Many residents returning home after the Alberton area is declared safe for reentry continue to report odors and illness.
Pictured: map of the Alberton area
GASSED: The True Story of a Toxic Train Derailment
Part 2 Chapter 2 "Being Home" part 2
[music] Welcome to GAST, the true story of a toxic-trained derailment. I'm Ron Scholl. Last time on GAST, many residents returned home and reported chemical odors that made them ill. We now continue with Part 2 and the conclusion of Chapter 2, Being Home. The following areas were reopened on April 14, but most residents stayed out until general re-entry. Southside Road. Jamie Becker of LeBaron Lane found a pesticide smell at her house and tried to clean during repeated visits, which made her eyes severely tear up. Her husband Bill had respiratory disease and couldn't visit at all. The pesticide-like reek last all summer, she said. They noticed a dearth of wild birds on their property and much tree damage. Becker avoided Alberton. Soon after re-entry, she went to a meeting at the senior center with neighbor Paul Lodge. "I stayed about five minutes," she said. "The tears were just rolling down my cheeks." Lodge taught at the elementary school. "Paul was telling me about some of the teachers from Missoula who were driving out and getting headaches at the end of each day," she said. Lodge recalled, "There were a lot of times when that fertilizer smell would come while I was teaching school the next year after that." At times, the smell was strong enough to make his eyes water and burn. He felt a lot more sensitive at the school in Alberton than at home. The Stiles family at Southside Road returned April 25th. A faint chemical smell lingered in their house. That first night, the dizziness and headaches got worse at home, Jamie called. He would repeated migraine since the spill. "We could still smell it in little pockets here and there, an unidentifiable odor. Each time you mowed the lawn, you would stir it up," he said. It made you nauseated and dizzy. His wife Anne said, "In Alberton, some of the teachers that didn't live out here that lived in Missoula complained of the school bothering their throats or their eyes." The Stiles found their property eerily quiet, devoid of birds, insects, and chipmunks. Many trees in the area had lost needles. Jay said family pets were "real-less-less, real lethargic. We would let them out in the yard and they would come in with that smell on them." The cats, especially, they lost their appetite, he said. They'd go through the grass and come in and sneeze and sneeze and sneeze. They had something in their lungs. They were really sensitive to it. Dixie Robertson made an earlier attempt at returning, but her son immediately suffered a severe asthma attack. After General Reentry, she tried again. Robertson cleaned her house from top to bottom, throwing out carpeting. Doing so made her sick, affecting her lungs. "My face looked like it was burnt," she said. The initial exposure, I believe, made a lot of people sick, but I feel that coming back and living in it has made a lot more people sick. To add chemical insult to injury, Southside Road residents suffered another exposure when MRL did routine pesticide spraying along their tracks, without prior notification. "When they let everybody come back home, they sprayed," J. Stiles said. "Man, I had the worst headaches." Larry and Avis Mickelson were out in their yard when MRL's pesticide sprayer passed below by the river. Larry said, "All of a sudden we got a whiff of the chemicals, and the wife immediately had to come in the house because her lungs started closing up." We thought that was pretty idiotic for them to do something like that. I think a lot of them from MRL think this was some kind of joke that really nothing is wrong with people. Ponderosa Acres. Beverly Ridenhauer recalled a rotten egg smell at times, and a pesticide smell near her home, she said. Within a few days, her border collie, just from rolling in the grass, the hair literally burned off her back, she said. The vet felt that it was probably something in the grass from when the chemicals came through. Except for a rash, the return home didn't make Ridenhauer feel any worse, though coughing and shortness of breath continued. Terry Stewart testified she still smelled chemicals in her house. It was everywhere, she said, especially when it rained or the air was heavy and moist. When Stewart drove by the spill site soon after re-entry, the smell was still extremely strong, she said, causing tightness in her chest and coughing. Ponderosa resident one found a pesticide smell when she returned. Honestly, I never felt like home was ever quite the same again, she said. Near the spill site, for such a long time, that site really stank. We raft the river all the time, and just floating by there, it was amazing to me how nasty it still was for, God, years. Going by the site triggered eye irritation and an asthma-like reaction. Six miles east of the spill, Steve Adams stayed out until general re-entry. "I did have lingering chlorine," he said, in the crawl space under his house. He complained to Montana DEQ about the smell from a porch carpet. "It wasn't just chlorine," he said, "there was like a chemical smell." Adams ripped the carpet out. "For a long time, after we came back, you could drive down there to where the accident was, and I mean, it was strong. You could smell it on the freeway." Meanwhile, we stayed sick once we got back. I had eye and sinus infections, and I know a lot of