National Pipeline Safety Day

Floor Speech

NATIONAL PIPELINE SAFETY DAY -- (Senate - June 10, 2009)

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, this morning I rise to remind all of us of a promise our government has made to the American people. It is an unspoken trust that certain things in our lives and communities are taken care of, that we don't have to think much about because we trust our government to keep us safe.

I think most Americans turn on the tap each day and expect the water they drink to be safe, and they probably do not think a lot about it. We expect if there is an emergency we will be able to pick up the phone and dial 9-1-1 and someone will answer and send help to us.

That is exactly what the people who lived in Bellingham, WA, used to think about oil and gas pipelines, if they thought about them at all. But all of our senses of safety and innocence were shattered 10 years ago today when tragedy struck for three families, and an entire community came together to
grieve and to learn and eventually stand up and say: Never again.

June 10, 1999, was a quiet sunny day in Bellingham, WA. For a lot of the students there it was the last day of school for the year. That should have been how it remained--as a day when kids played and celebrated about the coming of summer. Unfortunately, due to a series of mistakes and neglectful actions, it is now remembered as a day of fear and loss that the community still grieves.

Ten years ago today, around 3:30 in the afternoon on the west coast, a gasoline pipeline that ran through Bellingham, underground and near Whatcom Falls Park, ruptured, releasing more than a quarter of a million gallons of gasoline into Whatcom Creek. That gas ignited, sending a huge fireball racing down the entire creek, destroying everything in its path for more than a mile. It created this huge plume of smoke that rose more than 20,000 feet into the air.

The photo behind me was taken just moments after that explosion. Minutes before this, it was just a quiet creek, and this is what it looked like. That dramatic explosion took the lives, tragically, of three young people. Stephen Tsiorvas and Wade King were playing along the banks of the creek when this tremendous fireball ran across the water and set everything around them ablaze. They were both badly injured, and Stephen threw Wade into the creek and jumped in himself to try to soothe their burns. The boys were burned over 90 percent of their bodies and both died the next day. They were both just 10 years old.

The same afternoon, the same time, 18-year-old Liam Wood, who had just graduated from high school 5 days earlier, was fly fishing along this creek. He was overcome by the fumes, lost consciousness, and drowned. Stephen, Wade, and Liam were innocent victims of a horrific accident. But it was an accident that could have been and should have been prevented.

Pipeline networks stretch across the entire country. They run under our homes, they run by our schools, and our offices. Most people do not even know they are there. In fact, former Bellingham Police Chief Don Pierce, who was on this scene that day back in 1999, was recently quoted as he said:

As I was standing there none of it made any sense because creeks don't catch on fire. I don't think I knew that there was a gas pipeline that ran under there.

The chief of police didn't know there was a gas pipeline underneath.

Nationwide, the Office of Pipeline Safety oversees more than 2.3 million miles of pipeline that transports hazardous liquids and natural gas under communities across the country. They perform a very important service, bringing oil and essential products to our homes and businesses.

Prior to this accident in Bellingham, WA, I rarely heard about them myself and, like most Americans, I just assumed they were safe. At first I thought the Bellingham explosion was a fluke, something that never happens. Then, when I started to investigate this issue, I was astonished by what I learned. It turned out that what happened in Bellingham that day was not an isolated occurrence. In fact, it was not even rare.

According to the Office of Pipeline Safety, from 1986 until the time of this accident in 1999, there had been more than 5,500 incidents resulting in 310 deaths and 1,500 injuries.

Not only had these accidents destroyed families, they had destroyed the environment. At that time, 6 million gallons of hazardous liquid were being released by these incidents every year--6 million gallons. That is like having an oil spill the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster every 2 years. The environmental damage was estimated to cost $1 billion.

In addition to this horrific loss that was sustained by these three Bellingham families, this explosion caused massive environmental damage. In fact, I had been scheduled to be at this exact site just a few weeks later to dedicate a great, newly restored, salmon spawning ground. When I went there and saw the damage after the explosion, I was shocked. That blast had destroyed all the plant and animal life in the creek, and a once very lush and diverse habitat had been burned to ashes.

Again, our community was not unique. At that time, on average, our Nation was suffering one pipeline accident every single day. While Bellingham may not have been unique in our tragedy, we were one of a kind in our response. Today, 10 years after the unthinkable happened, the story of the Bellingham natural gas explosion is also a story of how a community came together to tackle a nationwide problem and protect other Americans from coast to coast. As we together learned about the problems with inspection and oversight of our national pipeline system, the community channeled their grief into action.

Through research, I found out there were inadequate laws, insufficient oversight, too few inspections, and not enough trained inspectors, as well as a lack of awareness about these pipeline dangers. I learned one of the most important public safety offices, the Office of Pipeline Safety, was underfunded and neglected.

I asked the inspector general of the Department of Transportation to investigate the Office of Pipeline Safety and provide recommendations for how we could make this system work better, and I got to work writing a bill to improve pipeline safety in America.

It turned out to be a very long, hard fight to convince Congress this was something we had to do something about. The people of Bellingham stood with me every single step of the way. The parents of the young victims who were tragically lost on this date came to Washington, DC, to testify. So did Bellingham Mayor Mark Asmundson, and Carl Weimer, who is now head of the Pipeline Safety Trust.

That trust came into being thanks to the efforts of families and a group called SAFE Bellingham, that had organized to fight for the better pipeline safety and accident prevention measures.

So together with them and the great support of colleagues here in the Senate--Senator John McCain took a tremendous lead as chair of the committee, and I thank him for that; former Senators Slade Gorton and Fritz Hollings came together; Senator Cantwell; Congress Members Jack Metcalf, Rick Larsen; many others--together we worked very hard and passed and President Bush finally signed into law our legislation in 2002 to give the Office of Pipeline Safety the resources and the muscle it needed to keep Americans safe. That law improved the training of pipeline personnel. It raised the penalty for safety violations. It invested in new technology that was badly needed so we could improve pipeline safety. It improved the inspection practices and, importantly, expanded authority to our States to conduct their own safety activities.

So children today in every corner of our State are safer because the people of Bellingham stood up and said: We do not want this to happen ever again.

But I am here today to remind us, 10 years later, that the work is not done. While our law has greatly reduced the number of pipeline tragedies, there still are accidents every year. That is why I am on the floor today to introduce a Senate resolution designating June 10 as National Pipeline Safety Day. I am introducing this resolution to remind all of our communities to remain vigilant and to encourage their State and local governments to continue to promote pipeline safety and to create public awareness of the pipelines that run under and through every one of our communities.

For me, this 10-year anniversary is a reminder of a day of terrible pain we must never forget. But it is also a reminder that we cannot just assume someone else is taking care of things. We cannot slip back to where we were before. We have to stay vigilant and continue to work to improve the safety of our pipeline system. That is the best way we can continue to celebrate and honor Steven, Wade, and Liam.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 181 which was submitted earlier today.

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