The U.S. government has a specialized plane loaded with advanced sensors that the EPA brags is always ready to deploy within an hour of any kind of chemical disaster.
Whistleblower Robert Kroutil poses for a photo Monday, May 13, 2024, in Olathe, Kan. Kroutil, who worked supporting an EPA program to collect aerial data, is questioning the agency's efforts to collect data with a specialized airplane after a 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
Robert Kroutil said even when the plane did fly, it only gathered incomplete data. Then, when officials later realized some of the shortcomings of the mission, they asked the company Kroutil worked for, Kalman & Company, to draft plans for the flight and backdate them so they would look good if they turned up in a public records request, Kroutil said.
The EPA said in a statement Tuesday that the agency didn't even request the plane until Feb. 5 — two days after the derailment — and it arrived in Pittsburgh late that day from its base in Texas near the heart of the chemical industry. The flight crew decided it wasn't safe because of icing conditions to fly it on the day of the vent-and-burn, but it's not clear why the plane didn't make a pass over the derailment on its way into the area.
“The East Palestine derailment was the oddest response I ever observed with the ASPECT program in over two decades with the program,” said Kroutil, who helped develop the program when he worked for the Defense Department at the Los Alamos lab after the 9/11 attacks made the need to monitor a chemical explosion from the air clear.
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