Winter 2002 - Source to Sea: The Nooksack River

From the Ashes
by Jenny Buening
Photos by Sarah Galbraith

Large, charred trees stretch toward the sky as a lifeless testament to the fire, while ferns and young trees cover the ground promising new hope for the ecological systems of the stream. A hawk perched on a dead limb keeps watch as Whatcom Creek, swollen by winter rains, rounds a bend and tumbles over the rocky falls. Its strength and speed resonate through the woods surrounding it.

On June 10, 1999, Whatcom Creek suffered massive devastation when a gasoline pipeline ruptured under Bellingham's Whatcom Falls Park. The pipe over-pressurized when a valve at the Bayview terminal in Skagit County shut unexpectedly.

It ruptured, spilling 229,950 gallons of gasoline into Whatcom Creek. Two young boys playing with a lighter at the creek's shore ignited the fuel creating a fireball that quickly swept through 1.5 miles of the creek. It burned everything in its path and created a wall of thick, black smoke six-miles tall.

Three boys died that day.

Wade King and Stephen Tsiorvas were fatally burned by the blast, while Liam Wood, overcome by the gasoline fumes, passed out into the creek and drown before it ignited.

Three years later, the Bellingham community still feels emotional and ecological wounds of the blast.

"(It was) the way it blew up right in town, killed three young kids, fried a creek and then the community grabbed onto it and wouldn't let it disappear," said Carl Weimer, executive director of SAFE Bellingham, a local organization working to increase pipeline safety nationally.

For the families who lost children in the Olympic Pipeline explosion, three years hardly seems like an adequate amount of time to come to terms with the tragedy.

Stephen and Wade's families have filed wrongful death suits against Olympic Pipeline Co., which operated the line. The trial begins April 22.

"There have not been a lot of trials (against pipeline companies,)" Katherine Dalen said. "The oil industry is very powerful."

Something very important was taken from Dalen the day her youngest child died.

"I was not really ready for my mothering to be done yet," she said. "(Now everything is) clouded by this horrible sadness. (The family's) balance is off. You're not the middle child anymore, now you're the youngest."

"When you lose someone in such a horrible way you just don't ever recover," Liam's mother Marlene Robinson said. "I can never reconcile how he died and how he died at such a young age."

For all these families, the losses of June 10 are still very painful. All still look for ways to live with the hurt.

Mary King said the neighborhood where her son played feels quiet and subdued now. She said that some children, still traumatized by the event, can't pass the place where the accident happened. Many on the block had to watch the boys, burned on over 95 percent of their bodies, wait on the King's front lawn for the ambulance to arrive.

The Kings will be moving soon, and Mary will clean out Wade's room and box the last of his things. Mary said she will probably keep the ecology poster that was hanging on Wade's bedroom wall when he died and, though a painful memento, a bookmark issued out by a pipeline company stuck in the last book he ever read. Mary said her discovery of these two items was uncanny.

"You look at all this and you just have to think it's part of a bigger plan," she said.

Perhaps that plan entails the families of Stephen, Wade and Liam fighting to make pipeline companies accountable for their actions and giving them a strong incentive to make pipeline safety the top priority.

Local pipeline-reform activists feel there are many changes needed in the regulation of the industry. Wade's father Frank King said he feels new pipeline laws should protect whistle- blowers so people who work for pipeline companies can report spills and other problems without losing their jobs. He also said the government should levy significant fines against companies when they have spills.

"If you fine these companies, they will eliminate their own spills," Frank said. "Penalties virtually force someone to regulate themselves."

The Office of Pipeline Safety, part of the Transportation Department, is the only governing body responsible for regulating the pipeline industry. The agency is one of the smallest in the federal government, with a 2002 operating budget of $59 million and only 120 full-time employees. Pipeline activists criticize the agency for not properly overseeing the nation's pipeline industry.

"Currently they are understaffed, don't have adequate authority or (don't) use the authority they have and have been influenced by oil industry interests way too much," Weimer said.

SAFE Bellingham steering committee member Greg Winter said he would like to see more pipeline regulation at the local level. He said he views regional citizens' advisory councils, like one he served on in Alaska after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, as a viable option.

"The idea is that it would be an organization working to improve public participation in … rule-making and oversight that would engage in collaborative research projects with government regulating agencies and industry so that we can work together to advance pipeline safety," Winter said.

Many in Bellingham have been disappointed and frustrated with pipeline regulation bills so far.

"To be honest, some of us have gotten to be pretty cynical about the whole legislative process," Weimer said.

Frank refused to let his son's name be used on a bill that he felt was too weak.

"These bills are worthless - they don't go far enough. I would love to have a bill named after Wade, Stephen and Liam, but it needs to be meaningful," Frank said.

Changes in legislation will likely take a long time, but efforts by local organizations and individuals working to restore Whatcom Creek have already helped rehabilitate the beautiful urban stream.

"It was pretty much a dead creek (after the explosion)," said Wendy Scherrer of the Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association.

Several years before the explosion, NSEA worked on Whatcom Creek's riparian zone, the buffer of land and vegetation bordering the creek, creating shade to control water temperatures and reducing sedimentation. NSEA has removed parking lots to expand the riparian zone, stabilized slopes on the creek-bed, replaced invasive plant species with native vegetation and reshaped the creek to create salmon habitat.

Representatives from federal and state organizations, the Lummi Nation, and the Nooksack Tribe formed the Trustee Group, an organization working with Olympic to develop a long-term restoration plan. The City of Bellingham's superintendent of environmental resources, Clare Fogelsong, said the plan includes three main project categories: acquisition of properties along the creek, habitat restoration projects and continuous maintenance and monitoring of the projects.

NSEA and the Trustee Group's restoration work is dedicated to improving many aspects of Whatcom Creek, not just damage caused by the pipeline explosion.

"More spawning habitat is available now than before the fire because of the way we've reconstructed the stream," Fogelsong said, "(but it's) still quite a ways before we have a fully functioning stream again."

Just two weeks after the pipeline explosion, NSEA gained a very important member when Robinson started working with the group.

"I find my greatest sense of … peace on the creek," she said, "I look forward to (working along) it every week. It's a great distraction just doing something that's bigger than you are."

Senior Jenny Buening studies environmental science at Huxley College. This is her first published piece.

Current | Introduction | The Nooksack: Winding through History | Stewardship | Slopes and Boats | Wretched Water | The Primary Compound | 'Totally Unacceptable' | Assessing Value | Brink of Extinction | From the Ashes | Everybody's Problem | An Overdue Solution

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