[music] Welcome to Gas, the true story of a toxic train derailment. I'm Ron Scholl. Last time on Gas, the tech struggled to patch the leaking chlorine car, even as a big spike caused forward ops to evacuate. Meanwhile, officials at the evacuee meetings held a vote denying the public to ask open questions. We now continue with part one, chapter 25. Ace. Epigraph. Those of you who are strong enough need to help those that are so sick they can't help themselves. Glenda Giles. A schism had opened. It was very hard to even ask a question, Lucinda Hodges said. Then came the vote by the evacuees. No more questions. It just broke my heart to see it. Our own town, just from the very beginning, she bemoaned. The older retired people really wanted these damn questions to stop. They really did. They thought that we were out of line for asking them. Old timers criticized her. We should be respectful that the railroad bought them dinner. How could you not be thanking them? There was a lot of that attitude that they got us out safely that the railroad was being heroes, she said. People were falling apart, getting hysterical at the meetings. By April 23, Hodges recalled, "I think they decided that they couldn't totally not allow any questions." The panel took a few questions for a 15-minute session. Dixie D's would cut off anyone if it ran long. Hodges' symptoms had worsened the opposite of what officials promised. "No one was helping us," she said. "No one was acknowledging what was happening." The griffins lost all trust in official assurances. "Nobody told us to decontaminate ourselves," Deborah said. The doctors at the public meeting said, "If you're not experiencing respiratory problems, you're fine." They said it was all short-term. "You'll go home, within a month, you'll all be fine." The vet at the meeting said, "All the animals are fine. He's seen only one or two animals that are actually ill." The griffins' cat became severely ill. Angry, her husband quit the meetings. "If you had a question, they didn't have an open floor for you to ask the panel, and everyone listened," she said. "You had to go up individually and ask these people after the meeting." Griffin said one-on-one sessions were with MRL claims agents. And officials took no interest in the questions residents discussed in these private meetings. "I was in pain all the time," Griffin said. Doctors were adamant that symptoms such as headaches and body pain were stress-related and advised that simply returning home would help. Jamie Becker of LaBaron Lane became somewhat outspoken. "Because I wasn't happy with what was going on and the answers we were not getting," she said. She questioned whether they had been exposed to more than chlorine. After one meeting, an MRL insurance agent asked her, "Well, what do you think we should do?" I said, "I think you ought to get somebody in here who knows what they're doing, such as experts on hazardous waste." So that evening, he sent the man who was actually teaching chemistry at Alberton High School. He was a general science teacher to my hotel room. So I asked this young man, "Do you consider yourself an expert on hazardous waste?" He wanted to say yes, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. The next day, the insurance agent inquired about the expert consultation. He said, "So you don't think Alberton's chemistry teacher is enough of an expert?" Robbie Flynn of Sawmill Gulch recalled the day that they were electing not to have an open common period at the public meetings. "There were these strange people in these first rows," she said. It was really interesting because one woman, this guy was sitting in front of her photographing her the whole meeting. So they voted on whether to have an open mic at the end or not. And this front row all voted no. And I'm thinking this was a little suspicious. And of course, the vote was not to have an open mic. At the next meeting, she said, "I went up and asked her and she said she was from MRL." And I said, "Excuse me then, why did you vote for a closed mic? You have no voting on this?" She said, "I didn't vote that way." And she walked away from me. "You know, they wanted to control the whole thing from the very beginning. No comments or anything like this." After a while, you could tell that they were getting really tired of people questioning their judgment. But I've never seen a fox conduct a fair hearing in a chicken house. "Why MRL was conducting these meetings when it should have been the state EPA, the federal EPA," Flynn said. "What I got from those meetings was that they told us what they wanted us to hear, Beverly Ride Nowers said. Everything is fine. Everything is going along just wonderful. We'll get you back in your home soon." A lot of questions just didn't seem to be getting answers. Things were coming up like, "My child has a rash all over. Can you explain that?" Well, nobody could explain it. Right now, her felt the health department