‘Beautiful sad tapestry’ of stories could bring hope in wake of derailment, attorney says

Most of the women who gathered in the second floor of the Best Western hotel lobby in Columbiana, Ohio, last week were mothers. One shook her head and said talking about what happened to her children made her angry. She sat on a couch and flipped through cellphone pictures of a raging fire — at a glance, they looked like photographs of the recent wildfires roaring through Los Angeles.

But they weren’t. The pictures were shot two years ago in East Palestine, Ohio, 10 miles southeast of the hotel. Since then, the mother’s once healthy children have experienced a variety of problems — gastrointestinal issues, high white blood counts, forgetfulness, dizziness. It didn’t have to be this way, she said.

Another mom walked up the steps, plopped down in a chair and pulled a knit cap off her head. She looked worried. “How are you?” she was asked. “Not good,” she replied.

Her 12-year-old son seems to be sick all the time, she explained. It’s like he has strep but he tests negative every time. Her daughter breaks out in rashes when she showers. She started her period at age 12. That seems early, the mother said. She wondered, “Will my kids be able to have kids?”

She’s learned about all those chemicals that went up in flames and smoke just a few blocks from her East Palestine home. Are those causing these problems? The anxiety is killing her.

You hear a lot of talk like this in communities around East Palestine these days — mothers voicing concerns about their children’s health, their futures. Kristina Baehr calls it the “trauma of the moms.” She’s experienced it herself, she says.

Baehr is an attorney from Austin, Texas, who during the past few weeks has made three trips to the East Palestine area to hear stories like the ones told in the hotel lobby. Those stories create what she calls “a beautiful sad tapestry.” With it, she intends to persuade a jury to offer some type of justice to the people whose lives have been warped by the fires and smoke generated by the 2023 East Palestine train derailment and its aftermath. She’s approaching her task with a certain intensity. The clock, she says, is ticking.

It’s reasonable to ask why she’s here. And why now, 23 months after the toxic disaster. She answers with her own story. It begins in 2017. Baehr was working for a private law firm in Austin at the time.

“I started getting these migraines that would not go away,” she said. “I had crazy thoughts, like maybe I should drive into oncoming traffic.”

She’d never experienced anything like this in the past. The symptoms came “out of the blue.”

Physicians suggested stress was the problem. Baehr was a mom with four children and worked for a big law firm. She should consider changing her lifestyle, doctors said. So Baehr quit her job and went to work as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Department of Justice. She was off every other Friday and could spend more time with her children. She cut gluten and sugar from her diet, and she exercised. The changes didn’t work. She remained ill, and in fact the symptoms got worse.

Then came the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown. Baehr and her children were stuck inside their home, day after day. Things began spinning out of control. Her 8-year-old daughter, a playful child who loved school, would explode in violent outbursts. Baehr recalled one night when she was sitting with her daughter and her 11-year-old son came to join them. Her daughter sprang up and began beating her brother with her fists. Baehr thought, “I’m going to have to have her committed. This is not normal.”

Her children developed other problems: sinus infections, headaches, stomach problems, depression, anxiety.

Her 2-year-old son began slipping in his development. He rarely spoke words. At times he flew into fits of rage. At other times he became lethargic. He’d get upset and then run into the corners of  walls. He screamed. Teachers suggested he may be on the autism spectrum.

Baehr’s health spiraled downward. In the middle of the day she’d feel out of it, like she was drunk. She’d wake up at night soaked with sweat. She had rashes, inner ear pain, headaches, her vision blurred. She and her husband, Evan, were at each other’s throats, so the couple entered therapy.

She visited a number of physicians. They had no answers. One did, however, order a battery of tests. Perhaps she had Lyme disease. Or parasites. She’d visited Africa 10 years earlier. Baehr needed answers.

An answer arrived when one test revealed mycotoxin in her urine. She knew nothing about mycotoxin. A doctor told her it is produced by toxic black mold. Contact a mold assessor, the doctor said, test her home.

