I concluded today that the Canadaian Pacific Railway company is, or at least was, run by self-absorbed bastards concerned only for their own profit. You may or may not be familiar with the anhydrous ammonia spill that occured in Minot, ND on Jan 18, 2002. Here are a few articles to bring you up to speed. My version of the story is this:
Anhydrous ammonia is a noxious gas that is used by farmers to fertilize fields. It is transported in large white cylindrical tanks and farmers apply it to their fields in the spring. It fixes nitrogen into the soil and "makes plants grow better." (Apologies to those North Dakotan farmers reading this...I'm trying to write for a diverse audience.) Anhydrous ammonia or "anhydrous" as farmers call it, is deadly if inhaled and will suck ALL the moisture out of anything it comes in contact with. Soil that has been treated with andyrous does not have earthworms in it because....why? Yes. They have been dehydrated. *mmm...yummy...dried earthworms. Find them in your local healthfood store....or my mother's Advanced Biology class...but that's another story*
In January of 2002 CP Rail was transporting thousands of gallons of anhydrous ammonia from Alberta to Minnesota on train tracks that ran directly through the Mouse River Valley. The city of Minot, where I went to college, is located in the Mouse River Valley, situated right along the Souris River. (The college campus is just blocks from the river.) Bear in mind also that the soil in North Dakota freezes and heaves in the winter. This causes highways and railroad tracks to buckle and heave as well. Apparently some irresponsible moron hired by CP Rail was not maintaining the railroad tracks just west of Minot because the frost caused them to heave and when the train carrying thousands of gallons of "death gas" came along, it derailled, causing the tanks of anhydrous ammonia to rupture, spewing thousands and thousands of gallons of gas into the air. Apparently this gas sinks and because Minot is in a valley and because the air was too cold for the gas to vaporize quickly the gas sank into the river valley and sat there.
So, this all happened at around 1:00 in the morning. It was the day before my 20th birthday and I was sleeping peacefully in my dorm room. It was Friday and I had class and then my roommate Al and I and Cat and K. from the dorm were going to drive to Moosejaw Saskatchewan to spend the weekend with Cat's parents.
Around 2:00 am I was awoken by a loud knock on the dorm room door. I was bleary with sleep and couldn't figure out who the hell was knocking...but it was 2:00 in the morning so it must be important. It was Jill from down the hall and she said something about her mom calling her and a trucker or someone having an accident and that there was poisonous gas in the air outside. I was supposed to wake Alycia up and we should call the people we knew and make sure they were safe.
I was completely confused. "poisonous gas?" WTF? It was 2:00 in the morning, I wanted to be asleep and I wanted this to go away so I could go sleep. But the air felt drier than normal and my skin felt tight. Breathing sorta hurt. This was frickin' wierd.
Jill said that her mom had told her to wet a washcloth and put it over her mouth. I got a washcloth out of my drawer, wet it and put it over my mouth. I may have gotten one for my roommate too, I don't remember. Breathing really WAS easier with the wet washcloth.
I took an experimental breath without the washcloth and it hurt. I could feel my skin getting "tighter." I sat on my top bunk for a moment, breathing through the wet washcloth, trying to figure out what was going on. And it slowly sank in. There truly was poisonous gas outside. It would take hours for them rescue us. I couldn't go outside because there was more gas out there than in my dorm room. And how was anyone supposed to rescue us if rescuing us meant going out of their safe homes into the poisonous gas? I was going to die. That's all there was to it. 20 years old and it was over. The gas might slowly seep in through the windows and suffocate us all. Fine...we were all going to die, no one would rescue us.....there wasn't shit I could do about it, so I might as well go into "survival mode" and just see how this all played out. People in the dorm were going to panic...Al was going to panic...Jill was already calling people she cared about in Minot to see if they were okay. Al called people. I think I called my parents and let them know what was going on. We turned on the radio to see if we could hear some announcement or emergency broadcast system warning. There was nothing...only country music. I now understand that the radio station was owned by Clear Channel broadcasting, a major corporation that owns most of the U.S. airwaves. There were no Emergency Broadcasting warnings because A. the DJ was not in the studio, rather he had been replaced by a computer for the night. (And I KNOW they do this because my frind Jarrett worked for that same radio station and I've seen him recording the "computerized DJ voice") B. Clear Channel did not test their emergency broadcasting system like they should have and even though they tried to broadcast a warning the system was broken. Minot has tornado sirens and I'd heard them testing them. THOSE didn't even go off. There was NOTHING. We were all confused.