wasn't qualified to answer many questions. MRL didn't bring in the people that they should have bought in to answer those questions, she said. They were relying on Missoula Physicians, who didn't have the experience or the knowledge with chemical exposure to answer the appropriate questions. Vic Stampley, who lived on the West Fork of Petty Creek, how do you unique perspective as a psychotherapist? From the first evacuation meetings he attended, he thought some victims overreacted. But after a few meetings, he questioned the attitude of I.C. Waldron, Leahy of the Health Department, and MRL. They had this sort of arrogant attitude where they were unnecessarily mystifying people, he said. Or maybe they had a reason to mystify. It really fomented paranoia, their reaction. Stampley felt people were not getting straight answers. I remember very clearly my perception changing radically, from one to giving these people the benefit of the doubt to, "No, this is bullshit." It might have been the second or third meeting, when the railroad company officials just shut things down, just shut off discussion, and it really rubbed me the wrong way. On the other side of the schism, Albertan resident Gary Weber was critical of some of the public response. Too many of the questions were coming from people that were not involved, like Missoula residents that decided to be there and show off their knowledge, and asked various semi-scientific questions and keep hammering at people. That, I found annoying, and I know some of the other people did, Weber said. Even so, Weber questioned the level of information given by officials. There were times when it was obvious MRL really didn't want to say much yet, Weber said. If they had been a little more forthcoming, saying, "Here's the list of cars, here's the manifest, here's what's come off," in such a way that they didn't appear to be hiding something, I think they would have had a lot easier time in terms of trust. It doesn't generate trust when you're standing up there saying, "I don't know, I don't know." People expect you to know. EPA had somewhat the same problem, Weber said. In that case, I think it was more they didn't know what was going on. Having arrived, Weber believed, on the third day. Weber acknowledged divisiveness, but for him it had to do with the perception of some people taking advantage of MRL. Most of the people I talked to, they weren't feeling too bad. They were very annoyed at the thought that there would be people trying to take advantage of it. You know, having steak and lobster every night, which was alleged to have happened. And I have no doubt that it did happen. I think it was a very, very small minority. The old timers in town resented and anyone taking advantage of the railroad, he said. While attending both staff and some public meetings, Albert and volunteer firefighter Terry Fairbanks noted contradictions with public information compared to what crews were being told at briefings. It's like, if you ask the question, we'll answer it maybe. But if you don't ask, we're not going to volunteer information. I think a lot of times it was with the escapes of chlorine gas, she said. The sear pullback and the evacuation of forward ops were good examples. I know on one of the release dates, they said there was no release, and yet we had been told there was quite a release on one of the downloads, she said. Fairbanks and other responders stopped going to the public meetings. The public story versus what she knew behind the scenes wasn't making any sense to me, she said. The public wanted answers and any questions you had. The answers were what they wanted to tell you. It may not be the truth, but it was what we keep the people calm. Fairbanks recall the time early after the spill when she and others at station 5 saw smoke rising from a fire at the site. A blackish gray, she said, it was obvious that it was something that, you know, there was action going on at the site. She heard some of the big wigs mention there was a fire, but when it was brought up at a public meeting, it was denied that there was a fire. It was just steam being let off is how they described it. As a local responder, Fairbanks was besieged with questions from residents, but was under orders not to talk. She said the order came from Waldron, one of the big wigs out of Hasmat, out of Missoula, and a couple of MRL guys. Hodges summarized. There was definitely the perception of those meetings that the question the authorities, the question MRL, the question Ellen Leahy or question Scott Waldron, was going against God, America, and apple pie. And it was frowned upon. You definitely were asking for trouble if you got up and asked point blank questions. I didn't know why it was that way. I guess it was because it was important for people to trust, because we had no control. We had to trust them. They had all the control, and if you couldn't trust them, then the whole thing fell apart. For