Results showed mold in places where her family ate, slept, played. It was discovered in the food and water. Baehr’s children were at a birthday party when she got the news. She acted quickly. For each child, she gathered one outfit of clothes, one special blanket and one stuffed animal. She placed those items in a plastic laundry basket, carried it to her vehicle and drove to the birthday party to pick up her children. Shen then drove to a ranch home owned by a friend. Her family would stay there to sort things out.

“No inspector told me to leave,” she said. “No one said, ‘This place isn’t habitable, you have to get out.’ It was just mama’s intuition. I told my husband, ‘You can come if you want, but I’m going to leave.’ He thought it was crazy.”

Baehr figured the move would be temporary. She and her husband would hire contractors to remove the mold, rebuild problematic parts of the house and then move back in. It didn’t work out that way. They spent more than $600,000 trying to make the home safe. They emptied their savings, borrowed money from their parents — Evan’s father mortgaged his house so he could help out.

“No matter how much money you have, you’ll spend it all trying to get well, to be safe,” she said. “You lose everything you have.”

Despite the expense, or perhaps because of it, the Baehrs never returned to their house. She felt it would never truly be safe for her family. And besides, they’d spent so much on renovations, rent, health care and basic living expenses that they had to sell the house to pay all the bills.

The Baehrs didn’t want to take any chances with Stachybotrys chartarum, the type of black mold found in their home, so they left behind everything — pictures, clothes, furniture, even the family Bible.

The family then entered a period of nomadic life, moving six times in four years. They’d settle into a rental and everything would be fine for a while, then Baehr or her children would react to something — a spray foam used in construction of the house, for example, or a problematic HVAC system. Then they’d search for a new place.

That ended recently. The family purchased an older home — they’re the safest, Baehr has discovered. It’s being modified to make it even safer. But Baehr remains worried about her children’s future. Will they grow up to be healthy adults? Studies show exposure to toxic mold can cause a range of long-term health issues.

Baehr wanted to hold people and companies accountable to the damage they’d caused to her family. She ran into a problem. No attorney wanted to take a case involving toxic exposure. Some lawyers did not even return her phone calls. She eventually did find two who would work on her case — one in Texas and one in Florida. Baehr ended up doing much of the work herself.

How did mold end up growing in the Baehr house? Contractors failed to properly seal portions of the roof, Baehr said. The family eventually won a $3.84 million verdict against a number of defendants involved in building the home.

That experience with toxic exposure, and the difficulties in finding legal representation, led Baehr to form her own law firm, called Just Well Law. When you ask her about the firm, Baehr says, “We represent sick people.” That means people poisoned by toxins, people who become ill, who see their children become ill and worry about their futures, people who can’t find doctors and attorneys to take their concerns seriously. People like her.

One of the firm’s first big cases pitted her against the U.S. Navy. She represented people in Oahu, Hawaii, who got sick after thousands of gallons of fuel from a Navy storage depot leaked into Pearl Harbor and contaminated drinking water. News reports said more than 6,000 people suffered from a variety of symptoms, including dizziness, diarrhea and vomiting.

She was working on that case when the Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine on Feb. 3, 2023. In fact, she saw the news reports and the now infamous images of that black plume rising into the sky three days later. Some lawyers descended on the town before the fires were extinguished. Baerh wasn’t one of them. She was tied up with the case in Hawaii. Besides, she said, she wouldn’t come to East Palestine until she was invited.

That invitation came last month. She received a phone call  from George Thompson, a toxicologist who’d been studying the potential dangers unleashed by the derailment. He told her people in the East Palestine area need legal help. The case in Hawaii was then behind her — she was waiting on the judgment. So she made her first trip to the area, flying from Austin to Pittsburgh four days before Christmas to meet with residents at a Colombiana restaurant.

It was dark by the time she arrived. The restaurant was closed and empty except for 20 or so people who’d gathered to hear what she had to say. These were residents who had been organizing for months, gathering on Zoom calls and in meetings, to learn about toxic exposure and advocate for those who’d become ill. Some had moved out of East Palestine since the derailment and fires — they felt their homes had been poisoned by all those toxic chemicals spewed into the air. Others had stayed in the community and now feared they were living in environments making their families sick.