WERE we going to die? WOULD we be rescued? DID WE NEED RESCUING? Why weren't they telling us ANYTHING?........
And now back to your regularly schedulled programming. Next time on "A little righteous anger" Stephanie shares with you the REST OF THE STORY. Were she and her friends rescued? Is the Canadian Pacific Railway company truly run by bastards? What DO hot college chicks do when threatened by poisonous gas? All this and more...next time on..."A Little Righteous Anger."
7 comments:
Lol,
Yes, we need to hear the rest of the story of the fog of death. If only to let the people that were not there now how crazy that day was.
"What DO hot college chicks do when threatened by poisonous gas?". . . Pillow fight? =P
I have another guess. Asphyxiation fetish??
Red and capital letters. A special treat.
memories. . . I still can't use Windex without being repulsed by the smell and thinking back to that night. Luckily, my cleaning product of choice (seventh generation) does not contain the nasty ammonia.
I lived on the 3rd floor (in the room right under Steph), and there was no evidence of panic on my floor. . . an interesting observation for anyone fascinated by crowd dynamics.
ooooh - I can't wait to see how the story ends! ;)
Lisa
While you are justified in being angry that there was no emergency broadcast and that the tornado/emergency sirens did not go off, I feel that it may have worked out for the best in that particular situation. It was at night, people were for the most part in their homes sleeping. Had the sirens gone off, confusion and panic may have been the result, and if you remember like I do - the anhydrous produced a wickedly thick white fog in the valley, and visibility was shit. The casualties might have been higher had more people known about the situation (think what happened in Terracita Vallejo, the neighborhood where the derailment occurred).
I needed to throw that information out there. . . lest people assume that all would have been better had everybody in the city known about it at the time. . . it might have. . . but it may also have ended with more tragedy.
Oh, and about the claim that "Apparently some irresponsible moron hired by CP Rail was not maintaining the railroad tracks just west of Minot," it seems you are assigning blame to an individual rather than a company and its policies and procedures. . . without providing any particular evidence that it was indeed a person's and not the company's responsibility. (that is sort of like if I chose to blame the workers at 3M for being bastards about the environment and toxic wastes, when it is the company that rightly deserves the blame)
And as a midwesterner, I will now provide my advance apologies for providing a critique of the story. . . because blunt honesty and/or the expression of opinions about controversial subjects does not come easily for us.
Lisa
Lol, Lisa, your critique is appreciated and I know that assigning blame isn't perhaps the healthiest thing to do. Overall I think CP Rail needs to be more responsible for their actions and the results. It would have been nice is someone at least had checked those tracks. And also, I know two people personally who were hired by the Burlington Northern Railway to work on their maintenance crews. One is an alcoholic. The other spends his winters smoking pot. One was my neighbor, the other is a relative. I know Burlinton Northern is not CP Rail. Just making observations I guess. I will continue the story soon.
Right. Don't get me started on BNSF... because Steph drinks that water now too. And not to include my side of the conversation that i sort of borrowed from this blog and turned into a bit of a tirade on my lj. i guess i am just tired of living in a pluralistic society where wealth and influence of the few are more important than the people. That isn't democracy.
My entire point being that when a disaster strikes and those who had a monopolistic control of the public airwaves for profit neglect their responsibility to warn the public - as they are required to by law - that they should have to face consequences that cannot be pushed aside by mere lobbyists.
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