EAST PALESTINE — Before the evening of Feb. 3, Jessica Conard was busy being the mom of three young boys and speech pathologist. Now, the East Palestine resident is busy advocating for her community which was sent into chaos when a Norfolk Southern train derailed, spilling toxic chemicals in the middle of her hometown.

“Until that train derailed, I had no experience or history of advocacy. I was raised in a conservative family and I was never really outspoken,” she said. “But the train did derail and we weren’t being told the truth. We had little information and the information we did have was conflicting.”

Conard now serves as the community advocate for East Palestine Justice — a team of lawyers and environmentalists led by famed environmental activist Erin Brockovich seeking compensation for individuals impacted by the rail disaster. It’s a position she wishes she never had to take for an organization she wishes never had to exist. It was also a position she didn’t go out looking for. East Palestine Justice came looking for her after she appeared on CNN’s Town Hall with Jake Tapper 20 days after the disaster. During the panel discussion which included Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw, Conard wasn’t shy when it came to calling the CEO out for his company’s responsibility or, in Conard’s opinion, irresponsibility. Brockovich’s team noticed her passion and offered her a job as the community advocate.

“After the CNN Town Hall, I was getting a lot of phone calls and the chief operating officer of Brockovich’s group reached out,” Conard explained. “He wanted to talk and I said ‘sure, let’s talk’ and we had a zoom call and I started telling him about the derailment and what the town was going through and at the end of the call, he offered me the position as the community advocate.”

Conard accepted the position because she knew her community needed a voice and more than anything they needed answers. She also felt that her town was being railroaded for lack of a better term by Norfolk Southern. “We are a very trusting community. We are a community that believes in a firm handshake,” she said. “I just felt like Norfolk Southern was telling people what they wanted to hear and throwing us breadcrumbs so the people in this town wouldn’t sue. If you tell people in this community that you are going to do something, they believe it, because they are good people who believe that other people are good. I kind of felt like Norfolk Southern was trying to take advantage of that.”

So far, Norfolk Southern has committed $27 million to East Palestine. The railroad has donated to the schools and local youth sports. Norfolk Southern bought the local florist out of flowers and purchased every ticket that was available for the high school’s annual musical production. But Norfolk Southern, she said, cares about profits, not people.

“This company spent $3.2 billion on stock buy-backs last year,” she said. “And they are bragging about giving $27 million to a town that they poisoned. I think the little things they are doing like buying the tickets for the high school musical and giving to our schools and youth are great but what about the big things? I don’t think they should be glorified for doing what they should do.”

Those big things are in fact huge things. If the chemicals spilled during derailment weren’t enough to cause worry, a controlled burn of 100,000 gallons of vinyl chloride three days later to prevent a possible catastrophic failure of the remaining tanker cars surely was. Conard doesn’t believe it’s a coincidence that she developed sinusitis and an ear infection after the controlled burn that released the toxic chemicals in the air over East Palestine. She isn’t alone as several residents have experienced bloody noses, headaches, sore throats and rashes after the chemical exposure.

“I know people who are sick. They have been diagnosed with chemical bronchitis,” she said. “We don’t need tests that prove we were poisoned. We already know that we have been. We need medical monitoring to know what their poison is doing to us.”

Conard is used to the sound of the cars rumbling down the tracks. Before Feb. 3, she found comfort in the methodical noise, or “hum” as she called it. The train was the soundtrack to living in East Palestine. It was the sound of home. Today, the sound of a train brings Conrad anxiety and worry. Before the train jumped off the tracks, it passed through Conard’s backyard mere minutes before. The cars were already on fire at that time and Conard shivers at what might have been if the cars had derailed a few seconds before.

“If that train would have derailed 60 seconds before it did, we would not have a town. All the houses and buildings would be gone. So we were fortunate in that aspect,” she said. “We were fortunate there were no casualties and that nobody died, but that doesn’t mean that nobody was hurt. This entire community is hurting. We live with trauma daily and it has had an adverse impact on our physical health as well as our mental health. Don’t tell me that nobody was hurt.”

When the responding agencies and the railroad rushed to assure Conard and other residents that their town was safe, Conard wasn’t so sure. She still isn’t. She said the data to make such a determination wasn’t available when her town was declared safe. As for the data that’s available now, it’s conflicting.

Conard gives one such example of conflicting information by relating a private well testing story. She had her well tested twice and the results came back as safe. But her friend’s tested well sample came back with high levels of polyvinyl chloride. Conard said she called the county water department and was told that the levels were high because the sample was taken with a plastic container and polyvinyl chloride is polymer of plastic so the high levels were due to the container the sample was taken with and not contamination. Conard said the explanation made sense until her second sample was taken and she was told that under no circumstances is plastic used to collect a water sample — a glass receptacle is the protocol. That made Conard question both the information she was given and whether her friend’s water well was contaminated.

“What are we supposed to believe?” she said. “Either the sample was taken with a plastic container or it wasn’t. Either the levels were from the plastic container or they were elevated from the derailment. How are we supposed to feel safe when nothing we are told matches up with what we are told by somebody else? Are we safe? I don’t know. Nobody knows and we can’t afford to wait 50 years to find out if we are.”

selverd@mojonews.com