Cajon Pass Spill Fuels Bid to Save Disaster Team

As potential disasters go, the toxic spill in the Cajon Pass last month was a monster. The overturned freight train laden with explosive chemicals erupted in flames five stories high beside one of the most heavily traveled corridors in the state.

The 40-car derailment beside Interstate 15 killed two brakemen, but a major disaster was averted, officials say, largely because of damage control by a statewide emergency response task force that is going to be out of money in July.

San Bernardino area firefighting officials, who were faced with an environmental crisis that demanded expertise with the chemicals involved, credit the so-called RAPID program with saving the day. “RAPID told us what we needed to know,” said Peter Brierty, chief of the hazardous materials division for the San Bernardino County Fire Department.

But the Cajon Pass intervention may have been the unit’s last. Created after the disastrous Dunsmuir chemical spill into the Sacramento River in 1991, RAPID’s funding has been canceled by the Legislature under pressure from the railroads and trucking industry, which paid $3 million a year in fees to support the task force.

For now, the Cajon Pass derailment and a rash of rail accidents nationwide have increased pressure to save the program and prompted public safety officials to question the wisdom of the cost-cutting in Sacramento.

“Merits of a program don’t seem to matter much when you’re pushing for something that is going to put some significant taxes on business,” said Kurt Latipow, a San Luis Obispo County fire official who lobbied on behalf of RAPID last year.

The state Public Utilities Commission reports that the annual number of accidents involving trains carrying hazardous materials has nearly doubled since 1985. And the PUC reports that the number of spills or leaks of toxic substances from trains and trucks has increased almost 70%.

If RAPID is shut down, its defenders argue, the state is going to be hard-pressed to cope with the fallout of chemical accidents--especially in rural areas where winding roads and steep grades have caused the majority of accidents.

Reacting effectively requires skills that many places don’t have, said Brierty, the San Bernardino County expert who was at the derailment scene in the Cajon Pass.

Providing that expertise as well as training thousands of firefighters and emergency personnel is what RAPID was created to do. And without RAPID’s experts backing them up, local officials fear that they will be pressured to reopen rail lines and roadways before it is safe to do so.

“A derailment can back up trains halfway across the country,” said Jan Dunbar, head of the Sacramento Fire Department’s hazardous materials division. “A great deal of money is at stake. The question is, do you want money driving decisions that affect public safety?”

It is hard to find anyone in state government, including James Strock, the head of the state Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the program, who agrees with industry criticism of RAPID. However, when the issue was being debated in the Legislature last year, the Wilson administration did not support efforts to extend collection of the industry fees beyond 1995.

Wilson aides insist that the governor did not take sides in the state Senate debate. On the other hand, supporters of RAPID say they threw in the towel when Wilson made it clear that he was not on their side. Copies of amendments offered by the administration include language calling for an end to the rail and trucking fees.

Five years ago, the Legislature and the governor hurriedly approved the fees after the Dunsmuir derailment, in which 19,000 gallons of the pesticide metam sodium spilled into the Upper Sacramento River. Hundreds of thousands of fish were killed, and about 700 people became sick.

The official response to the accident was chaotic. “Sixty agencies showed up, and no one was talking to each other,” said Karl Palmer, who heads RAPID’s emergency response branch.

At one point in Dunsmuir, Strock, a political appointee with no experience directing disaster response personnel, found himself in charge.

“It was painfully obvious we lacked a coordinated system that could quickly tap into all of the state’s expertise and help people like me make the right decisions,” Strock said.

Over the past few years, RAPID also has paid for emergency equipment for about 40 fire departments and specialized training for 3,000 firefighters and emergency personnel.

Still, there is a lot of training left to be done, program officials said. Only two counties north of Sacramento have emergency response teams trained under the RAPID program.

At the Cajon Pass derailment, RAPID came to the aid of well-trained firefighters who wanted a scientific assessment of the risks that they faced.

The overturned Burlington Northern Santa Fe train was carrying 500,000 tons of petroleum distillates, industrial solvents and pesticides--most of it hazardous to people’s health, some of it highly explosive.

“We get an accident of that magnitude once in a decade,” said Mike Martin, a railroad spokesman.

Firefighters, Brierty said, needed to know when it would be safe to approach the burning train and what the chemicals would do when exposed to heat, air and water.

“How far back to put people, whether to keep the road open or shut it down, what would happen when those chemicals got into the air, when it was going to be safe to pull the train apart and start breaking down the fire,” he said.

After the predawn derailment, RAPID’s job was to put together a plan to extinguish the fire, clear the wreckage and head off damage to the environment as quickly as possible without jeopardizing human safety.

“The first thing we did was recommend no one go near the train because of the potential for an explosion,” said George Baker of the RAPID team.

The concern was over 158,000 pounds of trimethyl phosphite, a pesticide component that RAPID officials feared could ignite a virtual firestorm in the air up to a mile around the wreck.

Eventually, a team of experts set off a series of controlled explosions that neutralized the chemicals but not before a tug of war ensued between RAPID officials and railroad executives over when it would be safe to reopen the rail line.

By the first day, 60 freight trains were backed up as far east as Kansas City. The track was reopened in three days, an achievement praised by all parties involved.

But railroad officials acknowledged that there was tension at the scene of the accident over how quickly to reopen the track.

“There is always some discussion, some disagreement over courses of action, and that’s what happened here,” Martin said.

As for RAPID, Martin said the railroad did not believe that the program contributed much to the accident’s containment. And he found fault with the way that RAPID has trained emergency personnel in the state.

“When it comes to rail equipment, the training needs to be more specialized than RAPID provides,” Martin said. Since 1992, he added, the railroad has trained 4,500 firefighters nationwide to respond to accidents involving hazardous substances.

RAPID defenders scoff at Martin’s claims.

“It’s baloney,” said Jan Dunbar, chief of the Sacramento Fire Department’s hazardous materials division. “The railroads don’t teach people to make decisions about evacuations. They don’t show you how to monitor the wind or track a toxic plume. They are not there for the public.”

Still, supporters of the program concede that there have been problems.

“It was hard to justify where all the money went,” said Latipow, the San Luis Obispo fire official.

During the past three years, nearly 10% of RAPID’s budget--more than $700,000--was paid to a state agency responsible for collecting the fees.

The fees also fell heavily on small truckers. An independent hauler with one truck paid $250 more per year for a license to haul hazardous material--the same annual increase paid by a large trucking company with a fleet of trucks.

For the railroads, the Southern Pacific paid nearly $650,000 a year and the Santa Fe about $350,000, according to the state EPA’s Department of Toxic Substances Control.

But, so far, RAPID’s defenders, including Strock, have not come up with another means of paying for the program.

If they don’t come up with the funds by July, training will stop and RAPID’s Sacramento-based staff say they will be reassigned to other duties.

“We won’t be gone,” Palmer said. “But you may not be able to find us when you need to.”