Railroad agrees to $600 million settlement for fiery Ohio derailment, residents fear it’s not enough

Norfolk Southern has agreed to pay $600 million in a class-action lawsuit settlement for a fiery train derailment in February 2023 in eastern Ohio, but local residents worry the money won’t go very far because their potential health needs down the road may be tremendous.

“It’s not nowhere near my needs let alone what the health effects are going to be 5 or 10 years down the road,” said Eric Cozza, who had 47 family members living within one-mile of the derailment.

The settlement also represents only a small slice of the $3 billion in revenue Norfolk Southern generated just in the first three months of this year.

More than three dozen cars of the freight train — which had roughly 150 cars and three locomotives — derailed on the outskirts of East Palestine, near the Pennsylvania state line. Several cars spilled a cocktail of hazardous materials that caught fire, and then three days later officials blew open five cars filled with vinyl chloride and burned that toxic chemical because they feared those cars might explode. An evacuation covered 1,500 to 2,000 of the town’s approximately 4,800 to 4,900 residents.