Residents of the Ohio village upended by a freight inform derailment packed a school gym to seek answers around whether they were safe from toxic chemicals that spilled or were burned off.

Hundreds of scared people gathered Wednesday in East Palestine, near the Pennsylvania place line, to hear state officials insist yet again that testing shows local air is safe to breathe so far and pledges that air and water monitoring would continue.

With the public in the national spotlight, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan is slated to called Thursday to assess the ongoing response and hear from impacted residents.

Those attending Wednesday's informational session, which was originally billed as a town hall rallies, had many questions about health hazards, and they wished more transparency from railroad operator Norfolk Southern, which did not help, citing safety concerns for its staff.

"They just danced about the questions a lot," said Danielle Deal, who lives a few much from the derailment site. "Norfolk needed to be here."

In a statement, Norfolk Southern said it didn't attend alongside local, place and federal officials because of a "growing physical danger to our employees and members of the community about this event."

Deal called that a "copout" and famous the seriousness of the incident.

Deal and her two children left home to stay with her mother, 13 miles away "and we could still see the mushroom clear, plain as day," she said.

Nearly two weeks when the derailment, people in the area have many anxieties about the huge plumes of smoke they saw, persisting odors, risks to pets and wild animals, potential effects on drinking waters and what's happening with the cleanup.

Even as school taken and trains were rolling again, people were worried.

"Why are they people hush-hush?" Kathy Dyke said of the railroad. "They're not out here supporting, they're not out here answering questions. For three days we didn't even know what was on the train."

"I have three grandbabies," she said. "Are they moving to grow up here in five years and have cancer? So those are all factors that play on my mind."

A sign welcomes visitors to the town of East Palestine on Feb. 14, 2023, in East Palestine, Ohio. (Photo by Angelo Merendino/Getty Images)

In and about East Palestine, residents said they wanted assistance navigating the budget help the railroad has offered hundreds of families who evacuated, and they want to know whether it will be held responsible for what happened.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost advised Norfolk Southern on Wednesday that his workplace is considering legal action against the rail operator.

"The pollution, which continues to contaminate the area around East Palestine, created a nuisance, damage to natural resources and brought environmental harm," Yost said in a letter to the company.

The nation's Environmental Protection Agency said the latest tests show five wells supplying the village's drinking waters are free from contaminants. But the EPA also recommends testing for secluded water wells because they are closer to the surface.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources judges that spilled contaminants affected more than 7 miles (11.2 kilometers) of waters and killed some 3,500 fish, mostly small ones such as minnows and darters.

There have been anecdotal reports that pets or livestock have been sickened. No related animal deaths have been confirmed, state officials said, but that support would require necropsies and lab work to determine the connection to the incident.

Norfolk Southern announced Tuesday that it is creating a $1 million fund to help the public of some 4,700 people while continuing remediation work, counting removing spilled contaminants from the ground and streams and monitoring air quality.

It also will expand how many residents can be reimbursed for their evacuation compensations, covering the entire village and surrounding area.

"We will be judged by our actions," Norfolk Southern President and CEO Alan Shaw said in a statement that the commerce is "cleaning up the site in an environmentally responsible way."

No one was injured when near 50 cars derailed in a fiery, mangled mess on the outskirts of East Palestine on Feb. 3. As fears grew near a potential explosion, officials seeking to avoid an uncontrolled blast had the area evacuated and opted to descent and burn toxic vinyl chloride from five rail cars, sending flames and gloomy smoke billowing into the sky again.

A mechanical negate with a rail car axle is suspected to be the causes of the derailment, and the National Transportation Safety Board said it has a video appearing to show a wheel bearing overheating just afore. The NTSB said it expects its preliminary report in near two weeks.

Misinformation and exaggerations spread online, and state and federal officials have repeatedly offered assurances that air monitoring hasn't detected any previous concerns. Even low levels of contaminants that aren't contained hazardous can create lingering odors or symptoms such as headaches, Ohio's health director said Tuesday.

Precautions also are intimates taken to ensure contaminants that reached the Ohio River don't make it into drinking water.