“What drew me to your story is that you are mobilizing,” Baehr told them. “You are already a movement. You are already taking on the big powers. And as you are sick yourselves, you are turning around to help other people who are sick. And that’s just inspiring.”

She told them about her experience with toxic exposure and how it has affected her life.

“I never walk into a room without looking at the vents,” she said.

A voice called out, “I look at where the doors are, how close I am to my car in case I have to leave in a hurry.”

This was Lonnie Miller. The Norfolk Southern train went off the rails 1,200 feet from her family’s home. Ordered to evacuate less than an hour after the wreck, she and her husband and son packed up a few items and left in a hurry. Fearing toxins in their home, the Millers moved out of town, even before selling their home. They’ve taken a financial and emotional beating.

“How many of the rest of you feel that way?” Baehr asked. Several people raised their hands.

She explained that each of the 17 representative families in the Hawaii case had a PTSD diagnosis. A study released in 2022 found 1 in 4 residents of Flint, Michigan, met criteria for PTSD, 1 in 5 for depression.

She told the residents her goal was twofold: help sick families and hold to account those responsible for the derailment and the actions taken in its wake.

Time was an issue. Suits for damages must be filed by Feb. 2, 2025, according to state tort law. The date loomed, weeks away. 

Class-action attorneys who showed up in the immediate aftermath of the derailment signed up residents as clients, then reached a $600 million settlement with Norfolk Southern. It sounds like a lot of money, but a sizable chunk — $180 million — goes to the attorneys. The rest covers 55,000 claims. 

Not everyone is happy with the deal. Residents regularly vent their frustrations on social media. Payments have been slow to arrive, and some people say the amount received is less than what they’ve been promised.

Those who “opted in” to the settlement signed away their rights to future legal action against Norfolk Southern and a number of other parties. Baehr has been talking to people who “opted out” of the settlement and now want to file individual claims against Norfolk Southern and the EPA. But even those who opted in have legal options, she said, so she’s been talking to them, too.

“Everybody has a claim whether they opted in or opted out,” she said. 

She stressed to the group that she’s not a class-action attorney, and her effort is not a class action. “We might bring the claims together in one case, but we represent everybody individually,” she said. And her actions, she said, will have no impact on the settlement already reached with Norfolk Southern.

Baehr told the group she wanted to hear their stories. Those would be key. They’d create what she called “a beautiful sad tapestry” that would move a jury to compensate the affected residents in a manner that also serves as a deterrent. Many people are angry about the settlement because they think it’s too little to prevent similar disasters in the future.

Norfolk Southern CEO Mark George reinforced that attitude two months ago, during comments me made in a CNBC interview. He said the company has had “two consecutive quarters now where our insurance recoveries have exceeded the costs related to East Palestine.”

Norfolk Southern had collected “more than $650 million in insurance recoveries” related to the East Palestine disaster, he said, and the company was “working with the EPA to hopefully put a bow on it.” His words did not land well in Ohio and Pennsylvania households where families wonder if they’ll ever be able to stop worrying about their health and their futures

Baehr told those gathered at the restaurant that she wanted to hear their stories. One man said health issues cost him his job, and so now he’s struggling to pay bills. “Almost weekly, we’re getting shut-off notices,” he said. It’s a major stress in his household.

“How many of you have had this take a toll on your marriage?” Baehr asked. Hands rose.

Jean Zins said she and her husband, Edward, a Vietnam veteran, had lived for 44 years in a house on Lyons Street in East Palestine. Edward — like his wife, 77 years old — had a bum knee and was diabetic but took care of himself and was in good health. He complained of no symptoms after the derailment. “He was one of the ones, like a lot of those in town, who say the grass is green, the sky is blue, everything’s fine,” Jean Zins said. “Meanwhile, I’m having trouble breathing. He had to walk the dogs in the morning because I couldn’t go out in the air.”

