Whistleblower questions delays and mistakes in way EPA used sensor plane after fiery Ohio derailment

abcnews.go.com:

The U.S. government has a specialized plane loaded with advanced sensors that the EPA brags is always ready to deploy within an hour of any kind of chemical disaster

The U.S. government has a specialized plane loaded with advanced sensors that officials brag is always ready to deploy within an hour of any kind of chemical disaster. But the plane didn’t fly over eastern Ohio until four days after the disastrous Norfolk Southern derailment there last year.

A whistleblower told The Associated Press that the Environmental Protection Agency's ASPECT plane could have provided crucial data about the chemicals spewing into the air and water around East Palestine as the wreckage burned and forced people from their homes.

The man who wrote the software and helped interpret the data from the advanced radiological and infrared sensors on the plane said it also could have helped officials realize it wasn't necessary to blow open five tank cars and burn the vinyl chloride inside because the plane's sensors could have detected the cars' temperatures more accurately than the responders on the ground who were having trouble safely getting close enough to check.

But the single-engine Cessna cargo plane didn't fly over the train crash until a day after the controversial vent-and-burn action created a huge plume of black smoke over the entire area near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.

Robert Kroutil said even when the plane did fly, it only gathered incomplete data. Then, when officials later realized some of the shortcomings of the mission, they asked the company Kroutil worked for, Kalman & Company, to draft plans for the flight and backdate them so they would look good if they turned up in a public records request, Kroutil said.

Kroutil