her and many others, the whole thing was falling apart. Prior to general re-entry, residents, activists, and lawyers unsuccessfully sought a list of all chemicals in the creslate solution and compounds created with chlorine, the quantities, and the known health effects. Citing right-to-no laws. Garen Smith was open with his information, but his screening did not quantify concentrations or address health effects. Residents had not even been told that 17,000 gallons of potassium creslate had spilled. Well, we had that information, Chris Weiss recalled. The bigger problem is communicating that information to virtually everyone who wants to have it, when they want to have it, and a form that they can understand it. Finding a way to disseminate that information in a useful way without tying up your time and resources is often really difficult. Why not publish a fact sheet? Well, I wasn't in the publishing business, he said. I didn't have any access to that. We had the newspapers that we were using. They were publishing information. The newspapers published what officials released, which was obviously lacking. A photocopied handout would have sufficed. By the time residents returned home, they knew nothing about the amount and concentration of spilled and created chemicals or the possible health effects. Once again, the lack of information and the apparent resistance to giving it fomented fear and distrust. Because officials and doctors assured that most everyone would recover fully and quickly, lingering or worsening health symptoms added to that distrust. For some, quick recovery seemed to follow. Thomas Wakeman, who initially had difficulty breathing and burning lungs, said that after a couple of days, it seemed to go away. Yet, many experienced persistent or delayed symptoms. Ponderosa 1, who had let her cult on foot to husan, felt worse over time. Coughing to the point of throwing up, she said, "I shed all the skin on the inside of my mouth and my tongue. It took a couple of days before things really started happening." Some felt delayed symptoms were not considered exposure related by doctors. Plateau Road 1's severe sinus infection was dismissed at St. Patrick's as a spring cold. Many evacuees complained of post-spill infections and diagnosed colds. And many people had sick animals. Terry Stewart of Ponderosa Acres called the official denial of animal illness "alye." The following are examples of extended acute symptoms reported during the 17-day evacuation, and people's experiences with health information and health care. In the immediate aftermath of the spill, Hodges felt in a day's. Then on the second night at her motel, as she took a shower, she felt on fire and broke into a full body rash. Her kids had rashes on the inside of their legs. "I was swelling," she said, "and I realized there was more going on than I thought." By the third day, she and son Jesse had ulcers on the inside of their lips and mouth. Other victims complained to her of such ulcers and feeling nauseous, and told her St. Patrick's hospital was treating them for strep throat. On the fourth day, she went to Western Montana Clinic, and a doctor advised her rash would soon resolve. "Everyone was saying, in a few weeks you'll be fine," she said. Hodges felt the evacuee meetings offered little information on health questions. She recalled sitting next to Les Rote at a meeting during week two. "He said to me, 'Is it just me?' I can't follow a word these people are saying. I'm not understanding anything anybody is saying to me." I realized that I wasn't either, and that was the first time I realized there was something wrong with our brains, and that we were all trying real, real hard to comprehend what people were saying, but we weren't getting it. A neurologist Hodges saw that summer noted, "The patient thought she had escaped illness initially." She had minimal symptoms the first day. On the fourth or fifth day, she developed a rash. Within several days of the chlorine exposure, she developed headaches, vertigo, deplopia, cough, skin problems, and fatigue. The second week she developed decreased concentration, some headaches. She staged that she was very sensitive to chlorine early on. In fact, chlorinated water in the hotel showers seemed to give her trouble," the doctor wrote. As word came back about a pesticide smell in the exclusion zone, Hodges began to think the symptoms suggested exposure to more than chlorine. Hodges. "All these symptoms we were having, they were saying that they couldn't possibly be from the chlorine spill. The skin rash is the burning sensation, the dizziness, the blurred vision, the nausea, the headaches, the anxiety feelings." Hodges said, "Official's assured you're going to get better every day." And we didn't. Joan and Orvin Crowder of South Frontage Road both had acutely burned eyes and saw ophthalmologist Dr. Rick Newmeister within a few days. Orvin's face turned red and broke out in