Letter: Administration's poor handling of recent events

It is difficult to pick which of these events was handled worse by the administration in the past month:

In East Palestine a deluge of toxic Vinyl Chloride was spilled over a large area from a train wreck, and as usual it was made worse with what was deemed a quick fix. Burn it all. Right, instead of polluting the ground, pollute the air and water as well. The government or anyone else who had authority on this should be fired and sued. In my opinion, based on a background in Chemical Engineering, this was wrong.

The Balloon Invasion has me a bit confused. In one case, we know it was from China. In the three other cases, we have no idea and have attributed it to companies, students or test facilities. Does America allow the free ballooning at 40,000 feet with an object as large as a car, without advising the government or FAA. They were worried about possible plane collisions. Seems like a good reason to shoot them down, but why allow it to begin with.

But lastly on this, wind velocity at these altitudes is 120-160 mph, mostly west to east. As far as I know these payloads did not have a propulsion to direct them. Only limited course correction can be done with wind sails. This could be good information to learn at some point.

Richard Francke

Bartlett