Union Pacific crews work Sunday, June 5, 2016, to get oil out of rail cars after Friday's derailment near Mosier. (Carli Brosseau/staff)
Carli Brosseau | The Oregonian/OregonLive
By Carli Brosseau | The Oregonian/OregonLive
on June 05, 2016 at 7:14 PM, updated June 06, 2016 at 1:02 AM
Updated at 8 p.m. and 1 a.m. with further details from a community meeting.
On most June weekends, Mosier is filled with pleasure seekers -- drivers, cyclists and other outdoors enthusiasts who come to appreciate the majestic beauty of the Columbia River Gorge.
But two days after a 96-car oil train partially derailed while passing through this city of 400, the traffic on Sunday was mostly industrial. Trucks hauled water, gravel and mobile toilets in big batches.
A Portland Fire & Rescue engine circled near the police checkpoint in front of Mosier Fruit Growers, which is preparing for an early cherry harvest, brought on by the warm weather.
Volunteers set up a shade tent to pass out water, granola bars and flyers for a community meeting in the evening. Neighbors braved temperatures above 90 degrees to hear the latest on the water system. They feared contamination. What they wanted most was news.
Acting mayor of Mosier responds to first train to pass through town since oil train derailed Acting Mayor Emily Reed was visibly upset Sunday, June 5, when she heard the horn of the first train to pass through Mosier since an oil train derailed Friday. She explains her safety concerns.
They got some big news during the community meeting at the Mosier Grange Sunday evening. The Interstate 84 exit to Mosier reopened, and the two-day-long evacuation of about a quarter of the city's residents was declared over. Wasco County Sheriff Lane Magill said everyone was free to return home.
People who live in Mosier Manor -- earlier told to evacuate -- were cautioned that they should be ready and set to go should there be a new emergency, the sheriff said. The rest of the city's residents and people who live up to about a mile outside of town should also remain vigilant and ready to go, Magill said.
Mosier residents were told they could now flush their toilets, but the water treatment plant remained closed. Waste will be collected and trucked to Hood River while repairs to the plant continue, the sheriff said.
About 10,000 gallons of crude oil leaked from damaged rail cars into the plant after three manholes were sheared off during the derailment, said Mike Renz, who was coordinating the hazardous materials response for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.
That oil has been removed, Renz said. The plant was shut down Friday shortly after 14 cars full of Bakken crude oil from North Dakota derailed and four caught on fire -- three rupturing, he said.
The sheriff said Sunday there was no estimated date for reopening the water treatment plant but he was impressed with the capacity and monitoring of the temporary waste collection system.
Mosier's acting mayor describes hearing news that an oil train had derailed Acting Mayor Emily Reed was out of town when she heard an oil train had derailed in Mosier. She describes thinking that a derailment was inevitable.
The city is using cameras to study the extent of the damage, Acting Mayor Emily Reed said. Mosier is now using a backup well because its primary water source was drained dousing the flames.
The city is pumping water to homes, but asking residents to boil it because the well hasn't been recently tested. Officials don't believe the water has been contaminated, but they want to double check, Reed said.
The city sent three samples for testing Sunday, and all had a chlorine residual, indicating that the water is likely OK, said Matthew Koerner, the city water operator. Results are expected about noon Monday.
While the sewerage system in Mosier proper was unusable, many people used the bathroom at the homes of neighbors who live further from the river and have their own wells and septic systems.
Ray Abanto is one of them. "It's just an inconvenience right now," he said Sunday.
He swam in the river as a kind of temporary bathing replacement, then later showered at a friend's home.
But Abanto is grateful he doesn't have to be at work on Monday. "That would be a bit more difficult," he said.
Other Mosier residents say calling the derailment an inconvenience is an uncomfortable understatement.
When a Union Pacific spokesman used the word "inconvenience" in an early press conference, "I think it kind of stung for a lot of people," said Lisa Gee, who spent hours passing out water and flyers Sunday.