bumps. Within a week, Joan's hair began breaking off in brittle clumps, while Orvin's hair came out with bits of his scalp. It turned all white, he said. Big chunks of it come out. Some hospital doctors left a negative impression. The Crowder's felt many respiratory problems were offhandedly dismissed as smoking related, or as bronchitis unrelated to the spill. When Orvin went to a referred dermatologist at Community Hospital, the first time I'd ever seen him in my life and the first thing he said when he looked at me was, "Well, I can tell you right now that there's nothing to do with the chemical spill. You've just been out in the sun too much." "Well, I'd been out in the sun all my life, and I never had any skin problems," Orvin said. Joan said very few doctors seemed to really care. People weren't treated very nicely when they went to the hospitals to see the doctors, she said. They weren't very compassionate or anything. And we thought, "What's the use of going, then?" Kathy Finniman of Alberton and her two children suffered burning eyes and a newfound chemical sensitivity, including toward the chlorinated hotel swimming pool. While she got groceries two days after the spill, she said, "They had weed and feed sitting outside, and immediately my lungs started to hurt. It made my nose hurt, my eyes water, and the kids said the same thing. It's like your lungs all of a sudden just tighten up, and it's hard to get a breath." Many others noted chemical sensitivity soon after the spill. Randy Augustine of Alberton recalled that at first, residents were told that "Our chemical cough would go away in three days or less." Then after three days, officials said, "You might have it a couple of weeks." He met a mother with a child who settled their claims early on this belief, and who later told them that their coughs never went away. He said, "We noticed that the girl was deathly pale all the time. The mother was crying. She said she wished she had never gone back to Alberton. She wished they had never settled." During the same Pat's lung function testing with Dr. Lunin, sponsored by MRL, Augustine met neighbors and other evacuees who had never had an asthmatic attack prior to the spill. His next door neighbor was told his breathing problem was "An asthmatic attack brought on by physical activity," he said, while another woman was told that she had a stress-induced asthmatic attack. Augustine said that because of these phony reasons, he refused to be tested. Jolene Cloud of Alberton was previously asthmatic, but in the year before the spill, her asthma seemed resolved and she no longer used inhalers. During the 17-day evacuation, Jolene suffered two to three asthma attacks a day, reacting to a variety of chemical triggers and also had bloody sinuses. An MRL referred doctor made no connection with the spill. During a couple subsequent visits to this doctor, Jolene recalled, "He told me my lungs were clear that this cough was maybe a cold was what he said, 'You know, that's coming on.'" Later she asked, "Then why have I kept having these nose bleeds, these coughs, the asthma attacks?" He didn't know why it was like that, and I told him, "I was totally healthy before the spill." I said, "Something is wrong." And he said, "Well, I don't see anything wrong." He was really rude when I went to see him, and because of that, I didn't want to go back, but I had to go back. Upperton's Deborah Griffin experienced continuous headaches, nausea, and body aches. She saw her physician within a few days. He said it was just situational stress because I was getting lost driving my vehicle. We would take her kids to the daycare to go to the meetings, and I would get lost trying to find my way back, and I had taken my kids there for four or five years at that time, the same daycare. She even got lost on her way to her nearby brother's home, even though I used to live within a mile of them, she said. It was just like I was totally disoriented. During the evacuation period, her daughter was not sleeping, screaming and waking up at night, having nightmares. "She was just really emotionally distraught about it," Griffin said. A psychological response to the trauma was expected, making it hard to separate what was physical, what was emotional, and what was potentially some residents would come to believe, injury to the brain. The Shugs of Alberton. You know, we gave them the benefit of the doubts, Steve recalled. They said, "Give this thing a few days, all the side effects should be over by then." Well, we gave them four days or three days before we finally went to the doctor. MRL attorneys would argue delays proved people received insignificant exposure. As soon as we went into the emergency room, we were all told that we had reactive airways disease, Nancy said. Their teenage boys had a history of asthma when younger. The whole family also suffered burns in their sinuses and throats, and Steve lost his voice for two months. And