Photos show the eerie parallels between the Ohio train derailment and a Netflix movie which was filmed in the state the year before

On the evening of February 3, locals from the small town of East Palestine, Ohio, saw smoke rising on the horizon. A cargo train enroute to Conway, Pittsburgh, carrying toxic chemicals, had just derailed outside of town.

It was almost stranger than fiction. It was also just like fiction — in particular, the 1985 book "White Noise" by Don DeLillo, which was recently turned into a Netflix film directed by Noah Baumbach.

DeLillo is known for being a prescient writer, but this took it to another level. In the 1980s, he told NPR, "I kept turning on the TV news and seeing toxic spills and it occurred to me that people regard these events not as events in the real world, but as television — pure television."

English professor and president of the Don DeLillo Society Jesse Kavadlo told CNN the spills were just a coincidence.

In the film, the toxic cloud was caused when a tanker truck carrying toxic materials crashed into a train, derailing it.

In real life, a Norfolk Southern train, which had 20 tankers filled with different types of potent chemicals, slid off the train tracks and caught fire.

Both the film and the real event were based in Ohio. The real event was on the outskirts of East Palestine, which is about 50 miles from Pittsburgh.

Whereas the film is set in a fictional, leafy college town called Blacksmith.

After the crash, experts wearing hazardous protection suits attempted to assess the damage in East Palestine.

People in hazardous protection suits appear in the film too, although exactly what they're doing is less clear.

In East Palestine, five of the tankers were carrying liquid vinyl chloride, a toxic flammable gas, which is used to make PCV, a hard resin used to make plastic products.

In "White Noise," the toxic chemical is called Nyodene Derivative, a fictional substance made from by-products of manufacturing insecticides.

Both the film and real life featured large fireballs.

In East Palestine, the fireballs actually happened after impact. To avoid the tankers becoming shrapnel bombs, emergency workers released the chemicals from the tankers then burned them off, creating massive plumes of black smoke.

The day after the crash, as smoke continued to billow from the crash site, officials ordered about 2,400 residents to leave East Palestine. This was half of the town's population.

Families had to flee in the film, too. "White Noise" focuses on the Gladney family, including Adam Driver's character Jack Gladney, a professor of Hitler Studies, and Greta Gerwig's character Babette Gladney and their four children.

In real life, the Ratner family was one of the families that evacuated from East Palestine. What was eerie about their story is that several Ratner family members had actually worked as extras on "White Noise." They were in a scene where cars are gridlocked, trying to escape the town and the toxic smoke.

In East Palestine, evacuees sheltered in an American Red Cross evacuation center.

In the film, locals and the Gladney family sheltered in barracks.

In real life, locals gathered around a resident named Jamie Cozza to hear news from a conference on her phone.

In the film, locals gathered around Heinrich, one of the Gladney children, as he explained what he knew about the toxic chemical.

On February 8, East Palestine residents were told they could go home.

Officials declared that the air and water were safe, but there were reports that fish and frogs were dying in streams, and people were afraid of the chemicals' long-term effects.

In the film, the Gladney family return home and attempted to go back to their regular lives. Here, Jack Gladney is back shopping at the local supermarket.

But in East Palestine it's not so simple. Residents have been reporting symptoms like burning eyes and feelings of nausea.

The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating the accident, but it has reported that the derailment was caused by a malfunctioning axle, which is what connects two train wheels.

Sources: New York Times, The Guardian 

Locals are now afraid the quiet town will never be the same. And, according to Ohio EPA's Office of Emergency Response, properly cleaning up the site won't be a quick process. It could take years.