Bellingham Pipeline Tragedy: 10 years on

COMMENT: June 10 marks the tenth anniversary of the Bellingham pipeline explosion in which three boys were killed. The Bellingham Herald has dedicated its June 8th issue of the newspaper to this tragic event, talking with the people involved and the aftermath, and legacy, of those deaths.

The tragedy cannot be erased from memory - not from the memories of the families who lost their children, and not from the memory of the people of Bellingham. That the town newspaper has given over this entire edition to remembering the event is evidence of that.

The tragedy will be remembered in other things too, particularly those related to pipeline safety. Out of the darkest hours of loss, grew a commitment on the part of some, particularly the parents, that this should never be allowed to happen again.

The accident was no accident. Negligence on the part of the pipeline owner virtually guaranteed that a disaster would happen. Investigations following the events revealed much about how unsafe pipelines frequently are.

Lawsuits happened, and over $187 million in financial settlements were made. Out of this dark and horrible history, money was available to launch the Pipeline Safety Trust, a Bellingham-based activist and educational organization dedicated both to the memories of Stephen, Wade and Liam who will never grow old, and to the continuing push to make safer those pipelines and other methods we use to transport dangerous fuels.

The Pipeline Safety Trust calls these last ten years, A Decade of Healing. It is a positive spin to put on those memories which can never heal, but which reverberate through the successes the Trust has had with improved regulation, permanent advocacy work, first responder training, restoration of Whatcom Creek Park, etc.

Please visit the Trust's website (www.pstrust.org) for the tribute that has been set up on this tenth anniversary.

Follow the links below to the Bellingham Herald's tribute.

A year or so after the Bellingham disaster, and a few months after BC Hydro had announced the GSX Pipeline project, Tom Hackney and I visited with Carl Weimer, who is now the Trust's Executive Director, and Fred Felleman, a well-known marine ecologist, writer and activist in Washington State.

It was a fortuitous meeting in many ways, and my relationship with both men has continued over the years. Because of Carl, I have met Bruce Brabec, father of Liam. And I have had the honour a few times of being with Katherine Dalen and Skip Williams, mother and stepfather of Stephen. We have walked together through Whatcom Creek Park and visited the site of those dreadful events.

While I never knew the boys who died, I have spent a lot of time thinking about those Bellingham events of ten years ago. During the GSX campaign, we kept pipeline safety as a constant theme. It wasn't just a campaigning device with media allure, however; it was based in solid statistical evidence over many years that pipelines leak, explode, injure and kill.

They still do. Pembina Pipelines Pine River oil spill, 2000. Westcoast Energy (now Spectra) Southern Mainline gas explosion on the Coquihalla, also 2000. Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline oil spill, Burnaby, 2007. These are just a few examples, to illustrate the statistical evidence.

Pipelines are not the only way we move these dangerous fuels. In BC as in most jurisdictions, most fuels end up on tanker trucks. There are so many of them on BC's roads that you probably don't even notice them. But pay attention: they are everywhere. And they are deadly. Tanker trucks result in 38 times as many fires and explosions as pipelines. And 88 times as many deaths, per ton-mile.

Marine transport of these fuels? Barges transport most of the fuel on BC's coast: 4 times the fire/explosion rate. Tanker ships, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers: 4 times the death rate.

A memorial is not the right occasion to keep up the campaign. Or maybe it is the rightest occasion of all.

Today's owner of the former Olympic Pipeline which passes through Whatcom Creek Park in Bellingham, is Enbridge.

Enbridge's Northern Gateway Pipeline proposes to move tar sands bitumen to Kitimat for export by tankers, and in a parallel pipeline to transport imported light oils called condensates, to Alberta where it is used to dilute that thick tar sands bitumen so it will flow in a pipe.

Gateway and the tankers are statistical last straws for a tragic oil spill in BC, whether it happens on a highway, in a pipeline, or in a ship. Disaster is only a matter of time and opportunity. Gateway increases the odds astronomically.