Edward always wanted a zero-turn lawn mower, so he bought one in 2023 and used it that summer. Cutting the grass, however, kicked up whatever particles were on the ground, Jean said. Edward also liked to work in his garage. A lot of dust had settled in that garage. Jean thinks about that dus, and remembers that toxic cloud that hovered over the city three days after the train crash.

The couple went on a camping trip last August. A few hours after returning to East Palestine, Edward developed dry heaves. He seemed to get better the next day but then got sick again on the second night. He ended up in the hospital and never returned home. He died of congestive heart failure and COVID-19 on Sept. 22.

Did hazardous chemicals from the derailment contribute to his death? Jean wonders about this. A lot of people are thinking about those toxins. Every time they or a loved one gets sick they think about the burning chemicals. It causes a lot of stress and anxiety.

Jean continues to live in the East Palestine home. She and Edward were married 55 years. She’s got more than four decades of belongings she’s sorting through.

“We went to Florida for the winter,” she said. “We came back. He mowed the grass up until the third week of August. Then we went on a camping trip where he socialized with everybody and had a good time. And that was his last good time.”

***

The next morning, Baehr drove to a two-story house on East North Avenue in East Palestine, about a half mile from the derailment site. She’d spend the next several hours visiting residents where they lived.

She was greeted at the door by R.J. Kissick, 35. The two walked to a dining room. A small plastic basketball goal stood in the corner – that was for Kissick’s son Mason. His youngest son, born six weeks early, had been diagnosed with a bowel disorder and was being treated at a Pittsburgh hospital.

Kissick took off his hat and ran his hand over his head. He’s in a jam. He explained to Baehr that he bought his house in September 2023, six months after the derailment. At the time, he heard a lot of people saying the town was safe. It was all over social media and news reports.

Since then, he’s had a series of six sinus infections. Two have resulted in ruptured eardrums. He’s had pneumonia. Mason, too, has suffered a series of sinus infections. Kissick’s fiancee has had problems, too. Doctors discovered a nodule on one of her lungs.

Illness comes with a price tag. “My hospital bill just from pneumonia is … I don’t even want to think about that,” Kissick said.

He’s worried about his family’s health and wants to get them out of the house, but he feels trapped. He spent slightly more than $180,000 for the place. Several months ago he checked websites that place values on properties. He was curious to see if his home had dropped in value. One site placed it at $100,000.

“I thought, ‘Holy shit, this is not good,’ ” he said. “So it’s taken me probably about eight months to mentally accept what happened.”

Values now are all over the place. Chase Mortgage has it at $110,000. Zillow’s estimate stood at $183,000. Kissick can’t afford to take a loss.

“Do you have a plan to get out?” Baehr asked.

“No, I don’t,” Kissick said. He shrugged. He seemed a weary man. Last spring, he was laid off from his job at steel pipe manufacturer Tenaris. The company said cheap imports were to blame. He’s now working for a contractor that does pipe fitting, welding and mechanical work. On top of that, he’s attending classes to learn to be an electrical technician. The stresses of work and school lay atop his concerns over his family’s illnesses, his worries over toxins in his house, his mortgage. 

“I don’t know what to do or how to process half of what’s going on,” he said. “I don’t have the luxury to do so. I’m stretched so thin between school, work, balancing credit cards and bills. It’s like I’m climbing out of a hole. I’m trying to make sure that, even though I want to get out of here, that I don’t default on the loan. Because then I’m ruined.”

Baehr said she could make no promises of success but that she’d “leave everything on the field” in her attempts to help. She repeated this to everyone she visited on this Sunday. Each had a story.

Kissick placed his hands on the back of a dining room chair, as if steadying himself. While working at the steel mill, he paid a few months ahead on his mortgage. Now that’s impossible. He feels up against a wall.

Baehr said to him, “We’re here to try to help pick up some of the pieces.”

***

Baehr visited with residents in Beaver County on Monday night, and said she will be available to meet with residents on Tuesday between 9:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. at the Best Western Coffee Shop in Columbiana, Ohio. She can be contacted at her firm’s website at www.well.law, by email at recover@well.law and by phone at 512-714-6919 or 614-954-0431.