Railroaders' Nostalgia > NWP & the $4 Million Empty Car

In March, 1982 on an otherwise quiet day, I was catching up on my paper work in my office in Oakland, CA when my boss told me he had just heard about a possibly serious problem involving a tank car up in Ukiah on the NorthWestern Pacific Railroad. Although SP was the name on my paycheck, NWP was a wholly owned SP subsidiary line some 300 miles long, and it was my responsibility to respond and investigate for SP’s Law Department.

My first reaction was to get on the telephone to the Willits exchange and from there reach the NWP Trainmaster at Petaluma, Jack Lewis. He was not there but his clerk - I think her name was Myrna - always wanted to be helpful. I asked her what she could tell me about what was happening at Ukiah. I can still remember her exact words: “ Aw, that car was just an empty. Nothing happened there”. A little more conversation with her lead me to believe that this had just been a false alarm, and I so advised my boss. About a half hour later he walked back over from the corner office where he had spoken with Western Div. Supt. MDO and informed me that the tank car may be empty now, but earlier it had contained some 20,000 gallons of formaldehyde and an evacuation had begun! Fortunately I kept a packed suitcase in the car and was quickly on the road, off for Ukiah.

The loaded tank car had been left on a track where it was over a drainage creek that ultimately fed into the Russian River which somewhat paralleled the NWP for miles. Earlier that day a 38 year old man with diminished mental capacity and a history of trouble obeying the law used a pocket knife or tool to force open the plug and then open the bottom discharge valve of the tank car. He thought he might be getting whiskey or some other form of alcohol, but instead found his pants drenched with formaldehyde before he could escape the choking fumes. He ran from the scene, wandered for a time, then tried to board a bus out of town. But the bus driver forced him off the bus and would not let him ride because of the overpowering smell still coming from his pants. Somehow he was able to get away but was arrested in Oakridge, Oregon 4 days later. Although charged with felony vandalism he was declared mentally incompetent to face trial.

The creek’s strongly contaminated slow flow was temporarily halted as SP’s Water Service Dept. brought in every available man and worked nonstop to build a small earthen dam holding back an estimated million gallons of contaminated water. Numerous tanker trucks were hired to pump out the water. But soon all were overwhelmed as a fine spring day changed overnight as a major chilling rainstorm arrived and drenched the area for several days. At night I was fortunate to have a refuge at the Lu Ann Motel, where the NWP had a number of reserved rooms. My boss later told my wife that I had an affair going with a “Lu Ann” in Ukiah where I often stayed, but that turned into a running joke used on many an NWP railroader.

Local news media appeared on the first day. As soon as they released information, which included the evacuation of part of the city and a close by convalescent hospital, a potential PR nightmare was ready to begin. The first response from a major news supplier was Time magazine, which chartered an airplane and sent in a reporter and a photographer. Upon landing, they began to search for the location of the injured evacuees. Within an hour they learned there were no injured persons and that the evacuation had been rescinded. The Time team re-chartered a plane and departed empty handed.

But the real story began with the arrival of the storm. The earthen dam could not hold back and formaldehyde tainted water flowed into the already contaminated Russian River from which several downstream cities drew their drinking water. The Mendocino County Health Dept. had the at-risk cities shut off their intakes but the question was how long could they do without water? Within a week the contamination level was down to the point the water was considered safe to drink and lives began to return to normal.

Bills for all the hired help and equipment, the monetary demands from cities, counties, farmers with formaldehyde tainted land behind the dam and even California’s Fish & Game Dept. all began to pour in. The guy responsible for this disaster was judgment proof. When everything was over the NWP was out some $4 Million and all from a tank car that was “…just an empty.”

Ran a special train of SPMW tank cars to pump out gthe spillage. Train ran at passenger speed Lv Schellville 8:15a, arrived Ukiah 12:05p

March 26, 1982, the week of the big storm that hit the Sierras.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/14 14:41 by WAF.

I had forgotten about that special train. From Timetable 18, effective April 26, 1981, you can see that the maximum authorized speed was not fast and had plenty of restrictions.

Another thing - during the height of all the action one of the government agencies involved wondered what the water conditions were upstream of the spill. They found formaldehyde there too. Apparently an industry took advantage of the opportunity and dumped their no-longer-wanted formaldehyde into the river, avoiding disposal expense. It was not as great a volume as the tank car had produced and could not be traced to its source.

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IIRC, Masonite was the consignee

What has been written here is accurate and covers the actual release and the ultimate solution. There is much more to this story.

We started out using tank trucks, then ran more than one tank train. Ultimately the heavy rain overcame all of our efforts to contain the spill.

After consultation with the California Department of Health and their help with the down stream water utilities, an agreement was reached to shut down
the intakes temporarily, the dike was removed and the contaminated water went down the Russian river and out into the ocean. One thing that helped
was that the Russian was close to flood stage and moving very swiftly. I do not remember the duration of the movement of this plug of contaminated water
to the ocean, but it was somewhere between 14 and 24 hours. There was not even a major fish kill.

However, this was by no means the end of the aftermath. Under the US Clean Water act, clean up costs can be recovered if you can demonstrate that you were not at fault.

Of course there is a lot to prove and then you need to attempt to collect... not a simple matter,
I must have been deposed at least a dozen times over the course of the next five years by several teams of Federal Attorneys. In the end I think we settled for somewhere around
two million.

mdo

What is the story behind why the car was there in the first place?

jst3751 Wrote:
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> What is the story behind why the car was there in
> the first place?


For Masonite to spot, IIRC