we find out that we are all so badly burned internally, we are never going to be right against, Steve said, strongly critical and suspicious about the medical response to the spill. Steve Adams, near Eddie's underpass, said his family symptoms plagued them over the next two months. "Endless infections," he said. Eye infections, ear infections, nose infections, sinus infections. It was just unbelievable. His young twins had never had a sick day in their lives before that. It was just endless ear infections and sinus infections. They finally had to have tubes put in their ears, he said. Jay Styles of Southside Road suffered powerful daily headaches that would not subside. Prior to the spill, he had manageable migraines, maybe one or two a month at the most, he said. I asked some of the people at the meetings when my migraine headaches would go away, and my symptoms, and they assured me that it shouldn't be too long. "You should be okay in a bit," they said. One migraine drove him to the emergency room. Fixed dambly of the West Fork of Petty Creek, said in a newspaper article just before general re-entry that he had been experiencing an eerie feeling of dislocation and depression and anxiety. Whether the condition was psychological or due to his chlorine exposure, it was real, the psychotherapist said. He also reported reduced motor skills and disorientation. It was like rapid onset middle-age dambly later laughed, who was 45 in 1996. Lots of forgetfulness. Like I said, disorientation. I had a pretty good chronic sinus infection and shortness of breath for a long time. In the same news story, pulmonologist Dr. William Bekamire dismissed relating reported symptoms of dizziness, disorientation, and even depression to chlorine poisoning, saying they were much harder to quantify than lung problems. Beyond the exclusion zone, Roxanne Simon of Six Mile Valley had chronic asthma that severely worsened after the spill, though her area was not officially evacuated. The next day, I ended up in the hospital in intensive care, she said. I was in intensive care for about five days, and in the hospital for about a total of two weeks. My lungs felt like if you take marshmallows to an open campfire. They felt so burned, it was so painful. There's a lot of that hospital stay, I don't remember. Husband John recalled they had her on an IV drip with morphine, and were giving her pain stuff on the side because she was in so much pain. Everybody thought she was going to die. Pulmonologist Dr. Bekamire was so concerned about the sensitivity of Roxanne's lungs, he had to avoid her home for almost a month. "He wanted her house professionally clean before I could come home," Roxanne said. Simon also had a severe rash over much of her body for about a week. Soon after her hospital stay, ophthalmologist Dr. Newmeister told Simon, "Your eyes are burned. Where do you live?" And I told him, he says, "Your eyes were burned from the spill." Both she and John develop meba mitas, a chronic inflammation of the oil glands in eyelids. On the day of his April 15 exposure while getting equipment from the DOT shop near Alberton, Leroy Strong said, "I knew I must have probably burnt my lungs, but I thought, well, this will pass, which was the medical advice he heard via other spill victims. I'm not a complainer, and I'm not a big baby. Life goes on, so I figured it'll be all right. It'll go away." Exactly what officials said, but it didn't go away, not for strong and not for many others. During the 17-day evacuation, the health message evolved, but general assurance of full recovery for the vast majority of people in a relatively short time held steadfast. Health officials assumed that, except for those hospitalized, 15 people, spill victims had received a mild or moderate exposure to chlorine and should fully recover within 1 to 2 weeks. A small percentage may be hypersensitive to chlorine or other chemicals for up to 8 weeks. Those people with pre-existing lung conditions might have chronic problems lasting longer or even indefinitely. Meanwhile, many residents continued to report smelling chlorine and/or a pesticide odor upon visiting Alberton and a mysterious white dust on various surfaces. Many reported feeling ill during visits. While officials now acknowledge hypersensitivity and warned about letting children swim in chlorinated pools, warned asthmatics and anyone having reactions against visiting the exclusion zone, had yet to determine conclusively migration of chlorinated compounds and struggle to deal with the leaking car 3, they still declared the area safe for visits. The message hodges and many others heard, "Everything's fine. Stop asking questions." Tuesday, April 23. Some residents wanted their own meetings. Glenda Jall's personal testimony of chronic chlorine injury coming on the heels of Garrett Smith's discovery of chlorinated compounds proved a catalyst. The clamp on public questions clinched it. Reentry was on the