air nor the water in East Palestine was safe.
Sil Caggiano, a local expert on hazardous materials, said the situation on the ground “looks like a nuclear winter.” He insisted that every single home should have been tested and cleaned up.
East Palestine was “pretty much… nuked… with chemicals,” Caggiano declared.
Enter the Biden-run federal government. Or not.
Buttigieg Plays Signature Move
The reaction of the Biden administration to the de facto nuclear blast situation in Ohio has been so bizarrely inadequate that even the likes of the “liberal media,” Commie progressivist US Rep. Ilhan Omar, and Communist China thought so.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, plain and simple, applied his signature move well-known from the devastating supply chain crisis: he waited for a very long time – over 10 days – before he even addressed the situation.
Then, when he finally did, out of the sheer kindness of his heart, he basically said not much could (have) be(en) done. Oh, and he blamed the incident on Donald Trump!
Buttigieg said the Department of Transportation was “constrained” by a rule changed in 2018 under which trains carrying dangerous chemical substances would have had to use electronically controlled pneumatic brakes.
At least this time, it was no national supply chain crisis, so Buttigieg didn’t have to go take a special paternity leave.
Your Disaster Ain’t ‘Natural’!
Then the office of Ohio’s Republican Governor, Mike DeWine, announced that the Biden administration snubbed the state’s request for federal aid over the chemical train’s derailment.
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told the government of Ohio that it wasn’t eligible for federal disaster relief as an entire community was struggling with the aftermath of the mini-nuclear winter following the toxic spill that their town had been subjected to.
DeWine’s spokesman Dan Tierney said FEMA didn’t think the incident was a “traditional disaster” like a “tornado or a hurricane.”
FEMA then graciously commented that it kept in constant contact with DeWine’s office, apparently to keep snubbing Ohio’s pleas for help. In its comments, FEMA didn’t care to comment on the state’s federal relief request.
The agency’s spokesman, Jeremy Edwards, only said FEMA was “closely coordinating” with other bodies such as the Health Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Centers for Disease Control for “public health assessments.” That was about it.
Tierney also said Ohio’s governor secured some help from the Health Department for the local’s medical costs resulting from the train derailment and its aftermath.
Norfolk Southern Railroad, the train operation, has been giving money to the affected community. However, community leaders warned residents the company might use its partial upfront payments to claim later that it had paid for damages in full.
But You Are Certainly a ‘Priority!’
The public outrage about the Biden administration’s non-response to the Ohio disaster has led an unnamed White House official to explain to Fox News why FEMA had refused federal aid: because it wasn’t the agency “best equipped” to help.
The official claimed that the Biden administration had given the affected community extensive help in other ways, but FEMA was all about “hurricanes and other natural disasters.”
The Biden operative also argued that East Palestine needed “much more expansive” aid – so, apparently, FEMA might as well be excluded from that.
The official noted that the EPA, the CDC, the Health Department, and the Transportation Department were the ones helping on the ground.
Meanwhile, Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated that the community’s “health and safety” were a “priority.”
Even Lefties Thought It Was Too Much
Such reactions from Joe Biden’s government have sparked well-justified outrage on both sides of the aisle. But one knows that lefties have gone to insane, absurd extremes when muster enough of their otherwise questionable conscience and common sense to call them out on it.
Thus, The Philadelphia Inquirer, a left-leaning newspaper, wondered why the mainstream media was practically ignoring the nuclear-type disaster in Ohio – and “how could” they do that?
Ten days after the derailment, even US Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, an otherwise Marxist-Communist progressivist, called upon Buttigieg to act immediately to help East Palestine and urged a congressional inquiry into the case.
Even the Foreign Ministry of Communist China was baffled by the federal government’s inadequate response – and it used to mock Biden-run America.
The Beijing Commies ridiculed the US for being “blind” to a “toxic mushroom cloud” over Ohio.
Two weeks after the train crash that created a toxic chemicals disaster, two East Palestine locals, Lisa Toner and Linda Murphy, were furious that Biden’s Transportation Secretary had downplayed the calamity. They said Buttigieg deserved a “pink slip” because of that.
Red State ‘Deplorables’ Left to Their Fate?
It remains a mystery why the Biden administration thought the good people of East Palestine, Ohio, didn’t deserve that much federal aid and attention. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s because Ohio has recently become a red state? Or because it is inhabited by Republican and Trump voters of the “basked of deplorables” type, as Hillary Clinton once famously quipped?
For the people of East Palestine, Ohio, there was no need for the Russians, the Chinese, and the like to strike them with nukes. They got their mushroom cloud – but the Biden White House pretended they didn’t notice.
The people of East Palestine were left with the hope that, after the toxic chemical spill, they may also get hit by a hurricane, a tornado, or something more “natural” – because then they would supposedly “qualify” for FEMA help. Or not.
