The Rock Report - February 2008

An important milestone was reached this month by Surrey's United Naturists (SUN) and Crescent Rock Beach. February 13th marked the one-year anniversary of SUN's website being on-line, bringing information about Surrey's and White Rock's naturist beach to cyberspace and the world. Several members of SUN met with webmaster Alan McInnes of HomePort Communications to celebrate this important occasion, which was toasted at the Village Pub in Ocean Park. SUN wishes to thank Alan for helping to produce what we believe to be the best nude beach website that can be found on the internet today.

On Valentines Day (Thurs., Feb. 14th), Nav Canada implemented new changes to the "GRIZZ" STAR landing vector for YVR which has brought planes into the airspace over Crescent Rock Beach. While this was supposed to have removed commercial jets from the area, the very next weekend still saw many planes still being directed over Ocean Park and Crescent Beach. SUN has contacted Nav Canada about this discrepancy and is awaiting an explanation as to why these planes are not being flown directly up the centre of Boundary Bay as had been promised.

SUN president Don Pitcairn has been invited by Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts to join the Working Group that includes executives from SCAANS (South Surrey Citizens Against Airplane Noise) and concerned citizens from the Fleetwood/Guildford area. Our goal is to provide Mayor and Council with information about this ongoing problem and to make recommendations to try and reduce the unwanted noise pollution that came with Nav Canada's unilaterally imposed decision to put planes over this area without public notification, consultation, or an environmental review.

The Vancouver Province newspaper ran a four-page article this month detailing the impact of a chemical disaster that focused on a chlorine gas release following a mudslide caused train wreck on the BNSF Railway in South Surrey. Featured prominently on the front cover and in pages inside this edition was a photo illustration showing chemical tanker cars derailed onto the shores of Crescent Rock Beach. The captions, "CHEMICAL NIGHTMARE", "76,000 evacuated after chlorine freighter derails", "White Rock and Surrey are ghost towns", "Hundreds suffer choking and chemical burns", and "Beaches bleached" accompanied this picture. 

While many of the photos that ran with this story were not posted on the Province website, the following is a copy of this article written by Province reporter Kate Webb. SUN would like to take this opportunity to thank her for bringing this environmental and public safety threat to the attention of the general public and hopes that it will lead to this historically dangerous railway being relocated away from the shores of Boundary Bay and the landslide prone Ocean Park bluff above Crescent Rock Beach.

 
The Province 

COULD IT HAPPEN?
At the end of Bayview Street in South Surrey, a railway track meanders along the bottom of a peaceful but very steep stretch of shoreline known as Crescent Rock Beach. Most of that track is parallelled by a slide-detector fence, an electrical rigging that alerts railway owner Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) of a landslide when a cable snaps. But to even the most novice observer it's clear there are gaps in this warning system. For one, there is a 400-metre stretch of track the company has opted not to equip with any slide-detector fence at all. All along this naked bluff are scars from past landslides, as well as mud from those incidents still caked on some of the wooden rail ties. Last winter alone, there were 11 slides along the full tract of Semiahmoo coastline, two of which caused BNSF to halt its Amtrak passenger service for a total of 72 hours.

The locals are not amused. Two grassroots community organizations, SmartRail and the Surrey United Naturists, have banded together over the last two years to raise the profile of what they say is a major public-safety issue. Their biggest complaint is that during prolonged rain, when the risk of mudslides along the Semiahmoo Peninsula peaks, BNSF voluntarily halts passenger service on the track for up to 48 hours, yet continues to run its freight service. The hazardous chemicals carried on those freighters include gasoline, caustic soda (the chemical responsible for the sterilization of B.C.'s Cheakamus River after a train derailment in 2005), anhydrous ammonia, and liquid chlorine. The trains are allowed to travel as fast as 56 km/h, and just a few metres off to the side of the tracks jagged boulders punctuate the railbed's edge. "We've come to the conclusion that there definitely is a high risk of toxic inhalant release if there happens to be a mudslide that comes across the tracks," says Ken Jones, vice-president of SmartRail. "Imagine if one of those [chlorine] tanker cars was to roll over and fall on those," adds Don Pitcairn, president of the Surrey United Naturalists, pointing at some of the massive rocks that line the drop-off on the seaward side of the rail line. John Clague, a geologist and director of the Centre for Natural Hazard Research at Simon Fraser University, thinks the concerned residents have a point. "When you get extreme events and you get four inches of rain in a day, you might think about suspending service for a while," says Clague, a landslide specialist. "[BNSF] obviously recognizes there's a risk, because they suspend passenger service, so it would seem they should consider that the risk is just as high with freight."
There is no law that prohibits rail companies from running hazardous goods along mudslide-prone tracks during heavy rainfall. Service suspensions are left to the companies' discretion. From a risk-assessment point of view, Clague thinks it would be a rare coincidence for a mudslide to hit a train while it was going by. But he cautions: "It's possible, absolutely."

