As a cloud of mistrust grows that is as thick as the one of toxic gas that hovered over East Palestine, Ohio, after a train derailment early this month, one local resident is wondering at a strange coincidence that borders upon a potential conspiracy.

Farmer Bob Moore told the Gateway Pundit that he has trouble reconciling the toxic disaster with what had at first seemed like a push for residents to have medical data available online for first responders.

In October, the East Palestine Fire Department announced it would be using the MyID service to allow residents to have health information stored and available to fire responders, according to the Morning Journal.

In late January, residents were urged to sign up and pick up a MyID device, according to WKBN-TV. The fire department promoted a sign-up that was held on Jan. 29, only a few days before the Feb. 3 derailment that changed East Palestine forever.

A fire set after the derailment to avert what officials feared might be an explosion led to a cloud of toxic gas over the community that residents, who were evacuated after the fire, blame for health issues that have emerged after they were allowed to return.

Moore said a climate of controlled information release and a lack of open communication, coupled with a lack of government response, is a breeding ground for conspiracy thoughts.

“The local news that covered MyID isn’t mentioning MyID in their news reports about the train derailment. Have they been monitoring the results of these bracelets and not telling us? Have people considered what the real intent of the federal government is coming in here and giving you these bracelets? In hindsight, after what’s happened, do you find it suspicious? I find it oddly suspicious,” he said.

Moore admits he was a skeptic about the MyID program.

“These IDs were designed to collect our medical data and all of us are a little anxious about the medical situation and the trust of the medical community, and elsewhere, right now. Anyone not suspicious of medicine now is a fool,” Moore said.

“They began monitoring your physical activity, your heart rate, your respiration, anything you might be exposed to. I see this as the kind of censor you would put on an astronaut or on an athlete that you wanted to track to see how he’d react to stress or being winded, or in this instance chemical exposure. It’s a monitoring device,” he said.

“I completely ignored it. But the way the media played it up -- it was like East Palestine was a test town that they volunteered to be part of, that they were chosen and were going to implement it right after Jan. 23. I do find it odd. I find it a coincidence that we are having coincidences pile up around here.”

Moore said connecting the dots “makes your mind wander … food factories and egg farms and these types of disasters compounding.

“It appears that these bracelets are a result of that or some way to monitor whether this is really just a coincidental test town or not,” he continued.

“It is absolutely a message, and it’s a message of evil telling us what they’re doing or a message from higher powers warning us,” he said. “These coincidences happen for a purpose, and if you start stacking them up, somebody is trying to tell you something. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but it sure is interesting.”

Moore said the pile of apparent coincidences concerns him, including the fact that the village was the setting for a movie called “White Noise” about a train derailment that releases a toxic cloud.

“This predictive movie and this predictive MyID distribution and availability certainly make a conspiracy-bent person scratch their head and make anybody that doesn’t really believe in conspiracies scratch their head,” he said.

Moore said the community needs answers in a time when trust has been eroded.

“The playbook now in the United States by the Deep State or corporate America or the government is always if you are not allowed to talk about it, it's probably true. If you are de-platformed, if you are censored, if you are isolated, if you are fired for speaking up, you are probably telling the truth, and we learned that every day,” he said.

“The government to me shouldn’t be trusted at either end of an accident. As Ronald Reagan said, ‘If you hear a knock on the door and somebody says we are from the government and we are here to help, you slam the door and go the other way.’ That’s how the majority of the people in our community feel."

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.