other people seem to have had the same problem getting ear infections and sinus infections. At the same time, Adams offered a suggestion that fit perfectly with the mission of ATSDR. "The media did not want to cover it," he said. I talked to the Missoulian repeatedly and some of the local news channels. I suggested to them, "You know, the Albertan phone book is like a page and a half long." I told them, "Call, do a phone survey. Right now, when everybody is just getting home." See what they say. "You know, are you having ear problems, sinus problems, eye problems?" Oh boy, that was a great idea. I talked to, I can't remember his name, some reporter down at the Missoulian. He was going to get all over it and everything. And then, nothing ever happened. And then he wouldn't take my calls anymore. Will Snograss noted from Adams that reporter Alekah Rutland said she would ask the Missoulian editor for permission to do a phone survey. Neither the media nor ATSDR nor the health department would bother to investigate if residents had health problems upon returning home. Missoulian reported Ginny Miriam recalled the paper had already used a lot of resources on the Albertan spill. "We covered ACE and the victims a lot," she said, and felt like they were certainly telling their stories all the time. There was a small group of people who felt they were very damaged and it was ongoing. There was worry about what might still be in the ground or the trees or the air. And you'd go around and talk to all the people at the meetings and put some of them into your stories. So we had that sense that the whole town of Albertan was really concerned about it. "Am I damaged while I be damaged in the future?" and concerned about property value, she said. But the Crisco story and Adam's suggestions for investigating as residents returned home suggested something was wrong now in Albertan. Miriam said, "In terms of going back and sort of doing our own study of door-to-door, how many people in Albertan had trouble going back to their homes, we didn't do anything like that. Because we thought we were doing a good job." and pretty thorough. Apparently, the Missoulian editor nixed any such idea. The Crisco's testimony remained a journalistic anomaly. Roscoe Road. The Edgar family stayed out the full 17 days. After general re-entry, their lawsuit claimed the residual chlorine odor was still so strong as to require that their home be cleaned professionally. Catherine Danude of Roscoe Road felt her house was well sealed and safe, but outside she smelled a fertilizer smell for some time, especially after a rain. For years, she also smelled it near the site. Friends who lived on Plateau Road left the area for much of 1996. They went away, she said, and it was raining. It was awful. God awful. We had headaches just going over to their place and taking care of the dog. It was the same weeding-feed smell. It's a real recognizable smell, she said. One of her children noticed the spill smell inside the Albertan school after re-entry. For months, Danude had respiratory problems with persistent coughing. The following areas had brief, precautionary, belated, or no evacuations. Six Mile Valley. Dan Lindell noticed a lingering smell for about a year and a half, he said. He was in the house, and then when we would go down by where the spill was at Albertan there, you know how you could smell it in the air a year or two later? Well, that's how it smelled here, too. The smell was much stronger near the site. Lindell recalled the dearth of birds and other wildlife on his property, which recovered the following year. That year there was nothing here he said. It's just like everything died here. Housan area. Charlotte Ringlob and family lived in Housan. Ringlob only returned to stay after about five weeks. It smelled like somebody had used a bunch of bug bombs inside, she said. That's what it smelled like, and outside there was still an odor of chlorine. And any time the winds would kick up, it would just about gag us. Actually, for about three months after, it really was a strong odor. She added, "We had this white stuff all over everything. It was kind of an ashy dust layer, but not very thick." "What really sticks out in my mind," she said, "and I hate bugs anyway. We virtually were bug-free that year, and we had very few birds." A couple trees on their property died that year. When family members mowed the lawn that summer, Ringlob said, "We would just burn our skin, even going outside lots of times, if the wind was blowing just right, it'd make us burn." Many exposed skin, our face, the eyes, and provoked trouble breathing. Choosing avoidance, the family spent much of the summer in eastern Montana with relatives. The West Exclusion Zone. After the Anderson's return, Shirley recalled, "I think we smelled that chlorine for a long time after that, and we would have to drive past the site on the interstate, and you could still, on certain days, even a year later, smell that chlorine smell, especially after a rain," she said. With these later exposures, my eyes would just water and burn, and she'd feel a little nauseous at home and near the site. Her husband Jim Anderson died of heart failure on May 15, soon after returning from hospitalization. Shirley thought his exposure aggravated her husband's already poor health. "He had been gas," she said, "at Stone Container, ten years earlier, and he had scar tissue on his lungs." "So your resident one," said, "there was a faint smell for a long time around the hot