"It's a little bit more than an inconvenience," she said. "It's a community that was hit very hard."
Gee's 8-year-old son was in reading class when the train derailed about 200 feet from his school, Gee said.
"Kids heard the explosion and started crying," she said. "They saw the smoke."
She said several of the children were panicked, as were parents who didn't know where to find their children after they were evacuated. "For some people, it was pretty traumatic," she said.
Mosier business owner says oil train derailment sounded like a missile Stephen Demosthenes owns Route 30 Classics in Mosier, near where an oil train derailed Friday, June 3. "The thing that saved us was that there was no wind that day," he said Sunday, June 5.
There were many signs of raw emotion at the community meeting Sunday evening and shortly afterward, when the horns of the first train to pass through Mosier since the derailment could be heard from the Grange.
Tears welled in the acting mayor's eyes as she stopped walking to listen. "I trusted them," she said. Reed later explained, "I was really hoping that our process, when they said that they would do everything they could for our safety, I was hoping that that meant that they would stop train traffic until the fuel was gone."
The Mosier City Council held an emergency meeting earlier in the day to formally object to Union Pacific allowing trains to pass through before draining the 11 remaining cars that have fuel in them.
"I understand the calculations of possibilities and the math behind it, but frankly, we've just seen that it can happen, and they're asking us to risk one more time with fuel on the side of the tracks, so when I heard the train, that they actually were going through, I was very disappointed," Reed said.
Union Pacific officials said they were aware of local safety concerns and the track was inspected to standard before the first train was allowed to travel through about 8:30 p.m.
Inspections will continue throughout the night, and trains passing through Mosier will be limited to 10 miles per hour, Union Pacific spokesman Justin Jacobs said. The speed limit rounding the bend east of Mosier is usually 30 miles per hour, he said.
"We want citizens to feel safe," Jacobs said. "We want to oil out of Mosier. We also have a requirement and responsibility to our customers to get their goods across the country."
There is no restriction on what cargo types pass through Mosier, he said.
Workers will continue to drain the remaining rail cars and move the oil in them onto trucks, Union Pacific spokeswoman Raquel Espinoza said. She said it takes six trucks to move the oil in one rail car, and the transfer process takes special equipment and specially trained drivers.
Experts in all parts of the cleanup and repair process have been brought in from around the country, and Union Pacific will work 24 hours a day until all parts of the process are finished, several Union Pacific officials said.
Preliminary findings of the investigation into the cause of the derailment show that a fastener that held a railroad tie to the rail could be to blame, Espinoza said. The investigation is not complete.
The track through Mosier is inspected twice a week, more often than federal regulators require, Espinoza said. The last inspection was May 31, and a joint inspection with federal regulators took place April 25-26.
"No issues were identified at that time," she said.
Officials were not able to estimate Sunday how much oil spilled or the cost of the cleanup. The earth around where the cars derailed will eventually be excavated, they said.
Some oil traveled through pipes from the wastewater treatment plant into the Columbia River, but only a slight sheen could be seen in a containment area Sunday, said Renz, of the Department of Environmental Quality. A containment boom will stay in the river Monday, he said.
Despite signs of friction among officials of various allegiances and residents Sunday, everyone seemed to agree that the derailment could have been much worse.
"We couldn't have had better weather conditions," said Mike Igo, a longtime resident who used to train Portland airport firefighters to respond to plane crashes. "Twenty-four hours earlier the wind was 25 miles per hour. It would have driven the fire to the east, to the rest of the cars."
Mosier Fire Chief Jim Appleton underscored that point.
"I don't want anyone to leave with the impression of a fairy tale ending," Appleton said at the community meeting, where he received repeated praise and loud applause. "This was a horrible, horrible event that almost destroyed our community."
Appleton said he plans to negotiate with Union Pacific for safety improvements. "I want them to help us materially to make our community a lot safer," he said.
So far, there is no contract in place, he said.
-- Carli Brosseau