- I'm scared to death.
Every time I hear that train, I'm scared.
It just destroyed not only our town but our state,
and God knows where it's gonna end.
Is this gonna end up being like an abandoned ghost town?
- Ghost town, yeah.
- That you want to go travel to, to look at,
as an old mining city. - Yeah.
- Like, it's gonna be an attraction.
- Yep.
My folks bought it in 1971, right after I was born,
and this has been my childhood home,
the home I grew up in, and the home that I live in now.
This is my roots, right here.
- Yeah, yeah.
Ooh.
Take that. Ooh.
- That's my mom, me and my dad.
That's in the kitchen there, as well.
You know, I mean, I guess for the thought of losing this
or it not being safe to be at, it's devastating to me.
You know? This is my home.
So, here we are at the fire on East Taggart.
I guess it started with a train derailment.
Now it's traveling all the way down the tracks.
I heard the explosion initially.
It shook this house.
And I looked out the window, and I seen the fireball.
First, they said shelter in place,
and then they suggested maybe you ought to get out of here.
- I expected, fully expected,
to be able to come back home the next day.
I figured when they evacuated us,
I assumed that it was about to blow up,
and once it blew up, they would put the fire out.
I don't think anyone even thought about chemicals
and especially toxic chemicals.
- I don't want to stay in the town for any longer.
Sometimes I meet up with people in the town, talk to them.
I kind of feel homeless, like it's here, but it's not.
Like, this is what my kids have known and grew up in,
and this was our home, our family.
Everyone is real close in this community.
And now I feel like I kind of don't have a place to go.
Everything's left the same, except for the bags
that I pulled out to carry things.
And my son was sitting here, eating ice cream,
and I was doing laundry,
and we came over and sat on the couch.
He was eating chips, and we heard an ambulance go by.
Oh, God.
What caused it? - Train derailed.
- A train derailed? - Yep.
- And we left.
I talked to the neighbor on the corner, and I said,
"Let me know if my house catches on fire, if you could."
At that point, everyone was being evacuated,
and they stopped at her and said,
"You're being evacuated, too."
And this is my son's room.
And this is the only reason why we come back.
Because he has a lizard.
- Bearded dragon. - I don't feel like it's safe,
and after being in here for 10, 20 minutes,
you start to have numbness in your mouth
and kind of a chemical coating.
I don't think it's safe to bring my kids back to.
So, ever since we left, we went and stayed with my mom,
and that's where we've been.
It kind of feels like everything's here.
I can't really touch it.
I can't really move things around.
I don't know what contaminants are there.
It's just a time capsule
that sits that we can look at but can't touch.
- We did lose a lot of comfort.
- Security. - Yeah, security.
- When you're in your home, that's your castle.
You're supposed to feel safe here.
There goes the train, right?
- Makes your spine twinge. - Anger, every day.
Living right here, this close, the first thing I saw
wasn't decontamination vehicles or heavy equipment.
It was semi-trailers loaded with preformed track,
and they were ready to get them trains rolling.
And, to me, that's criminal.
You know, you read articles about these areas,
like Chernobyl or like when Three Mile Island happened.
And they're saying this is the second-worst train
spill ever in American history, and it's here in our front yard.