zone, a faint chemical type smell that was similar to that sulfur, rotten egg smell." Nearby Evergreens had browned. There was a whole line of them that turned brown, like if the wind was blowing west, it would have been in a stream of gas. She added, "We used to have tons of squirrels, and the all just disappeared." Paris young of Salmyl Gulch stayed out indefinitely. After spending one night at home, his skin turned red, and he went to the emergency room the next day, fearing he was having a heart attack. The doctor advised he wait a while to return home. "People know," he said, "if you can smell it, it's there. If people are getting sick, no matter how many non-detects they have, it's there." Robbie Flynn, young's partner, had preexisting asthma and became chemically sensitive after the spill, especially to the Alberton area. Even outsiders reacted to the residual contamination Flynn said. When a man came out the summer of 1996 to size up some trees for removal, he was having some serious problems, and he left within half an hour, she said, and rode Paris. And he said, "I'm sorry, I can't jeopardize my health by coming out and bucking it up." Flynn came out in September and she and Young spent their first night together there, sensed this bill. "Paris," she said, "he had this metallic taste in his mouth, too, and I felt my head pinging. It was really scary." We said, "Let's get out of here." She and Young left behind thousands of books, but I can't read them anymore, she said. I read them, and with a half an hour, I've got a drive-throat. I've got to take my inhaler. A lot of people are chemically sensitive, she said. Flynn summarized, "I think all of these people just walked right back into a home that was contaminated." Visitors and drive-bys. Katina and Rick Magg lived in Missoula, and Katina received her first exposure while driving to the evacuation center at Frenchtown High School. Rick received his first exposure when he came out on the animal rescue April 13 to help his father at the mouth of Petty Creek. Katina's next exposure came soon after January entry. "When Magg met some people on Alberton outside the school," she said, "I started coughing. It was mostly chlorine that I smelled. We were there for about 20 minutes, and I wasn't feeling very well." She felt her throat closing, eyes tearing, and nose running. She and Rick returned to Alberton later that day from the west. "It was twilight," she said, "and as we passed the spill site, we actually saw a wisp of white stuff coming up, like tentacles of a fog drifting north. It was lightly raining." And we drove through some and actually smelled it. It was really strong and I started feeling really sick. And as she got to Alberton to switch cars, she began to have trouble breathing. I remember thinking to myself, "I've got to get out of here, or I'm going to die." My eyes were tearing, my ears were ringing. I felt nauseous, my nose was running, my lips were burning. It was horrible. She felt better back in Missoula, but said, "The next morning I woke up and my neck was two inches bigger around. I was covered with rashes. My face was swollen." My eyes were not swollen shut, but pretty darn close. And I felt really awful. Madge was diagnosed with chemical burns on her eyes by ophthalmologist Dr. Rick Newmeister. The Madge had just started clearing land for a new home by Rock Creek, east of Missoula. Two days after this recent exposure, Katina said, "I couldn't walk more than 10 or 15 feet without having to stop to rest because I couldn't catch my breath. I finally went to the doctor and he gave me prednisone for my lungs." That's when I started on this whole odyssey. Rick felt okay during the drive-by exposure and a split developed between husband and wife. For him, Katina said, "It was just a real slow progression and very insidious. For me, it was a very fast and obvious reaction. And we have different problems. Some of the problems we have are the same, but most of them are different. And so that was really hard for us to understand. And we weren't thinking clearly. I remember talking to my stepmother and I always called her by her first name. I mean, the woman raised me, but I couldn't remember her name." After Katina saw her doctor, she said Rick still didn't quite believe it, but he was at least open to the possibility that I wasn't faking it. Lee Shutter of Nine Mile owned a wrecking yard on ten acres just west of Alberton. Shutter thought his greatest exposure came that first week when they opened up the town, he said. The wrecking yard smelled and Shutter noticed a white dust on vehicles. Soon after General Reentry, workers who had not originally been exposed became sick on the job. He said by the end of the day, his mechanic, Ken, was sicker than a dog. He wouldn't go back up the next day to finish it. Sick to his stomach, headache, he said. Another day, Shutter brought in two young men to work, and by noon he noticed their eyes were all blurry and stuff. I thought they had bought drugs, he said. After one of them banged his head on a car hatch, Shutter fired them both, only realizing later that they were likely getting sick from working there. Over time, Shutter noticed the smell in cars that hadn't been opened up since the spill. French town volunteer firefighter Pam Roberts added insight into the difficulty of pinning down what people smelled and were exposed to. After General Reentry, Roberts would sometimes drive her kids from up Petty Creek to school in Alberton. One time I drove