Former New York State Homeland Security adviser Michael Balboni told Newsmax Thursday that while train derailments like the one in eastern Ohio are "part of the business," it's "astounding" that a lot of "very basic questions" still don't have answers two weeks post-event.
In addition, the official response is doing little to assuage the fears of the "folks on the ground."
"There should be all sorts of questions that both the EPA and state officials should be talking to Norfolk Southern about," Balboni said during an appearance on Newsmax's "American Agenda."
"What type of testing has been done? What has been the schedule for that? What are those results? What was the plume modeling? What communities were affected? And what does it look like, not just today, but next couple of weeks? What can they expect?
"Answer the questions of the folks on the ground," he continued. "This whole issue about soil samples — it's been a controversy. So, where did you take the soil samples from? And how were they tested? Where were they tested?
"This type of transparency is absolutely crucial to guarantee the safety of folks as they move back into their homes. This is their homes. This is not an academic exercise that something happened in another community. This is right where they live."
Balboni noted that the rail carrier should be on the ground addressing concerns in East Palestine, Ohio.
"Norfolk Southern should be here answering questions and frankly, I don't really buy the fact that their employees were scared about threats to their safety," he said. "They [Norfolk Southern] have security teams. There's a police department.
"You can't guarantee safety of folks who are going to go into a public meeting? Really? That just seems to be that they're missing the very basic marks on emergency management and crisis communication 101.
"One of the huge things that people don't really appreciate is that once there is a perspective in a community that things are unsafe or there's a contamination, that's very difficult to get people to rethink and then sit there and accept the word of government," he continued.
This is true "especially if you don't show up and basically put skin in the game to say, 'No, no, we're here. We're in this community. Here are resources, here are the people responsible for this cleanup, and it's going to be this partnership between the private purveyor, which is Norfolk Southern, and the state of Ohio and the federal government.'
"That kind of collaboration and reassurance that everything possible is being done to protect safety in this situation, that's got to happen," he stressed.