Toxic Veil

Anne woke at 12:40 am. Through the darkness of the bedroom she starred at the street-light silhouettes of the lace curtains and the potted plants. Her eyes were stinging. Her throat was raw and breathing was painful. Her body was drenched in sweat and convulsing with cramps. Her mind was racing, what's happening, what's wrong?

She rolled over onto her stomach. She dropped one foot over the bed's mattress onto the cold floor. She stretched her arm across the bedside table and slowly pushed her body upright. Her breathing was shallow and her heart was racing. She was in fear of her life.

She clicked on the small lamp on the bedside table. The bright light illuminated the ground floor bedroom, the patterned white bedspread, the modern pine drawers, and the neat rows of unpacked boxes of books beneath the window sill. Quickly her thoughts returned to her labored breath and bu methyl isocyanaterning lungs. She noticed the glass upon the table and gulped down the remaining water. It helped a little, but then the searing pain returned and difficulty breathing returned.

She stepped across the cool wooden floor to the large bay window. She looked along the wide, tree-lined street at the two-story brick apartment blocks in the eerie yellow-white glow of the township's street lamps. It was the middle of the night in a very quiet neighborhood of a rather small town, but Anne saw people, a lot of people.

She saw a old couple as they sat on the steps of the apartment that was facing her own building. The woman was holding the man in her arms. He appeared unconscious and was draped across his partner's lap like a rag doll. A third person was leaning awkwardly against the apartment's brick wall. He or she was throwing up.

Anne knew she needed help. She stepped back towards the bed. Her phone was next to the lamp on the table. Her eyes were burning, her mouth was burning, and her lungs were burning. She flopped onto the bed and grabbed onto the phone. She pressed the power button. But the phone was not charged. She glanced at the charging plug and its cable discarded on the wooden floor by the bedside table. She lay back on the bed. Closing her eyes she just wished for the end of the pain.

Ben was propped against the glass storefront of the Raj Mini Market on the north-west corner of Fifth and Vine. His shirt and trousers were stained with sweat and vomit. Directly in front of him was his old, gray Toyota Camry. The driver's door was open, the engine was idling, and the headlights were full beam. Over and over and over he tried to call 911.

Suddenly a 911 dispatcher answered. He felt a glimmer of hope and the possibility of an end to his torture. He tried to explain the situation. He'd left his shift at US Chemical Inc. at midnight, he'd pulled off the road just after leaving during the torrential rain of a pop-up thunderstorm, and then his lungs are burning, he's struggling to breath, and he's convulsing and throwing up. But he couldn't talk, he couldn't speak, he just wept.

He heard the dispatcher's voice “Are you there? Are you there?” she said. He listened to her warning about the chemical plant accident on the north side of the Pablo township. He heard her instructions. “Cover your mouth and noise with a damp towel,” she said. “Get to the top floor of your home or you building,” she said. But neither were possible.

From his position on the ground he just gazed into his car, at the vomit on the seat and the lights on the dashboard. In his periphery he recognized the flashing lights of several emergency vehicles. They were about two blocks from where he lay and approaching at high speed. He was going to be rescued, he was going to be saved.

But the vehicles didn't stop. He saw the occupants in protective suits and gas masks as they sped through the junction in the direction of the plant. He felt scared, he felt alone. The pain was intolerable - like nothing he'd experienced before. He closed his eyes, he wanted to be home, and he wanted to be safe.

By 1:00 am, the perimeter of US Chemicals Inc. was ablaze with the flashing lights of fire trucks and emergency vehicles. Through the darkness the flashing lights were eerily illuminating the huge arrays of rusty pipes that twisted and turned through flanges and valves between large cylindrical tanks and massive corrugated steel building. By now the site was jammed with firemen, safety officials and emergency technicians in chemical suits, oxygen tanks and breathing masks.

The leaking gas was dense and heavy. It hugged the ground. It's smell and taste were sweet and sickly. It was a Class 1A, neurological toxin that at low concentrations causes sensations of burning and confusion. At higher concentrations it causes nervous system failure and severe cardiac arrhythmia that leads to death.

The cloud of gas was being pushed by the south-east breeze through the sleepy neighborhoods of the Pablo township. A desperate attempt to alert and evacuate the sleeping residents was now underway.

At the plant, the site operators, chemical experts and safety personnel had devised a plan to stop the leak. By 2:00 am a six person team was moving through the site towards the 12A chemical storage building. The gas was leaking through an over-pressure automatic relief valve on a heavily corroded mixing tank in the 12A annex. To stop the release of gas they planned to open a connection through old valves and unused pipes that ran between a retired storage tank and the leaking mixing tank. The scheme would reduce the pressure in the leaking mixing tank and activate the closing of the automatic relief valve.

They'd had to figure a circuitous path through old pipes and unused valves to connect the two tanks. The challenge was going to be the old corroded valves that hadn't been opened or closed for decades. Carefully the crew started the process of identifying the valves and opening or closing as needed. One valve was broke when trying to torque it open - but fortunately a new route between the two tanks was quickly identified.

At 4:00 am they completed the re-routing between the storage tank and the mixing tank. At first nothing happened. Then slowly the pressure began falling in the mixing tank and after an intense thirty minute wait the automatic relief valve closed.

At first the information about the gas leak at the US Chemical Inc., plant on the outskirts of the Pablo township was very sketchy. A leak of noxious gas, both deaths and casualties, maybe hundreds impacted, maybe thousands impacted, the entire residents of Pablo evacuated. But with daylight the terrible scope of the chemical plant accident became clearer and clearer. It was a national tragedy.

In the days that followed the accident a story of mistakes and negligence at US Chemical Inc., emerged. A water leak at a corroded weld in the mixing tank had caused a sequence of runaway chemical reactions and production of methyl isocyanate gas. Eventually the increasing pressure activated an automatic relief valve.

The pressure increase had been quickly spotted by the weekend technical crew and the day shift safety engineer had been promptly notified. It had been an unusually warm, sunny day with sporadic rain showers and the engineer indicated in her report that the unusually high outside temperature was the probable cause of the pressure rise. She flagged the incident for a later check of the tank pressure by the evening shift safety engineer.

The surviving day shift, technical crew members later reported the safety engineer had seemed distracted. She'd been arguing on her cell phone and been dismissive about the worries expressed by the technical staff regarding the increasing pressure. Her report also lacked and normal attention to detail associated with documenting safety issues. The safety engineer had unfortunately perished in her Pablo apartment from her exposure to the gas.

During the evening shift the pressure continued to climb. The evening shift safety engineer had looked at the pressure and had noted that the rise was slowing and approaching a plateau. He indicated in his report that the predicted plateau was significant below the set point of the automatic relief valve.

Unfortunately little detail was available as neither the evening shift safety engineer nor any evening shift technical crew members had survived the leak.

The pop-up thunderstorm shortly after midnight had exacerbated the water leak and accelerated the pressure rise in the mixing tank. Within a few minutes of the rain shower the automatic relief valve activated. The relation between rain showers and the tank pressure was never identified by the either safety engineer and a major factor in the disaster.

It was noted by the official inquiry that the evening shift safety engineer, Ben Greer, and day shift safety engineer, Anne Greer, were married. The couple had taken their positions as safety engineers with US Chemical Inc., just three months earlier and were relatively inexperienced.

Cell phone records indicated that Anne Greer and Ben Greer had exchanged a number of lengthy phone calls during Anne's day shift. Interviews with Anne Greer's parents revealed that Anne and Ben' marriage was troubled and the couple's relocation to the small Pablo township from the Houston suburbs had seemed to worsened their relationship. On the morning before the accident, Anne told Ben she wanted a divorce.