BellinghamHerald_08Jun2009.jpgWade's parents: Facing the anniversaryWade's parents: Dealing with the angerWade's parents: The last 10 yearsStephen's parents: How he impacted othersStephen's parents: RemembrancesStephen's parents: How the community responded911 calls on June 10, 1999Linda Allen sings 'Pipeline'Events this week mark Bellingham pipeline explosionTimeline of Bellingham pipeline explosionPipeline blast changed Bellingham's self-imagePipeline disaster could have been worse, officials sayClose friend of Wade King doesn't take life for grantedTen years after pipeline explosion, Kings learn to feel joy againPipeline disaster a chilling memory for former police chiefFriend of pipeline victim: 'You don't forget something like that'Message to victims: Rest In PeaceThought Mount Baker was eruptingExplosion jolted middle school graduation day'It was pretty scary!''Nervous confusion and fearful speculation'Poet recalls 'anger's awful roar'Poet says creek is 'ours to hold and keep holy'Boys were unsuspecting heroes'A memory not easily forgotten'Explosion inspired artist who saw 'malevolent fire-breathing monster'Linda Allen writes, sings 'Pipeline'Screaming baby ended run through parkBusy creek work suppressed sadness for researcherEcology worker haunted by memories from ground zeroPhotographer familiar with three pipeline victimsLINK: Complete pipeline coveragePipeline victim Stephen Tsiorvas remembered as curious, thoughtful

Pipeline victim Stephen Tsiorvas remembered as curious, thoughtful

KIE RELYEA
The Bellingham Herald
July 8, 2009

KatherineDalenSueDalenSkipWilliams.jpg
Katherine Dalen, from left, Sue Dalen and Skip Williams stand at the grave of Stephen Tsiorvas at Bayview Cemetery in Bellingham on Tuesday, June 2, 2009. Tsiorvas was Katherine's son, Sue's grandson and Skip's stepson. He was killed in the 1999 pipeline explosion when he was 10 years old. (DANNY GAWLOWSKI | THE BELLINGHAM HERALD)

BELLINGHAM - Every once in a while, Stephen Tsiorvas' family would find toys the 10-year-old boy left behind.

In the sandbox they turned into a garden bed for blueberries, they discovered Star Wars figures he had buried there. In a section of the backyard that was transformed into a koi pond and waterfall, they found a toy car, a little toy soldier and a sheath for a plastic sword. The mementos now sit on the edge of the waterworks.

"His spirit is here," Katherine Dalen said of her son, who died 10 years ago in the June 10, 1999, pipeline rupture and explosion in Whatcom Falls Park.

Stephen and friend Wade King, also 10, were on the banks of Whatcom Creek that day when a fireball, sparked by a butane lighter they were playing with and fueled by 237,000 gallons of gasoline that had leaked into the water from the pipeline, roared down the creek.

Seeking relief from their burns, Stephen threw Wade into the creek and jumped in. The boys then climbed out of the water and stumbled down a trail, where they were met by Stephen's brother, Andrew, and his friend Tyrome Francisco. The older boys had jumped the fence of the family's house on Iowa Drive and ran into the park, looking for Wade and Stephen, after an explosion shook the home.

Badly burned, the boys died the next day.

Liam Wood, an 18-year-old Sehome High School graduate, also died. He was fly-fishing in the creek when he was overcome by fumes, fainted and drowned on June 10.

A decade after Stephen was taken from them, Dalen and Skip Williams, Stephen's stepfather, shared bittersweet memories of the inquisitive child and talked about how the community and their friends helped them through that terrible time.

"I want the community to know that I appreciate their strength and their prayers, and the love they showed us," Dalen, 54, said one day recently, while sitting in the backyard of their Iowa Drive home. "That's the only thing that got me through. If I hadn't had a friend and a connection. ... It kept me from that void of grief that was ever-threatening."