horizon and many residents felt leery. "I was president of the AVA, the Alberton Valley Association, so I decided that we should have an AVA meeting," Hodges recalled. She and neighbor Deb Janakaro, secretary treasurer of the AVA, rented a room at the Missoula Library and proposed an open meeting for April 23. Hodges asked Jall's to come. Their flyer was titled "Human Health Concerns for Alberton Evacuis." Hodges studied the crowd as Jall shared her experience with some 80 people. Some sobbed and Hodges thought they instinctively knew Jall's told the truth. "You would much rather know what's happening," she said. "Why, you're changing." Jall's told the evacuees that some of you are going to be really, really sick. Some of you are going to be sort of sick and some of you aren't going to be sick at all. But those of you who are strong enough need to help those that are so sick they can't help themselves. The Alberton story in a nutshell. "I came down because I walked my road alone," Jall's recalled. "And I told them I'd stay and help them because I knew what it was like to walk through it without having anybody tell you what's going to happen to you." "This is what we needed," Hodges said, "people who know how to live with this disease." The disease Hodges now feared chronic illness from chemical exposure. She credited Will Snograss and Jall's with informing spill victims about environmental illness doctors. After the meeting, a core of about 20 people stayed behind. After many hours, they emerged with a big sheet of paper listing their demands. "Everyone was really upset," Hodges said, "and that's when we became ace that night." The Alberton community evacuees had formed. They wanted to take control of the chaos and uncertainty that had gripped their lives. This was their response. Frustrated, Deborah Griffin went to the incipient ace meetings. "I was so hungry for information," she said. "I wanted to know what exactly we were exposed to, aside from the chlorine, and at what level were we exposed to. I was so hungry for what is this doing to my children? What are we looking at long term? Is it okay to take my kids home?" But there was also pressure from an increasingly divided Alberton community to return home, which Griffin felt MRL manipulated. "They were working on dividing the group anyway from day one," she said. "Those that were wanting to go home, they really catered to them and truly tried to get them to push the people that weren't sure, that had all these questions to tell them you've got the answers." New to the community, Griffin felt somewhat isolated. "The ones that were really anxious to go home seemed to be people who had lived in Alberton a long time," she said, "or that were railroad people." You could see and feel it at the meetings. There would be somebody that would stand up and ask a question, and there were others that sit down. They already answered that. Sit down. It was like, "No, they haven't. They've given you a roundabout answer that has never even answered the direct question." And that's why people are still asking it. Griffin thought people who complained generated some basic investigation. It was because people were saying, "Well, I smelled this, or what's the white dust?" So that's the only time that they investigated anything, she said. Griffin had no kind words for the media. The press was total MRL. I mean, when they are printing that we're getting lobster dinners and MRL is paying for it, there's a problem. And people are saying, "Gee, you know, I'm getting a vacation." The press was bought and paid for by MRL. It was not a vacation for me, it was my worst nightmare. The whole media thing was a total setup. Paris Young joined the fledgling ace group, especially critical of efforts to restrict people from commenting and questioning at the public meetings. It was clear from watching those meetings that that was what was going to happen, Hope Seek said, about the formation of ace. People were asking questions like, "Is anyone going to be coming to decontaminate our homes?" And officials left the meeting without answering. "The government officials were not doing any sort of outreach," Seek said. "They weren't doing any kind of public education. They were doing a bare minimum, as if they were really just trying to keep a lid on the situation." Seek said the community group was a bunch of sick people, just trying to hold their lives together. Adding insult to toxic injury, spill victims also faced negativity from the outside community. On April 24, the first letter to the editor was published that addressed the spill, co-signed by seven Missoulians commending MRL for their response while chastising certain victims. The vague letter said the incident had been a hardship and unfortunate, but they said what is more unfortunate, though, is that some of the people who have been affected by this spill and some people who have not are acting with greed and self-indulgence. The