Ten Years Later: Whatcom Creek Recovery

Emily Linroth is the editor-in-chief of The Planet magazine at Western Washington University. She studies environmental journalism.

Two major arteries flow through the heart of Bellingham, intersecting at its center. One is Whatcom Creek, rippling with salmon and echoes of laughter as it glides from the city’s drinking water source west through Whatcom Falls Park to Bellingham Bay. The other is the Olympic pipeline, weaving south through neighborhoods and the park, carrying millions of gallons of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel every day to waiting automobiles and airplanes from Ferndale to Portland.

On June 10, 1999, these two arteries met. At 3:30 p.m., the Olympic pipeline ruptured, saturating Whatcom Creek and nearby tributaries with approximately 237,000 gallons of gasoline. It flowed from the rupture site near a water treatment plant at the southeast end of the park one and a half miles downstream nearly to the Interstate-5 overpass above Iowa Street, clouding the water and air with choking fumes.

Liam Wood, who had graduated from Sehome High School four days before, was fly-fishing in his favorite spot. The vapors overwhelmed him and he fell into the creek and drowned.

Just after 5 p.m., Stephen Tsiorvas and Wade King were playing with a butane lighter in the safest place they knew: the banks of the creek. With one flick, the vapors ignited with a thundering crack, engulfing the two 10-year-olds and sending a fireball ricocheting up and down Whatcom Creek. Flames swallowed the creek as pockets of gasoline created successive explosions, and a billowing black cloud rose six miles into the air. The two boys were airlifted to a Seattle hospital and died the next day.

“I stepped outside and I thought it was an airplane crash,” said Wayne Landis, director of Western Washington University’s Institute of Environmental Toxicology, who lives about a mile from the park. “But then branches and leaves were falling, and they were still burning.”

After burning strong for about an hour, the fire smoldered, and the black cloud dissipated. Ash snowed over the silent city as Bellingham reeled at the loss of three young men and all the life in Whatcom Creek.

“The creek was just this gassy kind of milk color, and there were dead fish floating in it,” said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, who was working downtown at the time of the explosion.

Over the following weeks, the city of Bellingham worked with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Ecology, the Lummi Nation of Wash. and the Nooksack Tribe of Wash. to assess the damage and begin remediation.

“There was a whole group of people at the table initially, and that was a big help in the coordination process,” Landis said. The city contracted Landis and several others from Western’s Institute of Environmental Toxicology to analyze initial water and sediment samples and provide advice on short-term remediation.

The group was surprised to find gasoline still in the creek sediment.

“Gas floats, so usually you don’t get gas in sediment,” Landis said. He theorized the explosion may have caused the water to burn off, and the concussion created enough pressure to force the gasoline into the sediment.

“It’s not clear how long material like that [gasoline] can last. You don’t often have occasions where an explosion happens above ground,” Landis said.

Initial efforts focused on making sure the levels of gasoline in the creek were at low enough concentrations that they wouldn’t harm the fall run of salmon arriving in a few months. Even though the creek wasn’t toxic to the returning salmon, all their spawning grounds were initially destroyed.

“Everyone understood that that spawning year would be lost because there was nowhere to spawn,” Landis said.

After the city determined the burn zone was safe to enter, the community was allowed limited access to view the park. The sight was unreal.

“The soil and the rocks looked like they’d all been burned,” Weimer said.

Restoration experts were hired to replant the burn zone, and the community came together and began replanting areas downstream. Approximately 26 acres of vegetation were destroyed by the fire.

“Everybody wanted to do something that would help make things right, and the creek was an ideal place,” Weimer said. Remarkably, some species returned to the banks of the creek almost immediately, and one year later, plantings took hold.

With the restoration of the park, the community began a slow recovery. The families worked with the city and the newly established Pipeline Safety Trust (which grew out of the local watchdog group SAFE Bellingham) to push for stronger pipeline legislation throughout the country.

The King family made significant donations to both Western and the Bellingham School District, and in recognition of their generosity, a Bellingham elementary school and the new recreation center on Western’s campus were named in honor of their son.Wood’s parents started the Liam Wood Fly-Fishing and River Guardian School to honor their son’s love of fly-fishing by teaching the sport to the greater community. A class open to Western students and the greater community called the Art, Science and Ethics of Fly-Fishing uses fly-fishing as a metaphor for life and educates people of all skill levels about conservation.

Money from the settlement with the Olympic Pipe Line Company went toward restoration projects throughout Bellingham, as well as improvements within Whatcom Falls Park.

Leo Bodensteiner, an associate professor of environmental science at Western who teaches the Art, Science and Ethics of Fly-Fishing, was impressed with many improvement projects, especially one of the channels near where Racine Street nears the north side of the creek.

“Before, it was bare, just totally black, and if you look at it now there’s [sic] trees coming in probably 15 feet tall,” Bodensteiner said. “I think lots of good things came out of it [the recovery], and that’s just because of the people involved.”

A decade later, charred remains of Douglas firs stand like sentinels in a ravine northwest of the rupture site. Blackened from root to tip, they pierce the view of otherwise green vegetation. Parts of the park are still off-limits to visitors. Crisp white markers with red warning lettering trace the path of the Olympic pipeline, still in operation, across the creek and through the park.

“Even though it looks good, there’s [sic] still pretty strong indicators of how degraded it is,” said Bodensteiner. “Not just a fire destroyed Whatcom Creek, but the fact that it’s in the middle of a city ... it’s got all kinds of impacts.”

Chemicals from the rupture are still being removed from the groundwater to prevent them from contaminating the creek. New generations of salmon, insects and Bellingham residents flock to the park at the heart of the city, many unaware of the tragedy recorded in the burned snags and the memories of those who witnessed the smothering black cloud.

“I don’t think you can ever actually heal from it. I think the community takes a lesson from it,” Bodensteiner said.

One lesson is awareness. People now have access to information telling them where pipelines are and what they transport, through outlets like the Pipeline Safety Trust, Weimer said.

“Most of the people you talk to, whether or not they think we should have moved on by now, were pretty proud of how Bellingham reacted,” Weimer said. “In many ways we stood up to the industry and the federal government.”

Other lessons are learned through metaphor, as with fly-fishing. And some are learned through tragedy, as when a community loses innocence and rises from the ashes to recover together.

“If you get a wound, you get a scar,” Bodensteiner said. “I guess you heal in one sense, but it leaves a mark. It changes things. You recover, but you recover with change.” §

• Background information from Washington State Archives, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies: Remembering Whatcom Creek.

• The Planet magazine, “Olympic Pipeline Explosion: A Retrospective,” Spring/Summer 2000.

• Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust.

• Wayne Landis, director of Western Washington University’s Institute of Environmental Toxicology.

• Leo Bodensteiner, associate professor of environmental science at Western; teaches the Art, Science and Ethics of Fly-Fishing.

• Whatcom Creek Incident Archives. Available online at http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/archives/whatcomcreek/index.jsp.

• City of Bellingham, Olympic Pipeline Incident. Available online at http://www.cob.org/services/environment/restoration/olympic-pipeline-incident.aspx.

• Olympic Pipe Line Company History. Available online at http://www.olympicpipeline.com/history.html.