A true tale about pollution

[joebill]

I ran across this "superfund site" while searching out information on an event that aparently "never took place" in the winter of 1978-1979 in central Il.

cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0200327

I had gone there at the request of a friend to take over the service department and wreckers in a very large truck stop that was nearly new, but floundering financially. Money was leaking out of it in every direction, and my primary job was to locate and stop the leaks, then put it comfortably in the black.

I had a great garage building that would hold two complete rigs, two road tractors plus at least one automobile. We had a car lift, long grease rack, pit style, enclosed office, parts room, a fleet of 4 wreckers ranging from a holmes for the cars to a Mac B61 for the semis and a couple of sizes in between. It was a perfect setup and should have been making a fortune, but there were lots of operational and personel problems that became apparent from the first time I walked through the door, and I knew it was going to take some time to straighten them out, but it could be done if the whole place didn't slither down the tubes first, which was a possibility, because almost everybody that worked there was local and felt "entitled" to do as he or she dang well pleased with whatever came their way in the course of a day.

On the other hand, business absolutely could NOT have been better. Every three days or so the I-57 would get snowed shut, vehicles in white-out conditions would run off of the road, Diesels would suffer fuel-jell and sit there getting colder and colder. Cars were helpless to climb the embankment in the snow and get back on the road. Nobody in that country had 4WD in those times, and so there they sat, waiting for the snow to stop. The weather was perfect for making money, in other words, probably the best weather for that in living memory, at least in that location, and after I did some firing and hiring, we were ready, or so I thought.

The whole truck stop parking lot would fill with vehicles until there was no way to move them around when the police shut down the interstate and my guys would have to haul fuel around to the semis in barrells on a pickup with a hand pump and long hoses to keep them chugging. Couldn't let them run out of fuel or they would be forever getting started again, and it would be our fault.

I had a constant flow of stranded drivers who had run off of the road and got rides to the truckstop coming in and getting their names on a list to be towed in, warmed up, re-started, when the roads opened up. Mostly, we could have towed them sooner, but we had no place to put them until somebody left, and nobody could leave until they opened the interstate.

There is a lot that could be written abou that time, with the local bars running out of beer, guys sleeping in shifts in my office, a mass drunk when a insulated van full of PBR was declared too near the freezing point to be sold and was opened up and a sign put on the back saying "free beer", and the aftermath of THAT, but the real story is about a call I got from the state police at Pesotum at 4 AM in the worst night of one of the storms.

The cop introduced himself as "captain" whatever, and said I had to take some wreckers to a certain milemarker and tow a loaded semi back to the truck stop. I told him that he was something like #36 on the list, and I would get back to him when his turn was getting near, but he started blustering and I told him to take it up with the general manager and hung up on him.

Half hour later, the general manager called and asked me to stop by his office in the main building for a "talk and tot" as he like to put it. (after leaving that job, I never went to a bar and ordered a drink again. he couldn't talk business without a few drinks in him and a few more on the table waiting their turn, and I couldn't begin to keep up with him or stop him from ordering three more every time I finished one.)

I went up, told him I really was too tired for a drink, and got the bad news.

The stalled semi was from "Chemical Leaman", hauling the stuff they almost always hauled, which was stuff that would kill you from reading the label.

The story from the driver and from "Captain" whatever was that the stuff on that tanker, if it got below 20 degrees F. would clear a circle with a 6 mile radius and a 12 mile circle (or was it a 24 mile circle with a 12 mile radius? Can't recall, but it was BIG!), of living things. I do not know if it was true to this day, but I DO know that "Captain" whever believed it to the very marrow of his soul, and was intent that we were to go out there and drag that tanker in, no matter what, praying all of the time, of course, that it would remain above 20 degrees.

I'll try and finish this up tomorrow....Joe

 

[joebill]

Next morning, first light, temperature below zero, winds 40 to 50 MPH. Imppossible to know how much snow was on the ground, because it was all in piles and all of it moving. It was powder and had been, it seemed like, forever. We hadn't been above freezing for so long that there was no crust anywhere, and I couldn't tell any more when it was or was not snowing because of all of the snow in the air. Some of the overpasses were full of snow and abandoned cars and trucks.

www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/blizzard-of-78-enough-snow-to-1/60609

We kept getting reports of freezing deaths, but nobody could confirm anything. People would use the CB to call us out in the middle of the night, we'd take the BIG wrecker, go looking for them, finally figure out it was another prank from the kinds of peope who now start computer viruses.