WHAT IS CHLORINE GAS?
Chlorine is a commonly manufactured chemical used for water purification and the manufacture of paper and cloth, pesticides, rubber and solvents. During the First World War it was used as a weapon because of its potency as a choking agent. It is heavier than air, so it sank easily into the trenches.

Chlorine gas can be pressurized and cooled to change it into a liquid so that it can be shipped and stored. When liquid chlorine is released, it quickly reverts back into a gas that stays close to the ground and spreads rapidly.
In its gaseous form, it is a yellowish-green colour and smells like bleach. Chlorine itself is not flammable, but it can react explosively or form explosive compounds with other chemicals.

THE PRECEDENT
THE MISSISSAUGA EVACUATION
It was nearly midnight in Mississauga on Nov. 10, 1979, when an overheated bearing on a Canadian Pacific freight train burned through an axle and caused the wheels of one car to fly off, derailing 25 of 106 cars.
The freighter, en route through the Toronto suburb from Windsor, Ont., was carrying a potentially deadly chain of toxic and explosive chemicals, including styrene, toluene, propane, caustic soda and, most alarmingly, chlorine gas.

The Province reported "huge towers of flame and earth-shaking explosions" that some residents thought were the signs of an atomic disaster. The terrified citizens soon heard the dismal news over police loud-hailers that an 82-tonne chlorine tanker had ruptured in the area and everyone had to evacuate. Some 223,000 residents fled their homes and couldn't return for six days. It was the largest peacetime evacuation in North American history until the New Orleans evacuation of 2005.

Despite the uncontrollable nature of a chlorine gas spill, miraculously, no one died and the emergency was resolved through favourable wind conditions that diluted the gas and blew it into uninhabited areas.
 

ARE WE READY?

THE EVACUATION
According to the Canadian Transport Emergency Centre, an eight-centimetre gash at the bottom of a 90-tonne chlorine tanker would cause it to empty within 15 minutes. Based on a computer simulation of rainy, spring conditions and winds of 30 km/h, the evacuation zone would have an eight-kilometre radius.

The City of Surrey says that zone is home to over 76,000 people, all of whom would have to be alerted in order to escape a poisonous gas cloud. That number doesn't take into account the 2,600 more in Delta, and still more who couldn't be counted in White Rock, who also fall within that radius. In Surrey, those in the most immediate vicinity would be told to "shelter in place," and to tape up or use towels to stuff openings around doors and windows, says Surrey's deputy fire chief Dan Barnscher. He explains that's because going out into the open air could be a death sentence for those closest to the spill site.

Residents with enough time and distance to get out would be told over police and fire loudspeakers to evacuate by car or on specially acquired buses or, if the circumstances permit, on foot. But Barnscher admitted 15 minutes would not necessarily be enough time to notify everyone, and there could be casualties. "You're never sure that you can evacuate everyone because there are so many factors . . . so all we can do is do the best we can and follow our training," he says.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL COST
Patrick Lambert, head of field response for Environment Canada's emergencies division, says that most fish, birds and animals in the area would survive a chlorine gas spill, for different reasons.
He says birds and animals have the tendency to head in the opposite direction if they see an unusually coloured cloud coming their way.
Meanwhile, the hydrochloric acid vapours produced with the mixing of chlorine and moist air would not significantly contaminate the ocean, Lambert says.

THE CLEANUP
Under federal law, the onus is on the polluter to clean up any hazardous-material spill. Both the provincial Ministry of the Environment and most local chemical manufacturers have private chemical-containment contractor CEDA Emergency Response Team on speed-dial for an emergency such as a massive chlorine spill.

