Black, White Workers Blast Conrail, Pols over Toxic Gas Spill

Paulsboro, New Jersey, December 28 — From a garment factory in Bangladesh to a chemical spill here, capitalism’s murderous worldwide reach shows that the working class must put this profit-hungry beast down with communist revolution. Few Paulsboro residents were thinking about the need for communist revolution however on November 30 when a railroad tanker filled with vinyl chloride derailed and crashed into the Mantua Creek. It released a cloud of this toxic gas into the community. 

The derailment was caused when the bridge failed to close properly. Parts of the bridge date from 1873. A few years ago, Conrail replaced the worker who operated the bridge with an electronic system to save the company about $100,000 a year. The electronic system failed so often that Conrail dispatchers and engineers routinely ignored the system’s red lights and drove trains across the bridge if it “looked okay.”

Many of the working-class residents of Paulsboro were exposed to this gas. The most intense exposure was in an area of the town populated by poor black and white workers. This area was evacuated several hours after the exposure. Seventy people were treated in the Underwood Hospital Emergency Room for respiratory problems, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and headaches. 

Approximately 700 workers were evacuated from the neighborhoods closest to the accident. They were sent to motels in the surrounding areas. Conrail set up a family assistance center at a hall in the neighboring town of Gibbstown. Residents who were not evacuated were told to “shelter in place,” meaning stay in their houses and keep windows and doors closed.

Two weeks after this accident, there are still two tankers filled with vinyl chloride and one filled with ethanol sitting in the Mantua Creek and none of the capitalist experts can figure out how to get them out safely.

There have been two public meetings since the accident and they have both been angry affairs. Paulsboro workers have blasted Conrail and the flunkey Paulsboro politicians for their handling of the emergency. In 2009, a coal train derailed on this same bridge and it was not adequately repaired. There was never an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. The evacuees complained of shabby treatment by Conrail’s support team.

So maybe most Paulsboro folks were not thinking about the need for communist revolution before November 30. But after the chemical spill, they are now planning to form a committee to fight the deadly negligence of the Conrail bosses. This can prove to be fertile soil for PLP’s communist ideas, a “chemical spill” poisonous to all bosses.