The Apocalypse of East Palestine
The Apocalypse of East Palestine
The most dramatic photos from the train derailment in Ohio weren't taken by photojournalists.
The first time I saw this photo, I was suspicious. The ominous black mass hovering in the sky had to be from a catastrophe other than the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. I was wrong.
The photo, posted on Twitter at 6:07pm on February 6th by @dj23white, is real.
Then the Tweet was mysteriously deleted.
But days later, the photo went viral, amplified by @ArithmeticArra1 and @BillyM2k.
Colin Sullender, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas, conducted a fascinating investigation of the photo. Using flight data and satellite imagery, Sullender determined it was most likely taken from Spirit Airlines 334. Sullender’s research prompted Snopes to update their story about the photo from “Unproven” to “True.”
Two other photos of the “controlled burning” taken from airplanes also confirmed the veracity of @dj23white’s image.
Jared McLuhan was traveling on American Airlines flight 1313 from Denver to Philadelphia on February 6th when he saw what he believed was a dark shadow on the clouds. “As the plane flew closer, I knew it was no shadow, but instead the result of something significant burning.” he told Newsweek.
McLuhan told me the time stamp on his photo was 4:45pm.
The other image taken from a plane was posted on Reddit by u/Burge_11. Sullender concluded that this photo was made “minutes before Spirit Airlines 334 passed by at a much lower altitude.”
One of the definitive images of the derailment was taken by East Palestine resident RJ Bobin with a drone. Bobin’s photo, first posted by his son on Facebook, captures an incredible sense of place and scale of the burning.
Bobin told me he heard several loud explosions around 4:40pm February 6th, then walked outside his home. “I was stopped in my tracks,” he said, “The shear size of the cloud going into the sky left my son Evan and I with our mouth's wide open.” Bobin made some photos with his iPhone then turned to his son, “I need to capture this with my drone.”
“It didn't seem real. The sheer size was intimidating. It seemed like anything but controlled,” Bobin said. “I landed the drone on my back deck in front of my dog and checked out the pics and video. I knew I had something special. I also knew I had to get my kids out of there as the cloud was increasing in size and being pushed down by a temperature inversion. My kids and I left for the night.”
Bobin’s photo was everywhere. Echoes of Chernobyl.
“This picture should be on the front page of every paper in America tomorrow morning,” @CitizenFreePres tweeted. Had Bobin’s photo been picked up by the wires on February 6th there’s a good chance it would have been. However, the fact it wasn’t being published by news organizations, but widely seen on every social media platform, fueled the false notion that the story was being ignored.
One of the earliest, and most eerie, photos of the derailment was taken by John Bibbee with an iPhone from his back porch in Darlington, PA on February 3rd.
“I’m about 2.3 miles from the wreck,” Bibbee told me. “The smell is overwhelming. It smells like pvc pipe or lacquer thinner.”
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