"It's going to be pretty catastrophic," says Chris Nicholson, CEDA's team supervisor for B.C., of the hypothetical scenario. "It would be like a big bleach stain. It's going to be pretty tough to contain it." The contractors' first move would be to set up gas monitors around South Surrey to determine contamination levels, and to set up safe and unsafe zones. Shielded in full-body haz-mat "moonsuits," CEDA and other private professional teams would attempt to patch the leak, or, if possible, bail the tanker out with hoses and mix the remaining chlorine with water or other binding agents.

In the days following the disaster, giant fans would be brought in to air-out contaminated homes and buildings. But high concentrations of the chemical could make some structures unrecoverable, Nicholson says.

THE ECONOMIC FALLOUT
Homes written off due to irreparable contamination would likely not be covered under home owners' insurance policies, according to Ted Lewis, president of the Insurance Brokers Association of B.C. That means in addition to economic losses suffered due to business disruption and inability to work, locals could be stuck with the expense of filing lawsuits to recover damages. "The most common type of policy is the comprehensive homeowner's insurance. One of the things that's excluded is contamination," explains Lewis.
 
WHAT'S MISSING?

1. Ban on freight service during periods of high mudslide risk
BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas says his company's policy of running freight service even when passenger service is suspended is based on the structural integrity of chlorine tankers. "They're designed to endure. Even with rollovers, they're very difficult to rupture or puncture," Melonas says.
He points out that there have been no fatalities on BNSF's northern tier of track, which runs through B.C., since 1981.

But SmartRail raises the point that even the toughest tankers can be punctured. Such was the case in January 2005, when a train carrying chlorine on an improperly switched track collided with another train in Graniteville, S.C. Eighty-one tonnes of chlorine were released, killing nine and injuring at least 550. Some 5,400 residents were evacuated. In January 2007, the vice-chair of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board testified before the U.S. House of Representatives that the chlorine tanker in the Graniteville accident "was among the strongest tank cars currently in service."

Rod Nelson, of Transport Canada, says his department has the authority to issue an order prohibiting freight service during peak slide season, or insisting on the installation of a slide-detector fence in the unprotected 400-metre stretch. "We're satisfied with the mitigation measures [BNSF] has in place," Nelson says. He added in an e-mail: "Transport Canada has requested that BNSF explore measures that could further reduce the risk of mudslides and increase the safety of train operations in the area. We are expecting their report in the next couple of months."

2. Slide-detector fence and/or slough detectors A slough detector is a device planted under the ground that detects motion in slopes and can predict mudslides. BNSF has them installed in the slopes along its line south of the border but not in Canada. The company cites the same reason for leaving the 400-metre hole in the slide-detector fence in South Surrey: "We've determined that . . . this is not a high-risk area, and therefore a slide-detector fence is not necessary," says Melonas. "However, we regularly inspect the track to ensure stability."

Simon Fraser University geologist John Clague thinks completing the slide-detector fence would be wise. "I don't think they've presented a compelling argument on why not to install a fence," he says. "If you've got an area where there have been landslides, at the very minimum you need to have a speeder [car] come through a few minutes before the train."Melonas says the company sends trucks with inspectors along the track several times a day during heavy rains.

3. An alerting system Community activists involved in the push to get BNSF to improve its safety standards want a public alarm system installed. But Surrey Deputy Fire Chief Dan Barnscher says such a system could have an ironic effect, drawing people out of their homes to see what the trouble is just as a poisonous gas cloud arrives. Instead, his department's emergency planners are working on a reverse 911 phone system with the ability to send messages to every landline in the evacuation zone. The proposal is currently being reviewed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. The CRTC will make recommendations at the end of this month on who should be able to access the 911 database and operate such a system. Once approved, Emergency Communications for Southwest B.C. estimates the emergency-messaging technology could be put in place in as little as two months.

ARE YOU READY?
- Minimum of 72 hours' worth of water (four litres per person, per day) and food for every member of household.
- For sheltering in place, a battery-powered or windup radio (and extra batteries) to listen for instructions.
- Duct or packing tape for sealing doors and windows. Damp rags and towels can also be used.
- A grab-and-go bag with clothing, emergency contact numbers, prescription medications and extra keys for house and car .

For information and a checklist of other emergency items you should have in case any disaster strikes, visit:

www.pep.bc.ca/hazard_preparedness/Personal_Safety.html

or phone the Provincial Emergency Plan's toll-free preparedness line at:
1-888-811-6233.