by Shawn Bartek
They waited at the top of Mount Jumbo until the heat of the afternoon approached, and started their long walk over the rolling hills encasing the valley. The long walk to Frenchtown.
Their throats were dry. Their bodies were broken. They moved at a pace that ignored the concept of time. They held hands that were bloodied and bruised.
They couldn’t be happier.
Her ankle felt hellfire at every step, arm still stinging from the slice of the maniac. Her knuckles cried from reducing a man’s face to dog meat. She couldn’t wait to see her sister. She wondered about her friends that had driven off in the LaCrosse.
She was alive and she couldn’t be happier.
Her thoughts briefly returned to the other boy. She hoped that he was okay, that his new girlfriend had rescued him in time. And she made peace with the fact that it was in fact, his new girlfriend.
Who cares?
Her old flame was nothing compared to the boy she was holding hands with; the boy who was every bit as amazing and with whom she had now shared a singular, life-changing first date.
His head pounded as the sun roasted. The cowboy boots had completely destroyed his feet. His thoughts returned to his English class and his reading assignment. People that had to eat the bodies of the dead to stay alive. The horrors of the day had stopped short of that, but he had done things now that he’d never believed he would have to do. He had now killed a man. He was forced to. He would never be glib about death ever again now that he had caused it.
But right now he was alive and he couldn’t be happier.
They now understood each other more than ever. There was no pretense or self-consciousness about their feelings for one another, only a deep, comforting stillness. It was an affection that gave intimacy its truest and clearest meaning.
Just five miles more. Uphill and downhill. Feet yelling for reprieve. Knees buckling under their weight.
They held hands and looked upon the city; seeing it in a new light.
He saw a giant petri dish. When you turned the heat up, germs grew and infected the whole bowl.
She saw a gaping imprint in the forest, left by the removal of a giant stone. When you picked up the stone, you saw the creeping crawling things that would be left behind in the soil.
And yet this city saved her sister. An officer picked her up within minutes of her first call. Such a simple, tiny, and indispensable piece of information that she could not ascertain from anybody amongst the chaos. She would write an angry letter to the city about that. And then throw it away.
In the absence of the facts, she could only rely on the love of her family to make the decisions for her. Sometimes you make all the wrong decisions for the right reasons. It was the same kind of blind dedication to family that took her dad from her.
And who knows what those wrong decisions did to their friends in the LaCrosse?
They wanted to find out, but it would need to be eventually. No hurry here. Can’t hurry.
Just three miles more. Uphill and downhill. Feet yelling for reprieve. Knees buckling under their weight.
They felt safe because they were all alone now, walking in the brown-green grass, baking in the sun.
Just one mile more. Uphill and downhill. Feet yelling for reprieve. Knees buckling under their weight.
The westward sun was now lower in the sky, blinding them as they walked, their shadows running to the east. It wasn’t simply the sun to them anymore; it was a foreign celestial body. The landscape now looked like they were on a strange and distant planet. They were the only two people in the world.
They arrived at a freeway junction outside of Frenchtown and observed a circle of large green trucks and bright white tents. It brought them back to the world. Soon, they’d see their parents again. They’d probably have to go back to school eventually. They’d have to figure out a way to return to the daily routine. But they’d be doing it together.
They walked slowly to the trucks, lamenting the end of their serene walk together. Their future would be filled with more enjoyable hand-in-hand walks, but none as perfect as this one had been.
The lights went out on both of them within five minutes of arrival.
They couldn’t be happier.
Excerpts from the Executive Summary from the National Transportation Safety Board Railroad Accident Report: East Missoula Chlorine Spill, April 19, 2017.
