What drives household protective actions in an industrial crisis? Insights from the East Palestine train derailment

• Issues with hazard identification after industrial disasters impact communities. • Protective actions were driven by multiple factors such as perceptions of equity. • Perceived risk communication effectiveness was a key factor in relocation decisions. • Rapid, adaptive, and accessible environmental sampling is critical post-disaster. Complex industrial disasters illustrate the challenges of underdeveloped public warning systems. Unlike most natural disasters, quickly identifying hazardous materials and assessing their threats is crucial for developing protective action recommendations (PARs) that guide household response in industrial crises. The 2023 East Palestine, Ohio (USA) train derailment, chemical spill, and fires revealed that gaps in rapidly identifying hazardous materials, and the threats they present, can severely impact the public warning system. As the crisis unfolded, responding agencies left crucial questions unanswered, leaving community members uncertain about their safety, the extent of environmental contamination, and what protective actions to take. It is imperative to study the drivers of household protective actions in the absence of a developed warning system and well-established PARS. To achieve this, we conducted a community survey in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia ( n = 259) in response to the East Palestine crisis. We used multivariate logistic regressions to identify statistically significant explanatory factors that predict protective action response. Our findings reveal gaps in response, where challenges identifying and communicating hazards created environmental justice concerns. We provide policy recommendations to strengthen hazard identification and outline further work to include equity as a pillar of environmental disaster response.