As residents of East Palestine, Ohio, try to take rail company Norfolk Southern up on its offers to reimburse their evacuation and relocation costs after its train derailed last month, nearly a dozen said they have found the process confusing and burdensome. Several said they have expenses that the company declined to pay.
In the wake of the disaster on Feb. 3 — when a train carrying hazardous chemicals jumped the tracks, causing some of its toxic cargo to spill and burn — Norfolk Southern has offered residents a growing list of reimbursement options for the costs of their evacuations and other inconveniences. All 11 residents interviewed for this article have received sums from the company but are nonetheless frustrated by what they see as an onerous and opaque system that left them pleading with representatives to get money they believed they were owed.
They said the process — which followed the turmoil of fleeing their homes, watching their property values crash and, in some cases, dealing with health issues like rashes and coughs — further deepened mistrust of Norfolk Southern.
“They act like we are beggars or we’re just trying to get free stuff,” Zsuzsa Gyenes, who went to high school in East Palestine and moved back last summer, said of the Norfolk Southern representatives she met with. “They were trying to crack jokes about what people were trying to get reimbursed for. It was just very dehumanizing.”
After the disaster, Norfolk Southern first offered to reimburse residents who were required to evacuate for five days or did so voluntarily for necessities like hotel stays, food, gas, toiletries or clothing. After that, the company added a $1,000 inconvenience check for every person within a mile of the derailment site, then subsequently expanded it to anyone with an East Palestine ZIP code.
Then, nearly four weeks ago, Norfolk Southern began offering additional relocation reimbursements to cover food, gas and lodging for people whose…
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