East Palestine frustrated by feds’ response to train disaster, but private entrepreneurs step up

Almost two years ago, the town of East Palestine, Ohio suffered a huge tragedy that resulted in a lack of clean drinking water, resulting in entrepreneurs and everyday Americans stepping up to help the community while the government failed to do so. 

On Feb. 3 in 2023, a more than 100-car train transporting toxic materials derailed near the Ohio town, prompting a mass evacuation. 

The Ohio Department of Health had to open a health clinic in East Palestine to assist with those harmed by the toxic chemicals from the Norfolk Southern train derailment.

This derailment resulted in many people in the community breathing in dirty air and not having clean drinking water. 

Entrepreneur Nelson Mcilveen used his company "Sentry H2O" to provide clean water to those in need of it in East Palestine.

"Sentry H2O is a product line of ours that really cleans water without using chemicals [and] without using any poisons," Mcilveen said on a "Just the News, No Noise" special titled East Palestine Revisited. "It removes all the poisons in the water and it also makes people a little bit healthier. So it's a very unique product line."

Mcilveen's company is based in Arizona, but following the derailment in Ohio, Sentry H2O launched a project to get residents in East Palestine clean water.

"The bottom line is Americans are Americans," he said. "I don't care if you're in New York, Maine, Florida.....you're an American. You're one of us. If we don't take care of our own, who's going to? That's why we're there-no other reason."

Following the train derailment, the Biden administration got a lot of flack for not visiting the site right away and former President Donald Trump beat President Joe Biden to the site.

The incident directed considerable scrutiny toward Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, for the seemingly sluggish response to the incident.

Biden visited East Palestine roughly a year after the derailment and had a seemingly cold reception from some of the residents.

"My father essentially forced the Biden administration to act," former first son Donald Trump Jr. said on the special. "You know, we have plenty of time and money for Ukraine and other corrupt regimes around the world. But when something happens in America, and specifically happens in a red state in America....there's nothing. It's crickets."

Ohio GOP Senate candidate Bernie Moreno echoed Trump Jr.'s sentiment, saying that the U.S. doesn't care about small, rural communities in the country-specifically the ones who typically vote for Republicans. 

"We have people in Washington, D.C. that care more about foreign countries and foreign nationals than American citizens," Moreno said. "It took Joe Biden a year to even show up there. Kamala Harris has never been there. The federal response has been wholly inadequate."

East Palestine entrepreneur DJ Yokley said that he saw a lot of businesses that were negatively impacted as a result of the derailment. 

"My business was in a plaza that was over top sulfur run that was one of the contaminated creeks in our town," Yokley said on the special. "The EPA could not tell us if we were safe. The different organizations we reached out to could not tell us if we were safe or not. They refused to tell us. So we kind of had to make our own decision and we had to leave what was our first building."

Yokley runs an online sports business in Ohio and he praised Mcilveen for his efforts to bring clean water into East Palestine.

"We're so grateful for Nelson and Sentry H2O for coming in and doing this because they don't have to," he said. "He's doing this not as a political stunt or business stunt, because he sees Americans in need."

While the government failed the people living in an Ohio small town, Americans stepped up when they were needed. 

"This is what America is all about," Yokley said. "It's people looking out for people [and] Americans, looking out for Americans instead of looking across our borders and making sure that they get served before the people that pay taxes and care about the red, white and blue."