Toxic Trains in the Hot Zone
A Tough Trip Through Paradise
April 11th, 2009
Thirteen years ago today, just upwind of Alberton, Montana, 18 rail cars left the tracks, part of an east-bound Montana Rail Link mixed-freight train, releasing three hazardous materials: 68 tons of spent potassium cresylate, 64.8 tons of chlorine, and 85 pounds of dry sodium chlorate prills, totaling 133 tons of toxic waste.
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My family, along with hundreds of other family's, fled that toxic plume, in the midst of a dark and rainy spring night with only the clothes on our backs. Little did we know then that this was the beginning of one of the largest transportation chemical disasters in America's history. Some of us would never go home again; many would never be well again; and one man would die that night from chemical exposure.
To quote local author, Andrew Garcia, it's been, “a tough trip through paradise." Just as hurricane Katrina illustrated for the world that environmental catastrophes, create environmental refugees - the hardest hit leave and they do it quickly. Alberton and the surrounding countryside experienced a similar disaster-driven exodus after the derailment -- a fact not even acknowledged in the Missoulian's anniversary article On the Mend. While the article does tell the local story, it misses the rest of the story --the real story-- the odyssey of the displaced and dispossessed family's created by the MRL toxic train derailment.
Contrary to the Missoulian's reporting, “Four
or five families moved away in the years after the spill...”
I can easily recall that three of the five families on my block
moved because of the spill-- including my own. With a little more
thought, I can recollect the names and faces of at least twenty more
families comprising seventy or eighty people who relocated out of illness and desperation
in the wake of the spill; and I am sure there are many more to remember,
if we only reach out and pull back the veil of time to count them.
"Just as
hurricane Katrina illustrated for the world that
environmental catastrophes, create environmental refugees -the hardest hit leave and they do it quickly."
As for the Missoulian's statement, “...not surprisingly, a few folks have
died.” Well, that's a painful wound which will not easily heal for
the families who still mourn their loved ones'. So many untimely deaths, which
for years has begged the question, "how many of us will be hastened to our grave because of
the derailment and its 133 tons of chlorinated, phenol laden,
hazardous waste?" - a grim reality which deserves much more
consideration than trite
platitudes from the Missoulian.
Then there are those evacuees who ping-ponged back and forth in and out
of the area for years as their health waxed and waned with each spring's
toxic thaw; sickened by a myriad of health complaints few doctors could
or would make sense of.
Those were dark times, as the threads of a once tightly woven rural
community unraveled illness by illness which created overwhelming
hardship for family after family.
So to really grasp what impact the derailment has had on this rural
mountain town more than a decade later, you need to look far beyond your
kitchen window and discern the families who once lived among you -
ghosts of the chronically ill and chemically injured who fled that toxic
plume never to return again. A community's exodus which is now starkly
reflected in the subdued streets and toxic assets of the abandoned
businesses along
Alberton's once bustling
historic
district.
By, Lucinda Hodges, Missoula, Montana
Portions of the original editorial have been reprinted with permission in the Clark Fork Chronicle, and as a letter to the editor in the Missoulian. To learn more about the Alberton, Montana toxic train derailment click here. To view a symptom list, click here.
Toxic Trains in the Hot Zone