Perhaps the most dramatic and widely distributed photograph of the “vent and burn” in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 6, 2023, was shot by a 58-year-old village resident who works as a technology director for three school districts in Pennsylvania’s Beaver County.
Rodney Bobin lives outside the 1-mile evacuation zone established by authorities when they announced the “controlled burn” of vinyl chloride at the Norfolk Southern derailment site. Some of his neighbors left the area, but Bobin stayed put. He’d checked the prevailing winds and determined any smoke would be carried away from his house.
He was sitting in his living room around 4:30 p.m. when he heard a loud explosion. He went outside and saw the plume beginning its rise to the sky.
“It was intimidating,” he said. “It was so much larger than I ever expected. At that moment, I thought it best we leave the area.”
First, though, he wanted to shoot some pictures. Bobin, who’s been flying drones and remote control aircraft for about 10 years, checked a drone app to make certain it was safe to fly. He launched his craft, keeping it below the allowed altitude of 400 feet, and shot video and four still pictures of the rising cloud. Bobin and his family then left the area to stay with a son who lives in New Brighton. He didn’t look at the images he’d shot until later.
“Once I looked at the pictures and the video, I realized I had captured something special,” he said. “My oldest son posted one of the pictures on Facebook, and the picture went viral from there.”
The image exploded on social media and surfaced on a number of news sites around the world. Recently it was included in CNN’s feature “2023: The year in pictures.” Bobin’s photograph is bracketed by a picture of Beyoncé holding a Grammy Award and President Joe Biden giving his State of the Union address.
“My family and I still live in the same house and are thankful things have worked out OK so far,” Bobin said. “We do worry about long-term effects but have seen amazing cooperation of people in the village working together.”
This was not Bobin’s first experience with a derailment. In October 2006, when he lived in New Brighton, a Norfolk Southern train transporting tanker cars containing ethanol derailed half a mile from his home.
He gave the Union Progress permission to publish the photo with its East Palestine year-anniversary coverage.
Steve is a photojournalist and writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he is currently on strike and working as a Union Progress co-editor. Reach him at smellon@unionprogress.com.