East Palestine Ohio

歌词：

In 1985 Don Delillo wrote a book called white noise

relating self worth to the value of the things that we

buy in order to forget about our ending

But all you really need to know for this song

is that in that book a train derails

and explodes like a bomb releasing toxic

gas and that used to be fiction

It ain't us

said the CEO of Norfolk Southern

ain't us either said the government

Musta been god, or luck that ain't so good

It ain't us

said the people of East Ohio

No one to blame and all the while

East Palestine's a poisoned neighborhood

(A preventable tragedy everyone understood)

In 2014 congress passed a bill

that required trains that could toxic spill

to have Electronic Pneumatic brakes that were shiny

Those old air brakes do fine with freight

But with toxic material cant make mistakes

six million dollars in donations that bill was gone

On February third, twenty twenty three

a freight train carrying vinyl chloride's speed

was too much for its 1970's bearings

Fifty cars derailed spilling their contents

Risking explosion, so Norfolk Southern

Started burning all that stuff and watched the smoke

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources

estimates the spill killed four thousand fish

poisoned children, killed pets and all the deer

The smoke kept growing in that giant column

We still don't know the extant of the problem

And somehow I'm not sure we ever will

Norfolk Southern's worth fifty billion

It issues shares to executives in millions

and buys back stock in billions to show they care

They fired half their workforce to wallstreets praise

Cause the Safety Oversight folks were overpaid

and its cheaper to poison children than to upgrade brakes

White noise ends with a beautiful sunset

enhanced by the chemicals the train erupted

It's beauty a distraction from our deaths

Norfolk Southern wants to play that game

The government looks like it wants the same

Without having to admit they made the mess