Creagency 4

The East Palestine Train Derailment

Creators: Carley Naser, Johnathon Hafner, Luke Martin, Alex Macioszek, Stephanie Michmerhuizen

On February 3, 2023 at 8:55 pm a train of 38 rail cars carrying toxic chemicals such as vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. These toxic chemicals are colorless chemicals are highly flammable, can cause neurological and behavioral symptoms, and have seeped into there ground and water, and there is many chemicals still not identified or released for public knowledge. Many residents have reported countless health concerns due to these chemicals and struggle daily with these symptoms. Evacuations were put in place and many people had to uproot their lives for there health and safety. The train company responsable for the derailment, Norfolk Southern, decided the best way to clean up the disater was to lead a controlled burn on the train cars and chemicals. This however has caused all those chemicals to deploy into the air, adding to the toxic enviroment. The people of East Palestine have had to move out of the area and change their lives drastically in the past year. All of this stress and change has caused many to struggle with mental health issues like anxiety and depression which has lead some to form alcohol or substance abuse issues.

Story Map

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Our Story Map provides an in depth analysis of the events correlated with the train derailment of East Palestine. We believe it is important to view this disaster from a perspective involving both a timeline and specific locations.

Our Groups Goal

Our groups goal is to provide mental health resources for the people of East Palestine who have suffered from addidional stress, anxiety, and depression from this disaster due to property damage, economic loss, and health concerns from the derailment. In cooperation with the Unity Council for the East Palestine Train Derailment, our goal is to provide mental health resources available for those effected and focusing on bringing in mental health professional to specialize in substance abuse issues along with supplying online therapy sessions to those in need.

Outreach Campaigns

Our group as created communicative pieces in order to spread awareness to our targeted demographic. Our goal is to bring together the youth in the United States to fuel social change. By advocating for the citizens of East Palestine, we hope to encourage a Disastor Decleration and ongoing awareness of the long lasting consequences present in the town. The ongoing concerns that FEMA will be needed for financial assistance must be expressed; which is the leading cause of our media campaign. Although Norfolk Southern has made voluntary actions to compensate for the damage incurred, it is impossible to denote what long-term effects the derailment will have. This includes the host of physical and mental health impacts. Along with a range of economic influence including the loss of business and decline of property value. It is evident that the entirety of consequences have not yet been addressed within East Palestine and the assurance of ongoing financial support is not guaranteed for its citizens. We have created several campaigns including a Public Service Announcement (PSA) in the form of a Tik Tok, along with a visual campaign designed to be used on social media platforms.

Tik Tok PSA

Video Link

Our TikTok focused on spreading awareness and educating our targeted audience, teenages to young adults, about the issues in East Palestine. We really wanted to make the Tik Tok very dramatic and inticing to the audience, so we used dramatic music along with new clips from someone from the Unity Council. We made our PSA on Tik Tok because we believe it was the best way to reach teenagers and have them advocate for East Palestine.

Visual Campaign

Link to Visual Campaign

Our visual campaign's focus was to stress the need for the train derailment to be declared a disaster in order for more funding to become available for East Palestine, including medical, healthcare and technical assistance. Our intended platform for this visual campaign is Instagram because of the audience of both younger and middle age people to reach as many people we can of this issue. Our intended audience with this campaign is the younger generation as well with the hope that they will spread the message and inspire activism. Our message was based off the fact that organizations like the EPA and CDC have been unreliable sources in this train derailment and we want to show that the people of East Palestine are still not fine. This campaign shows the reality of East Palestine's issues of people still not being safe in there own community and families struggling because of it.

Our Grant Proposal

Throughout the semester, our group has been working on a grant propsal for the Unity Council for the East Palestine Train Derailment. The main goal of we have been working towards is providing the people of East Palestine mental health and substance abuse resources. We came across the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Adminsitration, SAMHSA, and believe it aligned with our goals. We have slowing put together a grant application by creating key information like goals and objectives, methodolgy information, need statements, and an evaluation plan.