Here's What Cincinnati Water, Fire Departments Would Do During a Crisis like East Palestine's

Leaders from Greater Cincinnati Water Works (GCWW) and the Cincinnati Fire Department (CFD) spoke during Cincinnati City Council's special Climate, Environment and Infrastructure Committee meeting on Feb. 21 to go over how the city would handle a toxic explosion disaster as seen recently in East Palestine.

“I also want to remind us that rail safety is regulated at the federal level, and the ability of industry to carry harmful materials is a conversation we need Washington to have,” said committee chairperson Meeka Owens. “While this investigation in East Palestine is under way, we also want to see Norfolk Southern being proactive in addressing how we can mitigate accidents of this magnitude in the future.”

In a Feb. 21 news release, Norfolk Southern officials said they are “going to learn from this terrible accident and work with regulators and elected officials to improve railroad safety.” While state and federal leaders are putting the pressure on Norfolk Southern to raise their safety standards, Cincinnati leaders want to be ready for any similar crisis at home.

“This is not a discussion about the potential sale of the railroad, but rather a chance to assure the residents of our city that the safety of our drinking water is sound and to better understand our emergency response in a situation like this,” Owens said.

GCWW continually tests water

GCWW was prepared for some of the chemicals from the explosion in East Palestine to flow down the Ohio River past Cincinnati over the weekend, saying the department would close its water intake and continually test and treat water to make sure no harmful chemicals entered the water supply. On Feb. 20, GCWW said that after "extensive sampling," the agency did not detect toxins from the Norfolk Southern train that had been carrying a variety of chemicals.

Still, Verna Arnette, interim director of GCWW, assured the committee that more testing of the water supply will continue on a routine basis, which was standard practice even before the explosion.

“We have what’s called an organics detection system monitoring point. We run samples every two hours all the time, regardless of this incident or not. We always do this,” Arnette said. “So we’re always looking for potential sources of contamination so that we can react.”

When asked how the utility would protect its 1.1 million customers in the event of a toxic disaster as seen in East Palestine, Arnette said there are protocols in place.

“If something happens immediately upstream of our intake, we will shut down. We always err on the side of shutting down and then find out what happens,” Arnette said.

Shutting down the water intake would mean GCWW customers would be drinking from the filtered water reserves for two to three days, depending on the time of year, Arnette said. After the reserves are tapped out, Arenette said GCWW would, depending on the contents of the spill, treat the water until it is drinkable. She said GCWW can treat out millions of different chemicals.

“We can treat for many [chemicals] with the powder-activated carbon, the granular-activated carbon,” Arenette said. “One of the big drivers for that facility was this very issue of Ohio’s industrial river and there are chances of contamination all the time. We would first look to see what the chemicals are, we can do testing in the lab [...] depending on the situation we should be able to treat for it.”


Jeff Swertfeger, superintendent of water quality at GCWW, said the city has long been prepared for moments like these. He said the city worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about 10 years ago to develop the Water Security Initiative, which helps cities test, detect and develop plans for contamination events in water systems.

“We worked a lot with the Cincinnati Fire Department, we worked with the Cincinnati Police Department, the emergency management agency, to develop plans,” Swertfeger said.

Cincinnati fire chief calls the shots

Cincinnati Fire  Department chief Michael Washington Sr. addressed the committee’s questions about how the fire department would respond to a disaster similar to that in East Palestine.

“Fire would respond in a manner to protect life and property, including the environment,” Washington said.

Washington told the committee that in the event of a derailment of cars carrying hazardous, flammable materials, the fire chief would be the one responsible for making the call to execute a controlled burn, like the one seen in East Palestine.

“That would be something that would come from the fire department, in concert with other people, though,” Washington said. “[The city manager] would be aware of everything that we’re doing along the way; nothing would be kept from the executive staff.”

Washington said one of the many factors that would go into a hypothetical decision to burn off dangerous chemicals would include where the train derailed, saying Queensgate Rail Yard has its own procedures for derailments.

No matter where a train may derail in the city, Washington told the committee that all Cincinnati firefighters – not just  firefighters who specialize in hazardous materials – are trained to handle toxic spills.

“Every person that goes through fire recruit training, a portion of their training is hazardous materials operations,” Washington said.

The special committee meeting also comes as Hamilton County is revisiting its own emergency management plan. The county is asking residents and businesses to fill out an online survey about how prepared they are for a major emergency, including how thy seek out emergency information and how likely they are to flee in the case of a mandatory evacuation.