(The following story by Christopher Dinsmore appeared on The Virginian-Pilot website on January 17.)
GRANITEVILLE, S.C. — Rail tank cars that were filled with chlorine tumbled like bowling pins three blocks away. The concussions drove Charles Reyes-Little Eagle from sleep.
He and his wife, Brenda Reyes, volunteer with the local fire department, and they quickly headed to the fire station a block away.
“By the time we got in the yard, the gray mist was up to our knees,” Reyes said. “It floated up to me, and I said this is bad, this is poison.”
She went next door to rouse her neighbors, urging her husband of 11 years to follow them to safety. He ignored her, running down Main Street toward the crash. Banging on doors until her hands bruised, Reyes woke several neighbors as the sickening fumes ate at her eyes, nose and lungs. Jumping in her car, she drove south away from the crash.
She stopped at U.S. 1, the main road between Aiken, S.C., and Augusta, Ga., to catch her breath.
“Then I heard over the radio that my husband was down,” she said , referring to her emergency radio. She turned back to look for her husband. “I thought he was dead. They just said he went down at the firehouse.”
Their story is one of many coming out of the Norfolk Southern Railroad wreck in Graniteville 10 days ago. The nation’s deadliest freight-rail accident since 1978, the disaster has left a wake of dislocation, despair and death, inconveniencing many and devastating others in this close-knit, yet diverse Southern mill town.
“A community like this, everybody knows somebody who was tragically affected,” said the Rev. James Young of Calvary Baptist Church in Graniteville. “We all deal with grief in different ways, at different speeds. We’re still in a state of shock, a state of uncertainty.”
For many, that uncertainty began to be resolved late last week as several thousand residents began returning to their homes. Teams of scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency are inspecting the homes of anyone who wants to be reassured that it’s safe to return.
The textile mill also is reopening where it can, and the last of the schools will reopen Tuesday.
Only the heart of downtown, where the wreck occurred, remains closed, and it’s uncertain when it might fully reopen. The railroad has cleared away nearly all of the wreckage, and no signs of chlorine are left in the air.
Norfolk Southern, headquartered in Norfolk, likely has seen only a tiny portion of the claims that will be filed against it. Still, most Graniteville residents and local officials heaped praise on the railroad for its response.
“They’ve bent over backwards to get what we need,” said Aiken County Sheriff Michael Hunt. “They want to make sure that things are put right again.”
Some, however, were frustrated and angered by the railroad’s claims process and have hired lawyers.
Besides compensation, the community wants something else from the railroad. It wants to slow the trains down.
The Jan. 6 wreck was the second fatal train accident in two months in Graniteville. On Nov. 10, a car with five workers from the town’s big textile mill complex tried to beat a train at a crossing. It didn’t make it. All five people were killed.
“It’s just strange,” said Philip Napier, chief of the Graniteville-Vaucluse-Warrenville Volunteer Fire Department. “If the cars can only go 35 miles per hour, why can the trains go 49 miles per hour?”
After that accident, Napier went before the Aiken County Council to urge a law to slow the trains. But the county did not have the authority, as train speed is regulated federally.
“With the number of trains coming through carrying chlorine and whatnot, I said what if we were to have a derailment,” he said. “We could have a real disaster. I said that, you could check the minutes.”
Little did he know how prophetic his words would be.
“If the speed had been lower, the accident would have occurred, but it wouldn’t have been as bad,” said State Rep. Roland Smith, whose district includes part of Graniteville.
The Jan. 6 accident apparently occurred because a switch wasn’t returned to the correct position. The Federal Railroad Administration formally asked railroads Tuesday to better document and communicate when a switch is changed.
On Friday, Norfolk Southern implemented the recommendations, said Robert Fort, a railroad spokesman.
No decision has been made about train speeds in Graniteville, Fort said. The railroad is first focused on cleaning up and then rebuilding the rail line there so it can resume service.
Even as Reyes-Little Eagle ran up Main Street toward the train wreck, Napier was speeding toward the scene after hearing the emergency call at home.
He heard one of his men on the radio saying he couldn’t breathe. He sent out a call for all to get out. But he went on.
Nearing the wreck, he saw the engineer lying in the street and the conductor with him in the eerie yellowish haze. He rolled down his window and the gas hit him.
“I just had to drive off and leave them,” Napier said. “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
Brenda Montgomery, mother of a fire department captain, also drove toward the scene. A nurse, she thought she could help. The gas cloud enveloped her car as she neared the wreck and came upon three men, including the engineer on the street.
