EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — Kristina Ferguson has called East Palestine her home since childhood. But since the toxic train derailment, Ferguson hasn’t been back there to live with her elderly parents.
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One year later, Ferguson still doesn’t know if that will ever happen.
She took News 5 Investigators inside when she stopped by to check on things.
“It doesn’t feel like home anymore,” Ferguson said.
It was a home once well-lived and one shared with her elderly mother and stepfather.
“To hear the sound of a train when you’re in that house just brings you right to that moment,” Ferguson said.
News 5 first met Ferguson two weeks after the Norfolk Southern train derailment and chemical burn.
“I want a complete wiping and cleaning from a hazmat crew, not fire restoration, I have gasses from that creek in my home,” Ferguson said.
Ferguson made the comment the same day the EPA Administrator toured her house that sits along a creek in the heart of the village.
The creek needed remediation for toxic chemicals from the derailment.
“February 3rd, it’s been a long February 3rd. I don’t even call it a year,” Ferguson said, a day that she's still stuck on.
She told News 5 that her house was never cleaned after the spill.
Ferguson had to take a new job and went from living in a hotel with her elderly mother and stepfather, who has dementia, to a rental home 10 miles away.
“It’s a beautiful home, it is — it’s just not my home,” Ferguson told News 5 in July.
Ferguson says her stepfather now knows his way around the rental home, which to her is bittersweet.
“Now that home is starting to feel like home and we’ll have to leave again,” Ferguson said.
Norfolk Southern has been paying the rent, and the railroad extended the leases after deeming her family a special circumstance, she said.
Our camera was there in mid-January when Ferguson stopped by her family’s home in East Palestine to check the pipes.
"You’ve got to leave them on a little bit of a drip,” Ferguson said.
She doesn’t stay inside longer than a few minutes, she said, for her health.
Ohio opened a permanent health clinic in the village, but Ferguson has sought independent medical testing.
“I try not to be in there long. I still get the burning in the eyes, nose; still get that taste in my mouth,” Ferguson said. She doesn't think the house on East Rebecca Street can’t be saved.
“I’m waiting for Norfolk Southern to come up with something,” Ferguson said.
Norfolk Southern said that there’s been no recommendation to tear down any homes, and the offer stands to clean homes for people who want to come back.
News 5 asked Ferguson if she’s able to look five or 10 years down the road.
“I hope that I have my family and my health, and I hope that we’re in a home that we don’t have to leave,” Ferguson said.
She just wants closure so her family can heal.
“I’m tired; I just want it to be over,” Ferguson said.
Ferguson thinks the house needs to come down because no one would be safe living there.
Norfolk Southern said that they have been working with ten households that have been out since the derailment.
