This is my first diary but I'm shaking mad about this incident I saw on TV this morning. A tank owned by Brenntag Stinnes Logistics leaked dangerous chemicals in Atlanta, Georgia yesterday and forced the evacuation of thousands of people. Now this sort of thing happened not too long ago in a white, middle-class neighborhood in the Dayton, Oh area where I am from. These people were given hotel rooms to sleep in and money for food from the company at fault.
The Atlanta incident happened in an African American neighborhood. Guess where these people were evacuated to? A shelter. Not only that, they were forced to wait in the cold, in the middle of the night, some with infant children, for MARTA buses to transport them to these shelters. Below is the letter I wrote to Brenntag Stinnes Logistics. I cc'd the ACLU and NAACP. What else can we do to let these people know this will not be tolerated?
To whom it may concern,
I was watching the weather channel this morning when they did a report about the chemical leak in Atlanta Georgia. Apparently, your company is responsible for this leak. Fire authorities said the leak was coming from a tank owned by Brenntag Stinnes Logistics on Empire Boulevard. The thing that bothered me the most about this news story was the fact that because of this leak, thousands of people were forced to evacuate their homes. I saw families standing out in the cold in the middle of the night with infants waiting to be transported to shelters. Some waited for an hour or more in the cold only to be taken to a shelter where they were forced to sleep on the floor!
I would like to know how you will be compensating these people. I would like to know why you were not more responsive to their needs after a failure on your part forced them from their homes. I'm not from the Atlanta area and I do not know any of these people, but I am shocked and angered and appalled that your company could show so little compassion towards people your company had directly affected so severely.
Your response to this accident is totally unacceptable and would have been different if it had been in a more exclusive neighborhood wouldn't it have been? These people should have been taken to hotels as quickly as possible. Hotels that your company should have paid for. I will do my part to make sure that you understand that this sort of attitude will not be tolerated. You need to know that if you think you can treat people like this, it will cost you.