We had been out again that previous night and my best wreckerman couldn't see anything of the road through the windshield, so I was watching the edge of the slab in the lee side of the wrecker, steering him blind into the whiteout, hoping nobody was in front of us. After that, we shut down to get a few hours sleep before going after the "bomb".

Our plan consisted of simply bringing three wreckers plus all of the cable and snatch blocks and whatnot that we had, some food and coffee, we all had those insulated coveralls and mickey mouse boots with about an inch of felt inside, some shovels and other hand tools. When the time came, we went looking for the driver of the CL truck so he could come with us, but he was "missing" somewhere and we figured out that if it was buried in snow, he wouldn't be able to find it anyway, so we left without him.

We had decent CB signals from truck to truck and could talk to the State Police HQ, so we were off and runing.

We didn't hit the first drift for about a mile after coming up the down ramp, running on the wrong side of the interestate for the direction we were going. We were relying on the North-bound lane to block the snow and wind coming in from the East and make it drift up there, leaving the Southbound lanes relatively clear. Because the ground was frozen "clear to China" we could use all 4 lanes, ranging back an forth across the median as we saw fit, always watching to make sure we did not plow into a drift with a vehicle inside. After the first couple of big drifts, they started getting worse, longer, wider, deeper.

Bobby was driving the Mac into them with as much speed as he could work up to, and when he hit, he'd wind up turned broadside , unable to move inside the slot he had plowed into the drift. I would hook up to his rear end with the cable on the 60 series Chevy wrecker, drag it sideways and out, get out and unhook, he'd back up and hit it again. Things were kind of running together in our heads, like we had been doing this for a month or so, it seemed like, and we were all exausted.

I finally sighted in on a tree that was a little ways off of the interstate and recalled seeing it quite a while before. 40 minutes later, I was able to report to the other trucks, then to the cops by radio, that we were going absolutely nowhere per hour. The drift was too big, rebuilding itself too quickly, we had been working on it for hours and the drifts were going to be closing up behind us, so if we were going to make it back, we had to begin our retreat before we ran out of time and daylight.

The cops were appalled ("whadda ya gonna do, just FORGET IT?") I assured him that none of us would EVER forget it, for the rest of our lives, which we were hoping to extend by a few years by escaping with out skins.

It took the rest of the day to get the wreckers and outselves back to the truck stop, and we were exausted, cramped from the cold, trying to warm up our mucsles with a few tots of Christian Brothers brandy that evening when we heard a bunch of engines and saw floodlights through the windows, and watched as a big motor grader and some other heavy equipment pulled a tanker labeled "Chemical Leaman" up, blocking the doors to the shop.

They had managed to pull-start it, so the steamers were keeping the load warm, but now we were at ground zero if the thing died again. I put a 24 hour guard shift on it with orders to keep a heater running next to the fuel tanks, switching it from tank to tank every couple of hours.

I do not know today, as I did not know then, if the thing was even explosive or if CL had only used the threat to get all of that effort expended on behalf of the company and it's interests. I DO know that nothing ever appeared on TV about the "near miss" near Tuscola IL Trucker's home that threatened to take out not only a lot of lives, but the Pesotum State Police HQ and all of it's personell.

In today's world, even moving such a load in the winter would (or should) be grounds for 20 years in prison, but today is today and those were different times.

At any rate, when the greenies want to talk about "poulltion" today, it's pretty hard to get my attention with a story about somebody draining his engine oil on the ground.

You can scan the internet for more stories about "Chemical Leaman" and all of the lawsuits against it, and get a more general idea about what REAL poulution" is all about....Joe

[themotherhen]

joebill, there is a stretch of road in southern Ohio that has marshland on each side of the road. My Grandma has lived in the area for my entire life, and for as long as I can remember(I'm 38 and was bo4n in December of the bad winteryou describe here), there are tree truncks, 10-15 feet tall, broken off. No branches, no leaves, just bleached trunks. I found out recently that it was because of a chemical leak 40 years ago that killed all the vegetation in the area. About 10 years ago grass started growing along the berm of the road! That's progress, I guess. Nobody drinks the water in my Grandma's well, she lives about 30 minutes from the little town that closed down due to heightened cancer rates.
I agree, used moter oil(unless in large amounts) are the least of my worries. Mixed with a bucket of sand though, it does a dandy job at keeping shovels, hoes, etc sharp!