Loads of Danger Take All Shapes in Toxic Traffic

Military cargo of volatile rocket fuel traveling through metropolitan Los Angeles represents only a small part of the extremely hazardous materials transported routinely along the Ventura Freeway through the San Fernando Valley, officials say.

Some of the materials commonly trucked through the Valley would, in fact, call for larger evacuations--should a spill occur--than the highly poisonous rocket fuel transported to Vandenberg Air Force Base in Ventura County.

Authorities said hazardous materials transported on the Ventura Freeway include dry and liquid chlorine, chemicals used in fertilizers, hydrochloric acid, pesticides and, most frequent of all, gasoline and propane. These are in addition to the rocket fuels that launched sharp criticism from Los Angeles officials last week.

Freedom of Movement

“Every hazardous material known to man is traveling our highways,” said Gary Girod, assistant fire marshal of the Ventura County Fire Department. “Pesticides, rocket fuels, toxic gases, carcinogens, everything--it’s all out there. Any of these materials can cause a serious problem. Most of them can travel anywhere they want to in any amount.”

Officials caution that they have no way of knowing exactly what is being shipped at any particular time because regulations don’t require trucking firms to report the shipments. As a result, fire and public safety officials concede that they would be hard-pressed to prepare for large-scale evacuations should an accident occur along crowded routes such as the Ventura Freeway.

The few regulations that do exist require trucks carrying 1,000 pounds or more of a hazardous material to have placards warning of the danger. The federal rules also require the placard to list a code number to identify the hazardous material on the truck.

“We don’t know exactly what or how much is out there, we just know it is there,” Los Angeles Fire Department Battalion Chief Dean Cathey said.

“We have a problem,” Cathey said. “We don’t have full knowledge of everything that is going through our city or the degree of risk that it places our citizens in.

One of Many Hazards

“To put it in perspective, the rocket fuel is only one of a number of hazardous materials. Maybe the others are not as lethal, but there is greater risk from them because of the sheer quantity that is transported.”

Often the materials are shipped in smaller containers and more frequently than rocket fuel, which is transported in huge tankers. For instance, Girod estimated that 700,000 to 900,000 pounds of methyl bromide, a pesticide, are trucked each year in small cylinders to Ventura County for use on strawberry fields.

Another pesticide, parathion, also is shipped routinely through the Valley in small amounts, officials say.

Circumstances Can Kill

“It comes in small cylinders, yet a small quantity of it can kill you,” said Girod, who is studying hazardous material transport problems.

How hazardous a spill becomes sometimes depends on the circumstances more than the substance being shipped.

“It is a realm of what-ifs,” Cathey said. “The happenstance of risk factors” would determine the extent of the danger. He said, for example, a collision of two trucks carrying noncompatible chemicals could have catastrophic results.

To illustrate those hazards, officials point to an accident the morning of April 10, 1975, when a tractor-trailer hauling 24,000 pounds of lanate methomyl, a pesticide, overturned on the Golden State Freeway at the Hollywood Freeway interchange. Heated vapors from the pesticide injured 43 firefighters and 59 police and California Highway Patrol officers. Residents in the surrounding area were evacuated.

The most common hazardous materials transported through the Valley in large quantities are gasoline and propane, officials said. Taken individually, neither poses nearly the threat of the rocket fuel, Cathey said, but the prevalence of gasoline tankers and propane trucks on the roads makes them a greater danger in the eyes of public safety officials. Most of Fire Department training in hazardous materials is geared toward accidents involving them.

Some of the other materials commonly moved in large quantities are dry and liquid chlorine, anhydrous ammonia and nitric acid, both chemicals used in fertilizers. Fumes from these chemicals can be highly toxic, Girod said. The same U. S. Department of Transportation emergency response guide that recommends a .8-mile-long corridor of evacuation downwind for a nitrogen tetroxide rocket fuel spill recommends a larger, milelong evacuation for chlorine, he said. Corrosives such as hydrochloric acid used in industrial applications, pesticides such as parathion or fertilizers such as telone also are routinely transported in smaller amounts but can be deadly and threaten large areas in event of an accident.

Girod points to a 1975 case in which a canister of telone fell from a truck in Northern California. A leak from the canister caused 21 people to be hospitalized.

Most Congested Highway

Unquestionably among the most dangerous of substances is the rocket fuel trucked on the Ventura Freeway, the nation’s most congested highway, on a route through Los Angeles to Vandenberg, near Lompoc. The Air Force estimated that during the next eight years there will be 130 such shipments of nitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine to Vandenberg to fuel Titan missiles.

Federal officials said the shipments are legal, carefully monitored and employ state-of-the-art trucking equipment and specially trained drivers. But local fire and police officials said they are not notified of the shipments and critics said it would take only one accident in a populated area to render those standards meaningless.

Mayor Tom Bradley registered strong objections to the unpublicized shipments, and the Department of Defense last week announced a 60-day moratorium on them. Other officials have called for a rerouting of the fuel, and City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky has introduced a motion seeking state or federal legislation requiring shippers to notify local fire and police departments when hazardous materials are transported through cities. The motion is expected to be considered by the council Monday.

Rocket fuel is ranked by the Department of Transportation as a “Class A” poison, which means that even a very small amount of it is dangerous and can be lethal. Other hazardous materials classified in the same category include cyanide, nitrogen peroxide, hydrocyanic gas, and arcenes, all of which authorities say may be shipped through the Valley in small quantities and used for industrial purposes.

There are now no state restrictions on the transportation of most hazardous materials, said Bob Brown, supervisor of the California Highway Patrol’s motor carrier safety unit in Los Angeles.

Annual Vehicle Inspection

Although transportation of explosives and most radioactive materials is restricted to highways outside congested areas, he said, trucking other materials is not. The CHP annually inspects the vehicles that move these materials, but no notification of individual shipments is required, he said.

“We make an identification of what is being transported when there is a crack-up,” he said.

Brown added that drivers of hazardous materials are not required by the state to have special training. He said an August, 1985, law requiring a hazardous materials certification for drivers was suspended only two months after it was enacted because the Department of Motor Vehicles was unequipped for the certification process. He said the law is expected to be put back into effect early next year.

Cathey and Girod say the few safety regulations that do govern hazardous materials’ transportation may be inadequate.

The problem with the placard system identifying the cargo is that it often does not give complete information at a glance to firefighters responding to an accident. Under the system, Girod said, a truck carrying material that is both flammable and poisonous is required to be posted with only a flammable placard. “It makes it another situation where it is hard to determine what is on our roads,” Cathey said.