LIVE From East Palestine: TRAUMATIZED Resident, Business Owner Can Still See the Flames

Louis DeAngelis is BACK ON-THE-GROUND in East Palestine with the latest

Status Coup’s Louis DeAngelis is back ON-THE-GROUND in East Palestine. As most of the mainstream media have left, the people of East Palestine are still enduring many of the same conditions with little to no information on everything from testing to much-needed health services. The long-term effects of the Norfolk Southern train derailment are starting to come into full view for many community members as they wrestle with security and safety for their families.

Louis DeAngeslis speaks to business owner and East Palestine resident, Lonnie Miller, who lives just feet away from the site of the Norfolk Southern train disaster. Lonnie recalls scrambling to find family members, ensure neighbors were safe, and pensively waiting for information as sirens blared and she could see flames from the accident.
“We went out on our porch and that’s when we seen the flames and the smoke. And we honestly that a row of houses was on fire. It was absolutely terrifying to see it all unfold. At that moment you don’t know what is taking place.”

”It’s a moment that’s always going stick with me for the rest of my life. It was horrific sounding. The metal on metal. You could hear the initial explosion. And the way it rattled my home. And shook my home. I knew it derailed instantly.”

“I don’t know what our future is going to hold. I’m terrified for that. I know I do not sleep at night, hearing the trains because I’m constantly anticipating the next one to sound like it did on Friday, February third…to take away that sense of security you have in your own home. How are you ever supposed to feel normal again anywhere?”

Her family was asked to shelter in place, and despite being only a few houses away from the crash, she could smell fumes in her home and outside, Lonnie tells Status Coup reporter Louis DeAngelis.

"What I encountered in my own home, I could smell the fumes outside. You could smell the fumes inside. I knew that we shouldn’t be there,” says Lonnie, about the night of the accident and the days after and its traumatic impacts. “No one should have been in their homes. We all should have been evacuated and told that we needed to evacuate or get us out as soon as that train derailed.”

“Finding out later on Sunday morning when we had a knock on our door…being told that one of the tankers could possibly have a catastrophic failure and that it could blow at any minute, and knowing that could have happened from the moment the train derailed on Friday night. Knowing that we were risking our lives basically 24, 36 hours later and being told that if it were a catastrophic failure and it could blow and basically wipe our town basically off the map and no one came to help us. No one.”

Lonnie talks about how she approached a Norfolk Southern employee while at a hotel days after the incident and thanked them for the work they were doing, and the worker responded with an alarming comment regarding the possibility of another derailment in the future and how frequent issues like the ones in East Palestine happen.

"He said there will be another one tomorrow...said it's going to happen again. I just cried knowing what we were experiencing…it's going to happen to someone else, and it has to stop. These are people’s lives at stake and we matter. Our families matter."

Watch the full interview here:

Louis DeAngelis will be ON-THE-GROUND in East Palestine today to speak to more residents and officials. Subscribe on YouTube or here on Substack for the latest updates.

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