East Palestine Isn’t Alone. How One Town Recovered From a Toxic Train Derailment.

“The whole house rocked,” said Gary Stevenson, who worked on projects at an oil refinery and served as the town’s assistant fire chief in November 2012 when a Conrail train derailed. 

Mr. Stevenson, now the town’s mayor, recalled throwing on his firefighting gear around 7 a.m. and seeing a vapor cloud emerging from the train cars that were in a creek underneath the rail bridge, which was about 150 feet away from his home. 

The accident briefly hurt local businesses and property values, and residents said a lingering stigma from it temporarily kept visitors away. The cleanup took about a month, and a new bridge replacing the old one opened for rail traffic in 2015.

But residents say the industrial town is humming today, thanks in part to community pride and major employers such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and

PBF Energy Inc.

that have remained.

Enrollment at the local public high school has been stable. The town’s population stood at nearly 6,200 as of the 2020 Census, up from just under 6,100 a decade earlier. Local officials also aren’t aware of direct long-term health implications as a result of the accident. 

“I don’t scare easily,” said Irma Stevenson, a former nurse and the mother of Mr. Stevenson. Mrs. Stevenson, who is 83, lives in a home that is also near the rail bridge. “If you’re worried about every little thing, you can’t live your life.” 

Paulsboro is years removed from its major train wreck, but many residents sympathize with residents of East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a Feb. 3 derailment. The February accident produced a larger evacuation zone and larger known losses of wildlife, as well as a fire that burned for days.