Graniteville Update

Here is Walt's update (dated January 17, 2005) on events following the big chlorine spill site in Graniteville, SC (Walt lives in nearby Aiken):

This is a follow-up about the January 6 train accident at Graniteville, South Carolina, which occurred six miles from my house. The death toll remains at 9, and only one person is still in critical condition. He has two collapsed lungs, and may not live. Chlorine has been removed from the tank cars, although it is still in the ground, and there also is much sodium hydroxide strewn about. Hazmat people are determining how much contaminated soil will have to be removed. People are returning to their
homes, and taking stock.

All 5400 people living within a mile of ground zero were evacuated from their homes the day of the crash, including the county sheriff's family. Surrounding the 1-mile radius circle was a buffer zone with a dusk-to-dawn curfew. It had the dual purpose of protecting residents in case one of the other two chlorine tankers ruptured, and also made it difficult for looters to enter the circle. I live two miles outside the curfew zone.

Part of US Highway 1, the main thoroughfare between Aiken and Augusta, was closed for 9 days. My wife works in Augusta, and had to take a detour every day. You can imagine the traffic when cars from a 4-lane highway are diverted to local roads. Several 18-wheeler trailer cities have sprung up in parking lots along Route 1 since the accident. They belong to emergency services vendors and agencies. Even the Coast Guard has a trailer here, although we're 120 miles from the coast.

On January 13 and 14, a week after the accident, 3500 people returned to their homes and pets. Today (June 17), maybe 1000 people are still not home. Several returnees were quoted saying they don't feel safe in Graniteville anymore, and plan to move. I don't know how widespread that feeling is. The animal control department has custody of a bunch of pets which they evacuated out of people's yards and empty houses; with all the confusion after the accident, many of them are not documented as to which property they were taken from. Six dogs and cats died after being reunited with their families. I guess they didn't have enough water after their families left, and suffered kidney failure.

It is now confirmed that the cause of the collision was failure of the parked train's crew to reset the switch back to the main track from the siding. Starting about 4 days after the accident, big advertisements from attorneys began appearing in all local newspapers offering legal advice to anyone affected by railroad accidents. At least three class-action lawsuits have been filed, by out-of-state law firms. Some attorneys were escorted by police out of Graniteville; South Carolina has an ambulance-chasing law. After the news media gave wide circulation to the liability releases which the Norfolk & Southern Railroad printed on the relief checks which they distributed to evacuees, the railroad reconsidered and now says that those waivers don't mean anything. Sixty people have gone to the motor vehicle bureau to have the addresses on their driver's licenses changed to Graniteville addresses. The sheriff, who lives in Graniteville, had many of them arrested. The family of a woman killed in an unrelated accident in Graniteville last November, while trying to beat a train to the crossing, has filed a negligence lawsuit against the railroad.

Graniteville's middle school is directly across the street from the collision site. If it had occurred during the day instead of at night, with 500 kids present, it would have been an American Bhopal. South Carolina allows Hazmat trains to go through urban areas during the day. What about your state? Tests indicate that there was little physical damage to the school, and it will reopen January 18. The sheriff plans to personally take his son to school, to demonstrate confidence in its safety. In contrast to a certain southern stereotype, our sheriff is not fat, and is very popular. He had an excellent opportunity to mug for the cameras and get on national news, but did not do that.

The big question in everybody's mind now is: what will happen to Avondale Mills? The textile company employs 2,500 people, and is the second largest employer in Aiken County (my employer, Savannah River Site, is the largest). Most Avondale employees have been idle since January 6, although Norfolk Southern is paying their wages. Avondale did receive significant physical damage, in addition to 6 employee deaths. The administrative building was directly in front of the crash, and chlorine gas destroyed the computers, along with company payroll, tax, sales, and inventory data.

Avondale owns about 6 separate mills in the Graniteville area; employees died at two of them, and a couple more are next to those. The mills have an assessed value of about $250 million(!) The public hasn't heard much yet about corrosion to equipment. However, there is much vulnerability, at least for the 2 or 4 buildings nearest ground zero. Copper wiring in circuits and motors are susceptible to corrosion, and power looms use a lot of wire for mechanically manipulating yarn.

The bigger problem is that the textile industry in general, Avondale included, is losing business to Asia. Four textile companies have gone out of business in Aiken County since 1980; Avondale is the only one left. They've run losses of $5 million per year for the past 3 years, out of total annual sales of about $550 million. They can't keep that up forever, but things are getting worse for them; a key tariff on Chinese textile imports expired at the end of 2004, so Avondale would have found it more difficult to turn a profit in 2005, even had the accident not occurred.

Avondale must now be under great temptation to cash in their railroad, insurance, and federal disaster area checks, and shut down some or all Aiken County operations for good. If I owned the mills, I'd sure be thinking hard about that. So far, everybody is putting on a brave front, and the owner, who lives in Georgia, is talking about how much Graniteville is important to him, and how the employees are like a big family, etc. But I don't see how Avondale can avoid closing, unless the state and maybe even the feds waive their taxes. Everybody knows it, but won't say it.