them in and we came around the corner. You know, Petty Creek exited. We drove into something and it smelled like the pesticide smell. We drove into that and I went to the school and I said, "My kids are not coming into school today. I took them out because I definitely smelled it when I walked in there that day." Some time after that, whenever I drove into town, I remembered distinctly smelling, and of course, we thought it was associated with, "Oh, that's chlorine. That's a chlorine smell." But it wasn't a chlorine smell. It was more of a pesticide type smell. And to this day, if the kids smell a pesticide type smell, they think of the chlorine. It's been associated because they think that was the chlorine smell. But it's not the chlorine smell. It was something else. In Alberton, Roberts said, "I would get a cough and start coughing, and I would feel whenever I was around there, just the slight symptoms of a flu type thing where I was tired, tired and coughing. But it would go away." Until that July. It was rare old days that I noticed it. I was going to be on the fire truck. I had to get down from one end of town to the other end of town where they were. So I ran down there. It was during that day and beyond that I developed the cough that I couldn't get rid of. It became so bad that they had to put me on prednisone. At first I went to Dr. Loonan because that was who MRL told me to go to. He couldn't do anything about it. He put me on prednisone because I had the worst "flu" or "col" or whatever I ever had in my entire life. I think beforehand that I had beginnings, but it was that day that I started that I couldn't stop coughing. And I felt really run down and really sick. Roberts also reacted to her Albertan church. And every once in a while I would go into it and I couldn't sit in the sanctuary. There was still residue and stuff around there. I would come home and be sick for two days after. Always tired, feeling like I was run down. I would start coughing again. I was mad. I was really mad that they even allowed the kids to go back to school for that last month of May. They should never have had anybody in their town as far as I'm concerned for a long time afterwards. There was still stuff in there. Richard Swartz was pastor of the Albertan community church, first exposed on an animal rescue. Swartz thought both a chlorine and fertilizer smell remained after general re-entry. "I think there were occasions when you could kind of, you could smell it," he said. "Probably depending on where the wind is, or you were located." He thought there was also residual contamination in his house. "I think down the basement you could smell it. I know my wife, when we were cleaning the place, she would break out in a rash." And all of her kids broke out with either a sore throat or cold or both. Swartz was also the school bus driver and found the fertilizer smell strongest by the natural peer bridge as he dropped children off. The community church smelled as well. Down in the basement he said it definitely smelled like chlorine. North Frontage Road resident one lived at the mouth of West Mountain Creek just opposite the spill site across the river and interstate. Her house construction began two or three months after the spill and North one was not exposed during the evacuation. "When we did start the bill," she said. "It smelled just like a big swimming pool from the chemicals, chlorine." We noticed it almost every time we were out, North one said. The smell came as we dug up the dirt. North one added, "I never really knew if it was airborne or it was just in our area. As far as coming from the site, I heard people say they went down there and it was really strong smelling." North one's brother-in-law built the house. "And he would stay all day long," she said. "The smell was an overpowering. It could bring tears to your eyes." The house took five months to build. Her brother-in-law mentioned being irritated by the smell at times. His eyes and breathing and voice, "You know, just how strong it was," she said. "I know when we'd come out every night, he would just say, 'Boy, that's strong smelling.'" North one's brother-in-law verified, "You could always smell it," he said, "the whole time I was there. You could always smell some kind of residual in the air, though it's strength varied according to the weather." "The smell is like a hot tub," he said, "that kind of smell," but it also reminded him of the French town mill, suggesting a sulfur smell as well. He developed some irritation and headaches. Craig Chambers, later pastor of the Alberton Community Church, moved to Alberton in November 1996. He had perhaps a unique perspective objectively, not only as a post-spill transplant, but also as someone in contact with many community members. When I moved in there, he said, there was still a strong smell of chlorine when it would rain. He thought the smell in the general environment was kind of like bleach. I smelled it all around. I smelled it in the church. I smelled it, you know, everywhere. It was fairly faint by then, but you know, you smelled bleach. And if it rained, you know, well, you smelled it when it rained, that's all. And sometimes it would be stronger, and sometimes it would be fainter. Chambers didn't recall if he smelled anything else. I think probably for about two years following, I could still smell it, he said. Even after he moved to the mouth of Petty Creek. Chambers recalled that in 1999, when he was looking to build a home, I found land that was