Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine took to the podium on Tuesday to update reporters and citizens about the devastating train derailment in E. Palestine, Ohio, on February 3. The small town has been reeling in the wake of the derailment and subsequent controlled burn of dangerous chemicals days after the wreck.

One of the most astounding revelations from the press conference was that the train was not classified as carrying hazardous chemicals.

“I learned today from the PUCO [Public Utilities Council of Ohio] that this train was not considered a high hazardous material train,” DeWine said. As a result, the railroad was not required to notify anyone in Ohio about what the train was carrying.

“Even though some rail cars did have hazardous material on board, and while most of them did not, that’s why it was not categorized as a high hazardous material train,” said DeWine. “Frankly, if this is true, and I’m told it’s true, this is absurd. And we need to look at this. And Congress needs to take a look at how these things are handled. We should know when we are trains carrying hazardous materials that are going through the state of Ohio.” The governor called on Congress to investigate the matter and make changes to the law if necessary.

DeWine noted that around 50 railroad cars were involved in the crash; ten of those were hauling hazardous materials. He said that both the U.S. and Ohio EPA were on the scene almost immediately to slow the flow of contaminated water while firefighters worked to put out the fire. Two days later, “concerns began to arise in regard to the temperature in one of the cars,” which was described to him as “volatile.” He immediately activated the National Guard.

“The fear was that this car might explode, sending deadly shrapnel in all directions,” he explained. After meeting with those on the ground at the site of the accident, “It was clear at that point that we were faced with two bad options. One option was to do nothing and wait for the car to explode.” He was told there would be a “high probability” of a “catastrophic explosion” that would result in shrapnel shooting out for nearly a mile. “We then made the decision to go ahead with the second option, which was the controlled release,” he said. “We sent back law enforcement into those zones, the red zone and the yellow zone, for the third time, to knock on, literally knock on doors” to evacuate residents. They were only allowed to return home after “the monitoring showed that the air was basically what it was prior to the actual train crash, what we would have expected it to be at that time.”

Other takeaways from the press conference: