(Texted photo from June 26th)

By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

Two months after the June 26th Seattle Iron and Metals barge fire on the Duwamish River (WSB coverage here) filled the sky with black smoke seen for miles around, a followup meeting answered some questions but raised even more concerns.

The Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition brought together some of the departments/agencies involved in fighting the fire and assessing its damage. “For us, this is a very important meeting – we had a lot of people who were really scared by the fire,” began DRCC director/coordinator James Rasmussen, later noting that what they had gathered for was to find out the truth. “The people who are here, who are your regulators, are trying to do the best they can for you.” We recorded Wednesday night’s meeting – here’s our unedited video in its entirety:

If you weren’t there and don’t have time to watch, here’s what was revealed, asked, and discussed:

Rachel McCrea, regional water-quality manager for the state Ecology Department, desribed her overview as “the facts as we know them today,” while stressing that “the investigation into this incident is not closed.” It was 8:13 pm when the fire broke out on a barge at the north dock of Seattle Iron and Metals; it took an hour to put the flames out. Responding entities were from all levels of government – state, local, federal – and Boeing sent a fire truck too.

The barge on which the fire started was MLT 6000-1, owned by Vancouver BC-based Mercury Launch & Tug, leased to yet another entity and containing scrap metal from ABC Recycling, which, McCrea said, had loaded it in Nanaimo, BC, with crushed cars stacked in a ring around additional scrap metal.

As the crane operator for Seattle Iron & Metal (which did not have a representative at the meeting) began unloading the cars, McCrea continued, a crane claw punctured a propane tank attached to a crushed truck. It erupted into flames. The crane operator tried to move the burning tank/vehicle away to stop it from spreading but it was too late. McCrea said that Seattle Iron & Metals has a policy about what they will and won’t accept – and the propane tank should have been empty, “but it was not.”

(June 26th photo from Peter and Kay)

She handed off to Seattle Fire Battalion Chief Joel Andrus, who was working in the area that night and responded from a station on Beacon Hill. “We sent a combination of different assets,” he explained. “Because this was a combination of different things – waterway, possibly hazardous materials,” they sent fireboats, hazmat specialty units, and more. First units in attacked it from land with water, “but clearly we were not going to make a difference from land.” The fireboat took a while to get there but started with foam and water on arrival. Isn’t the foam toxic? he said many have wondered, and then explained Novacool, the foam to which SFD switched years ago. “Since this was predominantly a chemical type fire” – with vehicle upholstery burning – the foam was needed. “It’s biodegradable, very safe on the environment … makes the water much more efficient.” The boats could access the back side of the barge, which land-based units could not; that enabled them to knock the fire down more quickly. Then ensued a process of plucking the burning cars off the barge and putting them on the dock. Along with the big fireboat Leschi, they used a smaller rapid-response vessel. Two cars “had sloughed off into the Duwamish” during the fire, into about 35 feet of water, he noted. (They’ve since been recovered, it was noted at this point.)

(June 26th SFD photo)

The barge was predominantly made of metal. If not for the foam, the fire might have burned for days, Andrus said.

Next: Spill responder Agustina Cartagena-Mclean from the DoE. She and Dick Walker, who has since retired, were there that night, she said. Her timeline said Ecology got a heads-up about the fire at 7:45, but that was called into question later, as the SFD Real-Time 911 log showed the call at 8:14. Meantime, she continued, at 9:41 pm they got NRC notification. She arrived at 10:30 pm; Walker was there. They were told that West Seattle-based Global Diving and Salvage was en route, hired by Seattle Iron and Metals. Global set up a boom later. That night, Cartagena-Mclean said, there was no visible sheen – some firefighting foam visible on the waterway – and no sheen visible the next day.

Seattle Public Utilities spill-response reps then spoke. Nate Hart talked about SPU’s role – in charge of drains that feed into the river, so they have a responsibility to address anything that might be carried into the system. They have 10 environmental compliance monitors and 10 spill monitors, who respond 24/7. “If the community reports something to us, we are aware of it and we will respond to it.”

SPU had two people on call that night who went to the scene. SFD asked them to be sure the barge was boomed. SPU’s team is based in Ballard and went that way by boat, with Ecology and US Coast Guard reps on board. They saw no oil on the water and no affected wildlife.

Hart said they more commonly deal with spills that happen on land. The burning material being moved onto shore was a concern that night. They later learned that Seattle Iron & Metals has a “huge tank” to capture water from their dock, and that at the company’s initiative, it was holding all the water that was being used on the shore that night.

