Governments and firms, including in the U.S., view disaster victims as ‘expendable’

WASHINGTON—One Bhopal victim, alive now 40 years after the disaster there, told People’s World that when the family returned to its home the next morning, all her mother saw, through eyes still burning from the chemicals, were “dead bodies in the streets” of people and pets. And the pomegranate trees had all turned black.”

Bhopal in India, “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana. Lac Megantic, Quebec. And, now, East Palestine, Ohio. The common thread through all those disasters—and more—is that governments and corporations involved viewed their victims as “expendable.”

So says Rachna Dingra. And she should know. Dingra also survived Union Carbide’s methyl isocyanate leak catastrophe in Bhopal, India, 40 years ago. Dingra, Farat Jahan, and Bati Bak Rajak discussed the issue at a September 17 Institute for Policy Studies session in D.C. The only press there was People’s World.

The session had a common thread: The three Bhopal survivors joined Jamie Wallace, who—like them—had to flee her home due to a chemical disaster: The Norfolk Southern freight train derailment, fires, contamination, and mushroom cloud over East Palestine a year and a half ago.

“Our government wants to protect Dow Chemical,” which now owns Union Carbide, “and not its people,” Jahan said of the right-wing Hindu nationalist government in India.

In Wallace’s case, the long freight train derailed and crashed in the small Ohio town near midnight in February’s mid-winter below-zero temperatures.

The federal response was halting and sometimes just plain wrong, she says. The Environmental Protection Agency ignored evidence that toxins released from the crash and from the follow-up unnecessary venting of chemicals from railroad tank cars poisoned the air and groundwater.

And powerful rail industry lobbying and campaign cash have sidetracked legislation by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, empowering the federal government to force the railroads to put people before profits, via federal re-regulation.

Disaster victims descend down through the generations, too. The three Bhopal residents described the befouled well water, the malfunctioning pipeline that replaced it, and higher-than-normal incidences of deaths from cancers and heart attacks. “I listened to what happened to them and I worry” if her daughter will be afflicted years from now, said Wallace.

Sometimes the victims are blamed

Sometimes, governments and firms blame the victims. Union Carbide and its present owner, Dow Chemical, disclaimed all responsibility for the Bhopal leak. It would have opened them to liability lawsuits from survivors, the three said. And Indian courts said they “had no jurisdiction” over a U.S.-based multinational corporation.

In the Lac-Mégantic freight train derailment, crash, and explosion, which destroyed its downtown and killed 47 people a decade ago, the railroad escaped liability. The only person ever tried for responsibility for the crash was the train’s engineer, a Steelworker. There was no conductor.

In Bhopal, Jahan, then a child, described how her parents screamed, “Run, run, run, run for your life” when the leak occurred the night of Dec. 2-3, 1984.

In East Palestine, there were no dead bodies. But people—including 39 Brotherhood of Maintenance of the Way union members whom Norfolk Southern sent to clean up the mess and repair the tracks—were sickened. Those workers told their union, the Teamsters, they suffered from intense nausea and migraine headaches.

The Teamsters took the complaints to both the railroad and Ohio GOP Gov. Mike DeWine. Meanwhile, Norfolk Southern’s aim was a rush for profits, not caring for people, Wallace said. Two days after the crash and derailment, with chlorine gas clouds still hovering over the town, freight trains were running again through East Palestine.

Bhopal survivors Jahan, Dingra, and Bati Bak Rajak came to D.C. to lobby for a congressional resolution memorializing victims of that disaster. All three were children when the Union Carbide plant leaked. Dingra said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., plans to introduce the memorial resolution about Bhopal next month.

The Indian government “is more interested in foreign direct investment” in industrializing, without considering the consequences, Jahan added about right-wing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

So is the U.S. government, she noted. The Export-Import Bank subsidizes corporate construction overseas for the benefit of firms here. Its loan guarantee partially subsidized the construction of the Bhopal plant. The Indian government added a fifth of its cost.

Lives permanently disrupted

Wallace spoke for herself and many, but not all, neighbors in the small southeastern Ohio town whose lives have been permanently disrupted by Norfolk Southern’s freight train derailment, crash, and toxic chemical release from tank cars over a year ago.

Some East Palestine residents are fighting for legislation crafted by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, to re-regulate the railroads and force them to put safety before profits, rather than the other way around. “Profits first” is also the mantra at Cancer Alley as was the case after Bhopal.

Others, including the heavily Republican town’s mayor, who spoke at the party convention this year and slammed the response of the Biden administration, took the railroad’s settlement money Wallace noted. Much of it, however, went to the lawyers involved in the bargaining.

Mayor Trent Conaway set up meetings between Norfolk Southern and his hand-picked business owners, not the rest of the town, Wallace added.

Both Norfolk Southern and Union Carbide offered inadequate settlements. Union Carbide paid out $470 million to survivors of the at least 3,800 people immediately killed there. It initially offered just over a fifth of that sum.

The payout averages $500 per person, one of the three said. But many got $300 or less, Jahan added. Union Carbide never admitted liability.

And both the Indian government and the company ignore what happened to the survivors’ long-term health as a result of the methyl isocyanate leak at Bhopal: Higher than normal rates of cancer and heart disease. Premature deaths. Chemically harmed babies, as the chemicals in mothers’ blood crossed the dividing line in their placentas.

“In the next generation, my sister died four years after the disaster, at age 24,” says Jahan. Another victim’s brother, trying to fix the wiring in their Bhopal home after their return, was electrocuted. The town had no electricians, who had fled and stayed away after the leak. The brother was a teenager.

And not until Bhopal survivors marched the 500 miles from Bhopal to the Indian capital of New Delhi, conducted a mass sit-in—and got arrested—did they get an installation of pipelines for cleaner water to replace the contaminated groundwater.

But sometimes the pipelines break down, and the Indian government does nothing. “They say there’s still 350 tons of waste in the [Bhopal] factory,” Jahan adds. “That’s 0.2%.

“There’s denial of the contamination by the government of India. And there are letters” from Dow “to the chief ministers” involved “saying ‘These people are making too much noise. Do something about it.’”

“When I first came from Bhopal to here, we thought things would not be the same” as they are in India, says Jahan. “But we visited ‘cancer alley’ in Houston and we visited East Palestine, and we see so many Bhopals happening right in front of us.”