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EAST PALESTINE -- The owner of an East Palestine business who claims he lost nearly everything because of the Feb. 3 train derailment filed a $500 million lawsuit against Norfolk Southern Tuesday.
Edwin Wang, majority owner of CeramFab, WYG Refractories and CeramSource and Yonggong, in a suit filed in federal court for the Northern District Court of Ohio said the disaster created an unsafe environment for his employees and forced him to close or relocate all operations.
The lawsuit said businesses are continuing to suffer "direct and substantial damages" due to "the fire and release of toxic chemicals into the air, soil and water" that followed the derailment. The six-count complaint alleges negligence, liability, private and public nuisance, trespass and willful and wanton conduct on the part of the railroad. Norfolk's actions following the derailment "created an unmitigated disaster of unimaginable portions with terrible consequences for its innocent victims," the lawsuit said
All four companies are in proximity to the derailment site, with the 80,000-square-foot CeramFab facility within the site itself and next to what the incident Unified Command referred to as Car Scrapping Area 4 "where burned out cars were dismantled for disposal".
Aside from damages caused by the chemicals spilled in the derailment, the ensuing fire and controlled vent and burn of vinyl chloride days later, the lawsuit said the use of CeramFab's lot as a staging area for contract workers, vehicles and equipment has caused additional damage to the property and excavation of the site that has resulted in multiple flood events.
"Over the next few months, defendants provided no clear indication on how long their clean-up efforts would take or how contaminated they knew plaintiffs' business properties actually were," the lawsuit said. "This lack of transparent communication from Norfolk Southern was coupled with multiple public third-party reports of increased community dioxin levels and persistent contamination proximate to plaintiff properties."
The lawsuit said "results from soil samples, bulk building samples and the storm sewer sampling showed higher-than-expected levels of volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, phthalates and dioxins were present."
Concern over the safety and health of CeramFab employees also was outlined in the lawsuit which alleges workers became "ill and unable to work after spending only short periods of time in the plaintiffs' facilities" and the employees who were able work for longer periods "experienced symptoms such as burning eyes, acute breathing problems, rashes, foul odors, tastes, and other strange effects."
Wang said the inability to adequately staff shifts, concern for the wellbeing of the employees and possible liabilities for exposing workers to a potentially-contaminated building, led him to halt operations.
The complaint further states that "the initial derailment, the national spotlight, the continued clean-up, and the operational shutdown has also eroded the confidence of both existing customers and potential future customers" and that CeramFab had its first customer order cancellation within weeks of the derailment and others quickly followed.
Wang's attorney Jon C. Conlins alleges that Norfolk Southern has a history of skirting safety regulations and disregarded known issues of 32N, the train that derailed.
"When you investigate the background of Norfolk Southern, the pressure executives applied to make faster, longer trains, run with smaller crews, and to repeatedly put juiced corporate profits over even basic public safety concerns, a disaster of this magnitude was only a matter of time," he said. "The full scope of this tragedy on humans, animals, the community, and the environment may not be fully known for years, but we know right now that Edwin Wang's businesses will never fully recover. That is why we are seeking full, just, and complete compensation for all current and future damages suffered by his businesses."
The fate of CeramFab and three other businesses, Brave Industries and U.S. Stonewares and Strohecker Industries, within ground-zero were addressed by both the Environmental Protection Agency and Norfolk Southern when announcing earlier this month that all contaminated soil has been removed from the site.
EPA Response Coordinator Mark Durno said possible contamination inside the businesses located at ground zero and potentially in the soil underneath the structures, particularly CeramFab, has yet to be fully assessed and determined as laid out in the Characterization Work Plan for Derailment-Area Soil.