McCrea had more information about what happened to the water in the tank. She said SI&M has a permit that allows the discharge of water “during an emergency firefighting operation.” But they retained that water instead of letting it go into the Duwamish and treated it in their treatment system – maybe 15,000 gallons, in addition to what was in the tank, so they treated about 175,000 gallons of water in all. That’s the water that fell on the shore/dock – not the water poured onto the barge. The permit requires SI&M to report this type of incident, and that report has been received by DoE, she said, and will be publicly available. She added that SI&M removed debris post-fire and there’s still an assessment under way of whatever else might need to be done.

An EPA rep also spoke briefly, addressing whether the barge fire affected the Superfund cleanup. She said the design phase starts in January for the upper reach of the waterway, nowhere near the fire site. It will be a while until they get to this area of the waterway.

(June 26th photo by Gustavo Arzola)

And then, Q&A. First one, from a Georgetown resident, just two blocks from the fire scene: What was in the air that came into our homes and cars and how did it affect health? “I was choking,” she said.

The DoE said Puget Sound Clean Air Agency – which also did not have a rep at the meeting – would have sent out an alert if necessary, but the Georgetown air-monitoring station “was relatively unchanged” – the air moved south and affected people from South Park to Kent and Puyallup. “The air quality was bad for a relatively short time,” so there was no grounds for a warning. The particulates rose briefly to about 40 – but that’s nothing like, for example, the 170 on the day of the meeting because of wildfire smoke. The resident said she had noticed pollution the next day, too; it was then revealed that there’s no current ways to measure chemical or other contents in he air. So if you see something like this, “go find a healthier place to be.” The air wasn’t analyzed so “we can’t tell you what was in the smoke.” Tires? Plastics? Speculation ensued.

So who is informing the community when things like this happen? was the next question. “We were looking for information we could share with the community” and couldn’t find it. Andrus said SFD uses social media as well as the Alert Seattle service.

The questioner clarified, what about the aftermath? How can community members get information in a timely manner? Cartagena-McLean said there is a process for who disseminates information.

An EPA rep said the response starts with local responders, which can reach up to county, state, federal if needed. “We actually contacted the CG to see if they needed our assistance,” but since the fire was out in about an hour, they didn’t. He was getting his information from social media. EPA taps into the local governments’ information network, he added, and recommended signing up for local alert systems. The EPA said that if “an incident is more prolonged in nature” they will send reps out into the community, door-knocking and distributing information in other ways.

Rasmussen said DRCC was getting a lot of questions and Ecology helped gather information, but there is more to be worked out.

The Georgetown resident said that she had scrapped a car and was told she didn’t have to empty it of gas. When something like that is encountered, SPU said, please report it.

Another community member asked about the Canadian barge unloading Canadian cars here. “At what point or where did the barge perhaps go through some kind of inspection that might have prevented” this?

Norman Jensen of the Coast Guard replied to that. He explained that the USCG assessed the situation that night and also set up a safety zone controlling marine traffic around the area while the fire was happening. But while it was a Canadian barge and a Canadian tug. “The kind of cargo they’re bringing in is not supposed to have hazardous material,” so they would not normally require an inspection. However, there is an investigation now into why that material was on board – if there was known hazardous cargo, there are processes for that.

Another community member mentioned a different Canadian barge fire elsewhere and the USCG said they’re delivering “a letter of concern” to loading facilities in Canada soon and telling them they will crack down if it becomes clear that’s needed. “That’s why we’ve reached out to Canada to help them address on their end, as well as ours.”

The next community member wondered about the Seattle Iron & Metals contract and how they can be off the hook once they accepted a shipment that turned out to have something hazardous on board. “Once someone accepts it onto their property to process it,” aren’t they liable?

“I think this is one of the things we’re finding … not a new concern here in the valley … because of the way industrial zoning was done” almost a century ago, Rasmussen said, so industry is right next to residents who were there first. He mentioned the longrunning concerns about other crushing industries that lead to air pollution. “You are put at risk by living here in some ways because you are next to (industrial businesses).”

The Georgetown resident wondered if Seattle Iron and Metals had been a source of calls in the past. She said she’d noticed past explosions. Rasmussen said SFD might want to check its records.

A local community advocate said her organization has been working with various groups over the past two years, regarding health concerns and whether it’s OK to eat fish from the river. She wondered if this was going to affect the health of fish in the Duwamish and what’s being done to address that. Reply: The longterm sediment cleanup is what’s more important for the fish’s health, and if there is advice not to eat fish – fish that spends its life in the river, not fish like salmon that just pass through – that advice stands, independent of this incident.

Ecology’s McCrea said that different lengths of exposure are important to consider. It was re-stated that no affected wildlife were found.

Another community member mentioned the difficulty of cleaning up oil and concerns about longterm effects of exposure to something like this.

“We obviously agree about the cumulative effects – which is why we’re cleaning up the river,” Rasmussen noted.