authors also expressed disgust with talk of lawsuits. "You've MRL a break," they said. "They've had enough to deal with without greed, profit, and self-indulgence added to the mess." MRL as victim. Two days later, Albertoni and James Jackson replied to the Missoulians who wrote about all us whiny, greedy, self-indulgent, Albertoni and folk who had taken advantage of poor old MRL. Let me say that you make me gag, almost as much as the chlorine gas we've had forced upon us. How dare any of them asked the victims of MRL's chlorine disaster to give MRL a break? Who answers for those crimes? What form of redress do the people have? Who is our advocate? Do these advocates of poor, unfortunate MRL really expect people who have had toxic stumped in their town to somehow feel bad for MRL? Do you really want the victims to feel grateful? How about I stick a gun in your ear and you thank me for not pulling the trigger, okay? Give me a break. On April 28, another letter to the editor by a Missoulian responded to allegations of greedy evacuees. "I have friends who have had incessant nosebleeds, coughing, vomiting, stress, lost wages, and countless other problems since the accident. If these are the short-term effects, what are the long-term effects?" While the author didn't believe the spill was intentional, she asked, "Isn't it possible that this accident was caused by some degree of negligence and/or reckless disregard for public safety? If so, and if I were affected to the degree that my friends have been, I would feel as if MRL owed me an immeasurable debt. I would venture to say that the authors of that letter were far from Albertin on the day of the spill." The Albertin area was already a community divided. Now, the first outsiders to publish an opinion had attacked the spill victims. Around April 24, Tammy Richards of Albertin called Will Snowgrass about her baby, who suffered lung and eye problems since the spill. Richards told him she had just called Community Hospital ER to report that her baby was vomiting and having trouble breathing when lying down. She told the ER she was an Albertin spill victim and was told there was nothing more they could do. Snowgrass recalled, "She was very upset. The baby was described at the time to me as bleeding from the nose, the ears, and the mouth. And the mother was distraught, because the hospital had turned her away. So I called the hospital, and I said, "This is Will Snowgrass. There is a woman wanting to get into the hospital. You are denying her access to the hospital. If you do not let her in, I will be there with the Missoula Press post-haste, and she was allowed to bring her baby in." Richards also called Glenda Giles, who was soon in tears. Giles had never dealt with chemically injured babies before. She called Cynthia Wilson of the Chemical Injury Information Network, who told her they needed to get the baby to the hospital. Snowgrass went with Richards and the baby to the ER, along with Glenda and Rob Giles, Lucinda Hodges, and Mark Hanson. Hodges recalled X-rays showed the baby had lung scarring. "Day and Roberts of Salmyl Gulch was the mother of Richards, whose two small children were made deathly ill," Roberts said. "That little girl, she was just delirious. She was so darn sick. And the little boy was the same," she said. "There were a lot of sick people at those meetings. That was obvious," Snowgrass simply said, in explaining his motivation to help those in need. Wednesday, April 24 through Friday, April 26. Ace introduced themselves at the April 24 evacuee meeting as a citizen's group aiming at helping victims obtain safety and health information related to the Albertin derailment and chemical spill. A spokesperson requested that Watts, Waldron, and Leahy attend Ace's next meeting to talk about health concerns. Though not reported in the Missoulian, Ace circulated a press release with three requests prior to re-entry. One, all Holmes' property and water are tested by the independent lab of our choice. Two, all Holmes are clean with non-toxic cleaners according to each individual's needs. And three, we are certain that all future concerns will be addressed. The group listed four representatives, Paris Young, Debra Janikaro, Kurt McComb, and Lucinda Hodges. Waldron and Leahy attended the April 25 Ace meeting. Waldron recalled, "They were concerned that when they got back, there might be issues involved that affecting their health. Some people thought they, you know, maybe somebody was being a rabble rouser, but I think we looked at it like a valid concern. And the nice thing about that group is it was people who were impacted, not a bunch of people from across the country who just wanted more information." As a result, Waldron claimed, "I think that there was some house cleaning stuff done. I think that we did extensive monitoring of every house before people went back in. I believe we put together some things before they went back in. We opened