Listen Live
BELLINGHAM, WA (MyBellinghamNow.com) – Three young people died, homes and businesses were destroyed and Bellingham itself was cleaved by an explosion and fire after a pipeline carrying gasoline ruptured in Whatcom Falls Park and poured almost a quarter million gallons of gas into Whatcom Creek.
It happened 25 years ago, on June 10, 1999. Calls about gasoline in the creek began coming in to 911 at about 3:30 that afternoon, following by the infamous explosion at 5:02 p.m.
Liam Wood, 18, was fly fishing in the park and drowned after being overcome by fumes from the gasoline. Two ten-year-old boys, Wade King and Stephen Tsiorvas, were playing near the creek when the explosion occurred. Both were critically burned and later died at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Eight others sustained injuries related to the disaster.
The explosion and resulting fire caused more than $58 million in damage. It also brought new awareness to pipelines that carry very volatile materials through our community and many others around the nation. And it sparked the creation in Bellingham of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a non-government watchdog dedicated to making pipelines safer throughout the U.S.
Community action creates a national pipeline watchdog
Carl Weimer headed Re Sources, a local environmental and community non-profit, at the time of the disaster. He says the community was left shell-shocked.
“When it ignited it killed the three boys and killed every single living organism all the way to the ocean. And it was a wakeup call for a lot of us around here didn’t know anything about pipelines,” Weimer said.
He says the pipeline owner, Olympic Pipeline, was stressing the need to get the pipeline repaired and transporting fuel again just days after the explosion and fire, well before there were definitive answers about what caused the leak in the first place. That prompted an impromptu meeting of community leaders over breakfast at Old Town Café a week or two later that led to the creation of a group they named “Safe Bellingham”. The group teamed up with the parents who lost their kids in the disaster to advocate for a national pipeline watchdog group and thus, the Pipeline Safety Trust was born with Weimer serving as executive director.
A disaster that could have been prevented
Weimer says the investigation found that a series of errors culminated in the rupture of the pipeline and subsequent massive spill. The pipeline runs near the City of Bellingham water treatment plant in Whatcom Falls Park and Weimer says the seeds for the disaster were planted well before that fateful day.
“They had been doing some work a few years earlier on the water treatment plant, and a construction company hit the Olympic pipeline with their backhoe,” Weimer said. “The company was supposed to be there keeping an eye on any excavation near their pipeline, but they weren’t there that day.”
He also says the construction company did not inform anyone of the hit, which left a weak spot in the pipe.
Olympic Pipeline later installed a valve in the line about 10 miles south of Bellingham. It closed unexpectedly on its own dozens of times, including on the day of the disaster. The back pressure caused the pipeline to finally fail where it had been struck and the leak began. Weimer says it snowballed from there, “because they were fooling around with their control room computer system that day, trying to install new software on the operating system, and it caused the whole thing to go down. So, they were operating in the blind, they started getting warnings that something was wrong.”
The system sensed the leak and automatically shut down the flow of gasoline. But controllers restarted it, causing thousands more gallons of gas to pour into Whatcom Creek. Weimer says proper regulation, reporting and supervision could have prevented or corrected any or all of these events and the disaster would have never happened.
Regulation comes to the “wild west” of pipeline operation
The shock of what happened in Bellingham reverberated all the way to Washington D.C. Weimer says he was surprised to find a lack of regulation when his work began, but they got some results fairly quickly.
“Like when Bellingham happened, there was no regulation that once you put a pipe like that in the ground, you ever had to inspect it again, that changed because of some of our efforts just a year or two after the tragedy,” Weimer said.
Liquid-carrying pipelines now have to be inspected internally using high tech equipment every five years.
Other changes include more stringent regulation for pipelines that run through populated areas over what is required for those in more remote areas. Another surprise for Weimer was the lack of training required for pipeline operators. “There was nothing on the books at the time that you had to have certain qualifications or training to operate a hazardous liquid pipeline. So that changed.”
Weimer’s organization helped shed more transparency on the pipeline industry, “so the public can kind of watchdog on their own, how pipelines are being operated in their communities.”
Weimer stepped away from the Pipeline Safety Trust after 20 years, and Bill Caram was appointed executive director in 2020. Weimer says that despite the victories, pipeline regulation is still a patchwork affair. For instance, natural gas pipelines are approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission if they cross state lines, but those that carry liquid substances such as crude oil or fuel are permitted by each state that they traverse.
Caram says whether a pipeline can be built across your property depends on what state you live in. “A state like Texas has very, very lenient laws on on public domain on eminent domain, allowing a pipeline a very low bar to cross in order to seize that land. Other states have much more protective laws around eminent domain,” Caram said.
Are pipelines a safe way to move hazardous materials?
Many people, including government agencies, say pipelines are the safest way to move hazardous substances. But Caram maintains that it depends on perspective. He concedes that pipelines have a better safety record on a mile per mile basis than transporting material by truck or train, but says pipelines present their own danger.
“I think what those statistics, and those metrics miss, is the sheer volume that can be released, when something does go wrong, and how destructive it can be.”
The work continues
The changing energy environment presents new challenges for the industry, regulators, and watchdogs like the Pipeline Safety Trust. Caram says areas they are focusing on including more stringent rules for natural gas pipelines. He says current regulation only requires repair of leaks that are found to create an immediate hazardous condition. “But if they determine that it’s not immediately hazardous, they don’t need to repair it right away. And we continue to see pipeline failures because of these known leaks. And that methane is also a very potent greenhouse gas leading to climate change.” Caram says they’re pushing to require operators to repair all leaks right away.
Addressing climate change is also creating new uses for pipelines and the need for oversight. Efforts to capture and sequester carbon is a young but growing industry. Highly concentrated carbon dioxide isn’t explosive but is dangerous and heavier than air and those types of pipelines need new regulation, according to Caram.
Another area they’re looking at is hydrogen production. Caram says they assume that hydrogen will eventually be transported by pipeline, and that will pose unique challenges. “It can cause a lot of damage to steel pipelines that are built to move methane. Hydrogen is a difficult material to move in that kind of steel. It’s also a lot more explosive than methane and poses some real safety risks,” Caram said.
Bellingham’s action benefits communities around the nation
Caram says Bellingham has good reason to be proud as we look back on this 25th anniversary of a very dark day. “Bellingham was not the first community to experience a tragedy like this from a pipeline, and they were not the last. But they were the only community to stand up and do something about it and try to prevent other communities from having to go through the same kind of senseless grief.”
Weimer echoes that. “You know, it didn’t matter whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, our whole congressional delegation came together to push for safety. The governor of the state, the head of the UTC, the county executive, the city mayor, everybody was singing the same tune and pushing forward and not letting go, you know, it wasn’t like, oh, this made it through a few news cycles and then faded. You know, we kept it alive. And I think that made a lot of difference.”
Caram also credits the efforts of the three families who lost loved ones, “Oftentimes, you know, the grief from such a tragedy is so so much that families just disappear. But I remember testifying to Congress standing next to Frank and Mary King, and it was like man, talk about a moral compass to guide you.”
And Weimer acknowledges that the organization that he helped create still has its work cut out for it, “because there’s still issues and there’s still over 2 million miles of pipelines in the country that somebody needs to keep an eye on.”