Another question was multipart: Chris Wilke of Puget SoundKeeper returned to the points of what went into the river that night and how information got out. He noted that Ecology tweeted the next day that there were no signs of environmental harm. But he was down there that night and saw the fire and the foam, and has concerns about ongoing water-quality issues in the area. “There absolutely was severe damage to the river that night. … How can we expect to get information about monitoring” if the declaration has already been made that there was no environmental harm? Wilke mentioned concerns about burning plastic and PCBs. “It was very unhealthy air.” And he noted that since air monitoring is on a 24-hour cycle, the true impact wasn’t gaugeable. “What’s the protocol, when do we initiate an evacuation – South Park” was dangerous that night. “What can you do with public information” to get concerns out during events like this?

David Byers, statewide spills response manager for Ecology, replied, “You’re right, any time there’s an event like this … (despite) all the things we see,” there are unquestionably effects. “Our challenge in communicating … were there big effects? Acute effects?” The next-day tweets were attempts to convey that they weren’t SEEING anything. While Novacool is the “least harmful to the environment” for firefighting foam, it still has an effect – “crashes the oxygen level” – when it goes into the water. Byers agreed it was a “missed opportunity” to get more information out – they didn’t make a specific website for this incident, though they have done so for other such incidents. “I’ll commit to being more aggressive about pushing out information.”

Has anyone been back since the 27th to check for foam, sheen, etc.? SPU’s boat made multiple trips the next day, Hart said. They checked tides, adjacent slips, barges, etc., but have not made a followup visit since.

Another person said she photographed the area the next day including a white sheen on the riprap along the shore. “That was a very visible sheen” and she sent it all to Ecology. They would have to replicate that in an enforcement action, Byers said. “It takes that level of scrutiny to make enforcement.”

Rasmussen commented that PSCAA, for example, wouldn’t accept evidence unless one of their own inspectors witnessed it firsthand, “and it seems there has to be a huge amount of evidence.”

Next question was whether Seattle Iron & Metals usually operates at that hour. Since the company wasn’t represented, no one could say.

Another questioner wondered why regulators had relied on visuals rather than taking samples. “This is a very unusual response,” one Ecology rep said. “In a lot of situations we can go in and sample for things. This was a challenging situation – big river, flowing out …” Byers said that in a situation like that he wasn’t going to put people at risk by venturing into dangerous conditions, late at night, to take samples. The next day, they didn’t think “a sample would be very helpful to us at that point.”

(June 27th Department of Ecology photo)

Asked another community member, “If we all want to protect this river, why are we not on the same page” to test it after something goes wrong. “It’s not rocket science … I’m very disappointed to say very educated people say ‘we couldn’t get to the river’.”

A longtime observer said the SI&M containment tank is a new thing – how new? Sometime between last February and April, replied McCrea. The tank had been there longer but the company made an improvement to the treatment system.

Ken Workman pointed out that he and Rasmussen are Duwamish Tribe members. “When we talk about this river, the condition of it today – it’s a very sad thing. Just a couple hundred years ago we lived on that river. There weren’t any fires … it twisted, it turned … when I hear this conversation, I want to cry.” But he also had words of thanks for the responders, and he offered those in Native language too. “It’s going to take all of this to make this river into a good spot once again … this is the only river in Seattle, and this is where we used to live.”

South Park community advocate Paulina Lopez asked if any of the responders had any “a-ha moments” they had learned from this. “Is there something you learned from this experience?”

Replies included: It’s hard to be holistic in the regulatory world – it’s frustrating “because information gets caught in one corner. … It’s very difficult to keep the whole connected.”

Also: Hearing people’s concern about air, from the fire. The EPA has been working on community air monitoring plans and tools they can use during an emergency. “As we start to practice that plan … commuication to the community is very important.” So they’re pondering ways of coordinating communication.

“This was very scary,” added a community member. “My house shook. There was no communication, from any agency” – even from Alert Seattle, no messages such as “the fire’s under control.”

Rasmussen observed that regulators and responders really should have tested because they knew foam was being used and that would have broken down anything that would have led to a sheen, leading to a “false sense” that nothing had gone wrong. He also asked regulators to approach Seattle Iron & Metal and ask them to “boom their barges when they come in.” If not, the community should ask them to do that as a sign “they are listening to us.”

He said even though the fire in the end maybe wasn’t so bad, “it could have been tragic – we could have had hundreds of people lose their lives in South Park” if it had been worse, and this area is perhaps unlike any other in the state of Washington, wth people living so close to something that could kill them. “We need to have a plan down here in the valley” in case of catastrophe. Currently the city only has a “plan for the entire city.” And that, he said, is not good enough – so the awareness sparked by the fire’s aftermath should be seen as “an opportunity.”