windows. Let those Holmes air out. In fact, there was no systematic cleaning, monitoring, or venting conducted." After this meeting, the Missoulian reported for the first time on Ace. Lucinda Hodges explained, "They organized a voice to health and safety concerns, and the approximately 40 members expressed distrust in returning home. Emerald had met with Ace and said they would reply to their concerns in a couple of days. Many evacuees did not welcome the group. "We're building a lot of animosity," Deb Janikaro told the paper. This report failed to mention the group's specific questions and concerns, the reason for Ace. Ultimately, Ace did not get anything they asked for. Of Ace forming, Ellen Lee said that she knew that when the emergency lifted, there would still be some people that had concerns, if not symptoms, she said. So I thought it was basically a good thing. Years after the spill, an interviewer asked Leahy who was ultimately responsible for dealing with the long-term health consequences of the spill. "You know, I think the courts will decide," Leahy answered, "not unreasonably." But the interviewer didn't mean legal liability. Victims ultimately had trouble convincing doctors their symptoms related to the spill, so whatever health officials said held important influence. Victims looked to official support long before they turned to courts. Who was responsible at the time for bringing to light health consequences the victims might endure? Good public information could give spill victims credibility in connecting symptoms they suffered to their exposure. Leahy reiterated her public statement that Little was known about chronic illness from chlorine beyond occupational studies. "It was very important not to try to diagnose from a podium," she said. "So we just sent people to doctors, and we had nurses listen to their complaints. We tried to categorize those complaints to look for trends. We tried to form the questions for the study that we asked ATSDR to do. Arguably, the most important information the health department could have shed light on for spill victims was chemical sensitivity, a symptom set that somehow didn't make it an ATSDR survey. Yet, sensitivity would play a monumental role in the future health of many residents. Ultimately, of course, the victims would deal with the long-term health consequences of the spill, which ACE soon understood. The early formation of ACE didn't surprise Chris Weiss. "It's not uncommon for us to encourage and help form what we would call a community advisory group," he said. "A group of people who can talk among themselves independently and then bring issues to the response action as an advisory group." Weiss said an advisory group could have been facilitated by the EPA, bringing in a community involvement coordinator. But the EPA did not help set up a community advisory group. Weiss didn't attend the ACE meeting. Uninformed and unguided, members of ACE knew nothing of such EPA programs. The EPA also could have directed MRL to monitor and test the homes. Weiss, if we had acquired information indicating that there was contamination in Alberton, we could have easily required MRL to clean those houses. As it turned out, we didn't have any leverage because the data that we were holding showed there wasn't any contamination. Weiss distinguished between the residents within ACE and outsiders, who weren't even really exposed, he said, and yet they were, in some cases, dominating the scene. But many spill victims who took part in forming ACE and the activists advising them shared a common goal of seeking information and of wanting help or to help others. Arguably, the activists filled the neglected role of community involvement coordinator. If forming a CAG was a good idea, formation of such a group was not encouraged publicly. ACE formed itself in the vacuum the EPA and Leahy left wide open. On April 25, the beginning of the third week of the evacuation, the information officer at the day shift briefing addressed rumor control. Someone had been giving false information on a talk radio show that this was a conspiracy, he said, and nothing really happened, it's just being staged. This was the most inclusive rumor of all, that none of this nightmare was real. Next time on gas, the true story of a toxic train derailment. Officials declared two of the four criteria to allow re-entry satisfied with a 100% certainty that no chlorinated compounds migrated off site, and the claim that the white dust was not harmful, even though officials say they cannot find any white dust to test. Till then, this is Ron Scholl. Thanks for listening. This podcast is adapted from the book Gas, the true story of a toxic train derailment. Visit amazon.com to see the two book series. To access support material in the book such as maps, photos, illustrations, and video links, visit my Facebook page Gas, the true story. Or watch my Gas playlist on my YouTube channel at R.L. Scholl.