At approximately 1:07 P.M. Mountain Standard Time on April 18, 2017, westbound Consolidated Railway Company freight train 123, while traveling about 47 mph through East Missoula, Montana, encountered a weakened rail twenty yards ahead of traversing Umpqua Bridge. Upon the crossing of the rail cars, an excessively worn fish plate shattered and car 21 became derailed. The derailment resulted in the detachment of car 21 from 22. As the locomotive continued to run after the derailment, car 21 became high centered on the tracks its tail wheels suspended over the side of the bridge. The conductor promptly slowed the locomotive to a stop upon the derailment alarm notification in the cabin. At the site of the fish plate failure, Car 22 became derailed and was diverted off course over an embankment to the south side of the bridge. It was held in place by the remaining weight of twelve other cars, ten of the cars still attached to the rails on the east end of the bridge.
The collision derailed four of the 38 freight cars of train 123. Among the derailed cars from train 123 were four tank cars containing chlorine, including Cars 21 and 22. Each tanker contained ninety tons of chlorine. Throughout the day of the 18th, emergency response units from throughout the county and state were called in to evacuate the immediate area. In consideration of the possible severity of the potential spill that would be caused by the plummeting of either of Car 21 or Car 22, a citywide evacuation was announced. Because of the high potential for chlorine release, approximately 75,000 people within a 7-mile radius of the derailment site were evacuated.
Emergency workers and contractors worked throughout the day to secure Car 21 and Car 22. Construction cranes were brought to the scene and Car 21 was officially secured as of 10:34 PM.
A separate crane working to secure Car 22 failed when the coupling buckled under the weight of the tanker and the car came loose. The car fell 52 feet into the rocky river bed below. This impact breached the tank and resulted in the release chlorine gas. No emergency personnel died due to the sufficient HAZMAT clothing.
The chlorine gas initially dispersed within a half mile of the crash area. The gas surrounding the hazard site remained at a low altitude due to the weight of chlorine gas exceeding the weight of oxygen. However, nighttime conditions and high winds moving through Hellgate Canyon dispersed the gas through the eastern section of the City of Missoula. The toxicity of the gas dissipated as it moved farther west. The reported exposure area of the gas was 4.3 miles west of the site. Gas exposure east of the site was limited due to the wind currents.
Although an evacuation was in place, many residents made the decision to occupy their homes. There were thirty-four reported deaths as a result of chlorine gas inhalation. About two hundred people complaining of respiratory difficulties were taken to emergency medical shelters located in the neighboring towns of Hamilton and Frenchtown.
Environmental impact to the Clark Fork River has yet to be determined. EPA officials will be completing a separate report to examine the extent of the damage and put forth their recommendations.
Total damages exceeded $116.4 million.
The safety issues identified in this investigation are as follows:
Railroad accidents attributable to outdated and/or worn track materials;
The vulnerability, under current operating practices, of railroad tank cars carrying hazardous materials.
As a result of its investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board has completed new safety recommendations to the Federal Railroad Administration, detailed in the conclusion of this report.
Chapter XIX
From the April 15, 2018 issue of The Missoulian:
&
nbsp; One Year Later, Missoula Teen Reflects on Nightmare Night on Tanker Day, by Nathaniel Henderson for The Missoulian.
As a new spring approaches, we see the green shoots of life appearing out of the desolation that scorched Missoula’s green mountainsides last April, a day now known as Tanker Day. And with this new life, comes a new outlook for one Missoula teen.
On that day in April, it began as just another day of healing for Ami Gibb. The prior December, Gibb lost her father in a tragic car accident.
“I was the reason he was on the road that night,” Gibb tells me, “You can’t know the guilt of that. It still hasn’t gone away. I don’t know if there’s a way it will really leave.”
“I used to try a mantra,” Ami continues, “Like a ‘Put on your happy dog face and the bad stuff goes away’ mantra.”
When asked what the exact mantra was, Gibb pauses and surprises herself that she no longer remembers it.
“Whatever it was, it kind of worked. I did feel that the pain was getting incrementally better. Then, of course, things just had to get worse.”
When the two Consolidated Railways freight tankers derailed from the Umpqua Bridge last April, most Missoulians made it to safety without incident. Ami Gibb, however, found herself in the middle of a nightmare. Her sister, Dana, only ten-years old, was home alone at the time the evacuation was announced. Gibb tried everything she could do to reach her sister by phone and by contacting the police, but was met with the deadlock that gripped the City of Missoula’s emergency line earlier that day. With no parents to assist and little access to emergency personnel, Gibb had to learn to think for herself. She convinced a few friends to join her in rescuing her sister.
