How Many Disasters Will We Tolerate? : Toxic spill: Californians were once wary of railroads’ power; let’s revive that cynicism.

In the 19th Century, train wrecks were public spectacles. Photographs show entire neighborhoods swarming over the twisted wreckage of trains that derailed or smashed head-on. People seemed awe-struck that the sophisticated machinery of railroading, proof itself of American technological ingenuity, could fail.

Californians must recapture some of that fascination; we need to swarm over railroad wrecks. The fact that we often cannot do so physically--the toxic gas, or poisonous liquid, or radioactive material would kill us--seems to make it all the more critical that we not ignore railroad accidents like the Southern Pacific derailment last week outside Dunsmuir.

Railroad wrecks happen all the time. But in the 20th Century, the stakes have gotten much, much higher. Two years ago, a Southern Pacific freight train plowed into a San Bernardino subdivision. As if that were not bad enough, the wreck destabilized a gas pipeline that later exploded and leveled the neighborhood. Up north, the metam-sodium will eventually wash away. In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of fish are dead, large game animals are threatened and a gorgeous stretch of the Sacramento River has been sterilized into nothingness.

Southern Pacific has long played an extraordinarily important role in the state. In the 19th Century, the massive conglomerate controlled most of the state’s rail traffic, employed the most people and owned the most land. In addition, through an effective and organized lobbying effort, it pushed for friendly legislation at the local, state and federal level. “You can’t buck against the railroad,” declared Annixter, a character in Frank Norris’ classic California novel “The Octopus.”

But there has always been opposition to Southern Pacific and “railroad power.” Eighty years ago, Hiram Johnson catapulted into the governor’s office as head of an anti-railroad ticket that characterized Southern Pacific as an all-powerful corporate evil. Johnson and his ilk, however, generated far more heat than light: Massaging the railroad issue merely meant smart politics. The railroad never played the omnipotent role in people’s lives that Progressive-era reformers insisted it did.

How ironic: The railroad is no longer a topic of political currency, and yet it now has the potential to disrupt our lives on a massive scale. Nineteen thousand gallons of metam-sodium is proof enough.

We simply cannot allow sloppy shortcuts in the transport of incredibly hazardous materials. It is imperative that Californians restructure the state’s legacy of railroad opposition into something that has teeth at all levels of governance.

Of course it isn’t just Southern Pacific that deserves to be watched by concerned citizens and their political representatives. And it obviously isn’t just railroad companies that merit such attention. But the recent disaster on the Sacramento River demands that we make the railroad company the focus of a movement based on a cynical view of the environmental awareness of major corporations.

In the past, Californians displayed great indignation about the railroads’ real and supposed power. We could use some of that spirit today. We must not accept the fatalistic notion that the railroad can’t be bucked. Part of the Sacramento River has been rendered unreal. How many more such disasters are we willing to tolerate? Is that the California we want?