The men loaded the engineer, Chris Seeling, into her car, and the four of them sped off toward the hospital. As they got out of town, she rolled the windows down to help get the men air, and Seeling was coughing a lot. Even so, he apologized to Montgomery for coughing all over her car.
“I started praying for him that the Lord would give him breath,” she said.
The 58-year-old Reyes-Little Eagle was also praying. He’d heard Napier’s order to get out, but he wanted to save people.
“I saw the mist coming at me,” he said. “By the time I turn around, my nose, my eyes, my mouth, my lungs, they were burning. I asked the Creator: You brought me home from three tours in Vietnam, you bring me home now. …
“I fell down. Something picked me up. I heard a voice: ‘Wake up, don’t sleep.’ I took off. Something gave me power.”
He started going house-to-house, banging on doors, yelling “Poison gas! Poison gas! Get out! Get out!”
Reciting a Kiowa warrior’s prayer, he staggered up the street, falling down, throwing up, rising again and going to another door. He fell for good on the fire station lawn, but was picked up by someone in a truck before his wife arrived.
“I couldn’t save everybody,” he cried. “I tried. And don’t call me a hero either. I was just doing my job.”
Fire Chief Napier echoed the sentiment: “There’s no heroes in my department; we’re all survivors.”
Seven of the fire department’s 40 volunteers had to be treated for exposure to chlorine gas, and one remains hospitalized in grave condition.
Authorities now say that 550 people were treated for chlorine exposure, although only about two dozen were hospitalized. Some of those remain in grave condition, including the conductor.
Altogether, about 5,500 residents were evacuated. Most who were exposed are expected to recover without long-term effects, but some will suffer for the rest of their lives. And nine died. Despite Montgomery’s prayers, Seeling died in the hospital. The nurse was relieved to learn later he knew God.
“We never know what minute or what hour that we’ll need salvation,” she said.
The other dead include six employees of the Avondale Mills complex, a trucker waiting to make a mill delivery and a man who died at a nearby home.
A funeral Wednesday for Willie Shealey, a supervisor at Woodhead Mill, drew several hundred people to a borrowed church in neighboring Langley. They spilled out of the sanctuary into the lobby. During the Rev. Young’s eulogy, a train whistle blew hauntingly in the distance.
The graveside service at the Warrenville Cemetery began with a young woman singing “Amazing Grace” a cappella.
“This family hurts in ways that are hard for most of us to understand,” Young said. “Sudden, unexpected tragedy has come into their lives.”
As the service ended, Shealey’s wife, Sherry, placed a rose atop the coffin, followed by each of their three sons. The middle son, Travis, already a young man, bent and kissed the mahogany-colored box.
The small fire department has seen its share of death in recent months – the five mill workers in the November grade crossing accident, a woman who drove into a pond and drowned, a woman who burned to death in her car, several people run over in the road and now nine in the chemical spill.
“Emotionally, my men are destroyed,” said Napier, fighting back tears while at the busy command center in a vacant Kmart parking lot. “You volunteer to help people, but when you can’t, it’s rough. This is our community, our friends, our family that we lost, including the people in the mill who didn’t live here. They still worked here and we’re all family. …
“It’s about all you can bear. Our community is strong. Our fire department is, too. But this is rough. Somehow, we’ll get back to where we were.”
Suffering from chlorine inhalation, Reyes was reunited with her husband at a fire station in Langley , where a decontamination station had been set up.
Workers there flushed her eyes, douched her nose and mouth, and took her clothes away. They stuck her in a shower and washed her down. They also confiscated her car.
After decontamination, the couple was transported to an Augusta hospital for eight hours of breathing treatments.
Previously married to others, they have 10 children between them : five living around Hampton Roads, a daughter in the Army at Fort Monroe, three sons who work as fishermen out of Hampton and a son who raises clams on the Eastern Shore.
“I just want my children to know I’m OK,” Reyes said. “I’m going to live.”
They were staying in a motel room at the GuestHouse Inn in Aiken. Children ran around the motel’s courtyard as their parents and other adults lounged on the patios and balconies.
“I’ve done had enough of hotels,” said Lois Craig, staying there with her young son. “It’s hard for a 5-year-old to be at a hotel all day long without his toys. He keeps asking when we’re going home.”