However, a fateful wrong turn along the way put her and her friends in the path of Clyde Walling, 51, and Richard “Dicky” Stubbs, 47 of Arlee. A near collision with Walling’s truck provoked the men to terrorize Gibb and her friends later that evening. After running Gibb’s car into a Reserve Street sidewalk, the two men proceeded to follow the teens and attack them at an empty Albertsons.
“I remember clearly thinking that I was going to die,” Gibb says, “But my anger turned out to be far more powerful than my fear. It really is true what they say about adrenaline.”
Gibb describes fighting like an animal, and with the help her friends, Marc Nelson and Scott Dwyer, they managed to force their way out of the attack. Thinking quickly, they made their escape by floating on a raft down the Clark Fork River.
What Gibb did not know was that it wasn’t going to be the first escape that night. After running into a variety of more trouble that evening, she was shocked to find that Walling and Stubbs had obtained her phone in the store attack and were waiting for her and her friends when they arrived at Gibb’s house. And when they arrived, Dana was missing and Ami was now faced with a horrifying conclusion.
“I thought they had killed her,” Gibb says, “They told us they killed her and I didn’t want to live anymore after that. But I wasn’t going to go without justice. I think the fact that I was ready to die only made me more vicious.”
Gibb and Nelson engaged the two men in a struggle outside of Gibb’s house and continued the fight on the side of Mount Jumbo. Each of them fought for their lives until they fatally injured both Walling and Stubbs.
Thankfully, Walling and Stubbs had been bluffing. Gibb was unaware that she had already saved her sister with one phone call earlier in the evening. Officer Frank Oliver was in the Rattlesnake area when he received a call that a little girl was home alone during the evacuation.
“It took a little convincing to have Dana open the door for me,” Oliver says, “After she was safe, I attempted to contact Ami on the cell phone number she had provided and we never connected again until she walked into Frenchtown. I could have never have imagined the circumstances for why she was not answering.”
During the altercation on Harrison Street, Stubbs shot Gibb’s longtime friend, Scott Dwyer, in the shoulder. Dwyer was rushed from the scene by his girlfriend, Leslie Knadler, and miraculously survived after a significant amount of blood loss. Dwyer continues to undergo physical therapy for nerve damage and his arm will never regain a full range of motion.
Marc Nelson stuck with Ami to the very end of that nightmare day. After defeating their attackers, they walked a long trek on foot at the highest points of Waterworks Hill, through Grant Creek, and finally made their way to safety in Frenchtown.
“She’s my hero,” Nelson states, “I would be an unsolved mystery if it wasn’t for her. Those men made it very clear they were going to disappear us for good. And in the chaos of that day, we’d have been untraceable.”
“It’s pretty hard for me to imagine seeing what’s next in life without him,” Gibb adds.
The horrific experience brought Nelson and Gibb much closer than mere school mates. They recently placed a deposit on an apartment in Seattle and will be moving there together next month.
Ami said that although she will never feel fully safe after that day, she feels like she can breathe again. She met with post-tramatic stress counselors in the months that followed that day, but has not attended a session since January. Nelson says that spending his life with Gibb is the only therapy he wants.
Ami said she has a new mantra to deal with that night.
“‘It was just my turn’,” Gibbs says, “You never know what is going to interrupt your contented life or how bad that interruption is going to be. Every person eventually faces devastation and a need to face that responsibility, and it was just my turn. And that night sort of set the bar for me for life. Now I don’t really worry what is going to be thrown at me in the future.”
“I can take it,” she adds, smiling.
Note from the Author:
This book is dedicated to my wife, Rebecca and my son, Warren; my appreciation for their patience while I plugged away at this OCD-byproduct is beyond my ability to quantify. I would also like to give special thanks to my sister, Kate, for being my first reader.
Standard disclaimer applies: All characters appearing in this work are fictitious; any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.