right near the spill. In fact, I think it was probably right above the spill on Plateau Road that was for sale. And it happened to rain while we were there. Boy, the smell was strong. Chambers declined to buy the property because of the smell. Meanwhile, people complained about the church even after cleanings. "Oh, they were very much complaining when I got there," he said. There was the smell inside the church even for almost a couple of years, even though it had been cleaned, yes. One woman, he said, couldn't even come to church for about a year and a half when I first got there. It would just affect her. Many parishioners confided illness with Chambers that they related to the spill. Most of the congregation from 1996 was here at that time, he said in 2001. Probably 60 to 70 percent were here at that time. And they all had problems. Everybody had problems, it's just a matter of whether they lingered on or not. I don't know of anybody who had lungs that didn't hurt. Afterward, many people seemed to recover and they were fine. Even if they could smell it, it didn't bother them. There were others that could smell it and they couldn't stand it anymore. They can't go down the grocery aisle, they can't do this, it really bothers them. They still have reactions to it. Chambers was describing chronic chemical sensitivity. Of the 80 to 85 people in Chambers' 2001 congregation, 60 to 70 percent translated into 48 to 60 people that were exposed during the spill. In a foreshadowing of chronic illness to come, Chambers thought there were around 8 to 10 people that still have problems. Even now, in 2001. This translated into 13 to 21 percent of those originally exposed people in the congregation as having chronic symptoms that they related to the spill. At least the Chambers knew of by their confiding in him. Now whether they all relate to the spill, that's the thing he said. Or maybe there was a condition that got aggravated by it. But I do think there's a very direct correlation with many people's illness right away and probable correlation to long-term effects. Though Chambers arrived 7 months after the spill, he thought he experienced some symptoms possibly attributable to the residual contamination he smelled. "More of a general lack of feeling healthy, I guess. A little bit in the lungs," he said, "a feeling of closing up and a slight nausea. And it's probably because I'm getting older, but my memories started going," he laughed. "About six months later, I started to have memory problems. I get in the middle of a sentence, and that's it. I don't know what I was saying. That could just be the age. I'm 48 now." His memory problems had improved over time, however. Chambers guessed that since he arrived in November 1996, there had been perhaps a 20 to 30 percent turnover of the Alberton area population, one way or another. My observation in this town is that it sure does have a high rate of stuff going on. We've been praying for people right and left. There's always someone getting cancer, it seems, like every other week. Alberton seemed unlike most communities in which Chambers had been a pastor. There were times when we had a lot of people dying, but just not like this. It's at least as equal as to a retirement community. From an outsider's vantage, Chambers thought the spill had been divisive for the community. There are people who have worked for the railroad and feel like it was taken advantage of, he said, especially on the settlements. And I think almost everybody would agree that there are some people who took advantage, especially during the three weeks they were evacuated. Eating different meals than they would have normally eaten at home, steak, and expensive meals, they would eat the ritzy stuff. Chambers, of course, formed these impressions second hand. When I first got there he said, all I can tell you is there was still quite a bit of complaining and counter complaining. That is to say, there's people who are saying the railroads getting railroaded, and others who are saying that the railroad is covering things up. We're not hearing everything. There's a lot of stuff going on that we don't know of. There's a lot of chemicals. You can see both sides to that, and it was divisive. I think it still is. Scores of accounts describe the spill site as continuing to wreak after re-entry, even years after the spill. The majority of these people also smelled odors in the general environment in the Alberton area, indoors and outdoors. People generally describe a chlorine and/or a pesticide or fertilizer-like smell. The return home triggered or aggravated physical symptoms in many people to vary in degree. Some people were driven to leave the area for good. Officials continued to insist that all was safe. The above accounts are just a sampling of residents in various locations in and around Alberton, or non-residents, who were exposed, who complained of odors and/or aggravated symptoms upon returning to the area. Since no re-entry interview process or media investigation was conducted, no one knows how prevalent such complaints were. Next time on gas, the true story of a toxic train derailment. While many residents complain of chemical exposures that make them ill upon returning home, health officials show no concern, claiming the area is safe. We also look at modeling, withheld from residents, that shows just how severely the Alberton area was exposed to chlorine during the spill. Until 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. [music] [BLANK_AUDIO]