No one knew when they might go home. Chlorine gas is a corrosive agent that eats away at metals. Napier fears that the fire station and the two engines, ambulance and service truck there are ruined.
“My business is in the ground-zero zone,” said Napier, who owns a combination hardware store and florist. “It’s closed now and possibly destroyed.”
Reyes, now 57, expects the home she bought when she was 18 also will be destroyed.
“My house is pretty low to the ground,” she said. “Everything is gone.”
Norfolk Southern opened an assistance center in Aiken to begin processing claims from Graniteville residents on Jan. 7, a day after the early morning accident.
It misstepped at first with a release statement on the back of the checks that read: “Endorsement of this check constitutes a full, final and complete release of all claims growing out of an accident occurring at Graniteville on 1/6/2005.”
The ensuing confusion about the scope of that release language prompted the railroad to issue a statement by the end of the day. It clarified that cashing the checks only covers the intended expenses, not subsequent claims.
Most people welcomed and praised the railroad’s help.
“They’re doing real well,” said Brian Host, who lives three blocks from the accident. “I’ve had no problem every time I come down here. I’m not trying to beat them. Hopefully, they won’t try to beat me out.”
Yet some were trying to beat the railroad. The Aiken County Sher iff’s office reported that more than 60 people tried to change their driver’s license address to Graniteville in the week after the accident. One woman was arrested for obtaining property under false pretenses and arrest warrants had been issued for 15 others.
Brent Hiers was in line Thursday, attempting for the second time to get reimbursed for hotel expenses the 19-year-old incurred with his pregnant 16-year-old fiancee.
“They accused me of writing my own hotel receipt,” Hiers said. “All the people doing fraud make it harder for the people who got hurt. It embarrassed me, making it look like I was doing fraud.”
Rob Fender, the Norfolk Southern regional claims manager who is managing the assistance center, said it’s a difficult process.
“We’re trying to be lenient, but there’s a lot of fraud going on here,” said Fender of Virginia Beach. “There’s the potential for people who do have legitimate claims to run into trouble without legitimate ID.”
But most were simply inconvenienced and growing frustrated as the evacuation persisted and they tried to live in cramped hotel rooms.
“I don’t like sitting in a hotel room,” said Daniel Sheppard, who was staying in one in south Aiken with his fiancee and her two teenage daughters. “My fiancee tells me I’m antsy. I just need to work.”
They live in Warrenville, well away from the accident, but within the one-mile evacuation zone. He’s a pipe fitter, but can’t work because all of his tools are at the house.
The railroad has been covering their expenses and giving them meal vouchers to eat at Shoney’s. “I’m getting sick and tired of Shoney’s,” he said Wednesday.
Sheppard and nearly half of those evacuated were allowed to return home Thursday.
As Scot Brady washed out his garage, where the family’s two dogs had been left, he was glad to be home, but worried.
“I think the long-term thing will probably be a little bit of a stigma to the community,” Brady said. “If you have property, it might not be worth as much because who would want to buy a home where there was such a big chemical accident.”
Up Jasmine Drive from Brady, James Bryant sat on the porch of his home waiting for the home inspection team to show up. He and his wife had been living with their daughter a few miles away for a week.
The two-man inspection team showed up around 12:30 p.m. They took a GPS reading outside the house, then tested the air in two rooms and found no trace of chlorine. After 10 minutes, they gave Bryant a form with the test results.
“Now I’ve got a piece of paper in there that my wife will be able to see and say ‘Oh, it’s OK ,’ ” he said.
For many, the emotional scars will linger. And a few may never be the same again.
“How do we get our lives back? ” Napier asked. “They could give us a million dollars, but it wouldn’t mean a thing compared to what we’ve lost. … The material things can be replaced, but the scars within our hearts won’t be.”
Sitting on the edge of the hotel bed, gasping for breath, Reyes-Little Eagle said he’s a runner who used to have no trouble breathing. Now his medical papers say he should refrain from work for an “unknown” period because of chlorine inhalation sickness.
“I’ve got to stay busy, I’m a workaholic,” he said. ” I want to go out there and help, but I can’t.”
Napier praised Reyes-Little Eagle, whom was voted firefighter of the year last year.
“He works his tail off,” Napier said. “He’ll come out to the department at 6 a.m. and work until after sunset.”
Now it’s difficult to stand and talk at length. “It took the paint off the firehouse trucks,” Reyes-Little Eagle said. “What do you think it’s doing to my lungs?”