Yeah, being from Ohio it’s really unnerving to hear that the “controlled burn” did not go as planned.
People are freaking out no matter how far away they are from the accident.
Discussion
They should be. They were hauling some nasty stuff and you don’t really want to be breathing the fumes or have it in your drinking water. Exposure is based on route, quantity, and length of time so impact should be minimal but not zero.
All the details aren’t out yet but it sounds like the clean up crew chose the lesser evil out of few options on a limited time budget. Hopefully we will know more about what happened soon and that it wasn’t driven by cost concerns.