Dalen was talking about friend Teri Cruzan, whose son Nathan was close to Stephen.

Stephen was the youngest of seven children when Dalen and Williams combined their families. They described him as a child filled with curiosity who collected Kool-Aid packets and Tootsie Pop wrappers.

"Do you remember him asking you questions in the car?" Dalen said to Williams, chuckling.

"Oh my God," Williams replied. " 'Hey Skip, what about? Hey Skip, what about?' I mean we're going to Seattle. Every two minutes, he's got a new question."

Stephen also was a thoughtful child who had a way of reaching out to people.

Dalen recalled a father who visited their house after the explosion. His daughter told him that Stephen helped her when she was new to school and felt intimidated. He helped her find her classroom and told her not to be afraid.

"I guess from then on, she kind of looked for him every day because she had a big kid that cared about her. She was very upset," Dalen said, pausing for a long moment, "that some huge thing had just ripped him out of her world. She wanted her dad to find me and tell me that she was going to miss him."

Someone else misses the boy who loved sports and had an easy way of making friends with people of all ages. That person has left flowers outside the family home nearly every day in spring and summer since that June 10.

Dalen and Williams don't know who's doing it. They think it's a neighbor. They guess it's a woman. Whoever drops off the flowers never leaves a note.

"I appreciate it a lot," Dalen said. "Somebody else remembers him and somebody else remembers how horrendous it was, how terrifying it was to this whole community."

Like the families of the other two youths who died that June, Dalen and Williams have become activists for pipeline safety. They have been involved with the Pipeline Safety Trust since it was created in response to the rupture and explosion. Williams, 57, still sits on the board; Dalen resigned earlier this year.

They also have made charitable donations or otherwise been involved in various local organizations, including a $100,000 challenge grant to encourage people to contribute money to buy a permanent home for Northwest Youth Services. RE Sources and the Pickford Theatre also have benefited.

"Part of what I've done is tried to be supportive of things that Stephen might have appreciated or might have been involved with," Dalen said.

Williams and Dalen will be at community events that have been planned for the 10-year anniversary,

"I want the community to understand how much we respect and appreciate their desire to remember," Dalen said.

Their presence in Bellingham this time of the year marks a change; usually, they travel elsewhere.

But if they have been compelled to leave the city in the past, they said they won't allow terrible memories of what happened so near their home, which backs up to Whatcom Falls Park, drive them away. (Their house is down the street from the home of Wade King, whose parents moved a few years after the explosion because they said it was too painful to remain in the neighborhood).

"I didn't want to leave because I could still see Stephen walking down the hall and him in his bedroom," Dalen said. "I could go down there and spend time remembering what it was like."

Williams said he didn't want to leave his neighborhood.

"My feeling is I'll be damned if I'm going to let some idiot in some corporate office drive me out of my neighborhood," he said, referring to Olympic Pipe Line Co., which owned the pipeline at the time. "I'm going to persevere."

And they've done so, by trying to evoke happy memories of Stephen.

"Remembering Stephen with joy, it hasn't been easy because there's always this pervading sadness that he's gone," Dalen said. "Waking up every day and going, 'This has to be a nightmare. This cannot be real.' And coming to the conclusion that it is real."

The family has struggled in the decade since Stephen's death.

"We have suffered several other losses as well, including that of Stephen's niece, my granddaughter, and Stephen's grandfather, my father," Dalen said. "We came together again in fear and sadness when Stephen's older brother (Andrew) nearly lost his life in an auto accident."

But Andrew recovered, and joy was again ushered in with the birth of a grandson seven months ago.

"Despite everything, we love one another. My family continues to miss Stephen daily," Dalen said. "We carry on, if not with grace then at least with tenacity."

Reach KIE RELYEA at kie.relyea@bellinghamherald.com or call 715-2234.

Posted by Arthur Caldicott on 08 Jun 2009