My family and I live in Clark, Wyo., on the
Montana-Wyoming border. I used to tell people that I lived on the
edge of Yellowstone country. Nowadays, though, I admit that I live
in an industrial zone — the kind of place where things can
get dangerous and sometimes go very wrong.
Early in the
evening of Aug. 11, a neighbor called to say that our area of some
35 households had been ordered to evacuate because of a “blowout”
at the Crosby gas well just up the road. A drill rig had punctured
a high-pressure chamber some 8,500 feet down the hole, and the well
casing had failed under the strain. Short of an explosion or fire,
a blowout is the most serious accident one of these wells can
experience.
We later learned that the incident had
occurred much earlier, at 2 p.m., when rig workers spotted drilling
fluids and methane gas erupting up and down the county road, with
some of the blowholes 150 feet away from the rig. We also learned
that officials of Windsor of Wyoming LLC and its contract crews
spent three hours trying to deal with the problem before calling in
people from volunteer emergency services. Then they used up yet
another hour trying to “evaluate” the situation. Meanwhile, none of
us were told that anything was going on.
That afternoon,
I’d had a scratchy throat, watery eyes and a runny nose.
Unfortunately, that was nothing new; I assumed it was caused by the
dust and diesel fumes that had become part of my life. But right
after my neighbor called, I noticed that the air seemed thick
enough to taste. We debated loading up our horses, but quickly
decided to just get our dogs and people into the pickups and blast
out of there — as fast as we could.
For the next
three days, while we camped out with friends or in motels 40 miles
away, 8 million cubic feet of methane and vaporized drilling fluids
were released into the atmosphere as the company tried to “kill”
the well.
My neighbors and my family were kept in the
dark about what was happening at the well site. Nor could the
company representatives, elected and appointed state officials,
county disaster and emergency workers tell us what to expect in the
aftermath of what was now called the Windsor blowout. They just
kept repeating that a blowout of this magnitude was a “one in a
million” occurrence.
What we found most infuriating is
that for eight years — during which time Windsor was
responsible for three toxic spills and fined for illegal dumping of
drilling fluids — we had tried to get our small community to
prepare for a disaster like this. Again and again, my neighbors and
I asked how a 12-member volunteer first-response team could handle
industrial accidents, how our neighborhood could be evacuated
safely on a narrow, one-way gravel road, and how medical aid could
get to us from 40 miles away.
We reached out to Wyoming
Gov. Dave Freudenthal and his appointees at the Department of
Environmental Quality, the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and
the State Lands Board. We talked to elected officials, from the
conservation district to state legislators to Wyoming’s small
congressional delegation. We worked with local first responders,
and we attempted to open a dialogue with industry representatives.
Again and again, we were brushed off and insulted —
called obstructionists and alarmists, unpatriotic and unrealistic,
dismissed as annoying nuts. Well, call us crazy, but as the Windsor
blowout demonstrated, accidents do happen — serious,
dangerous accidents. We need to be prepared. We need to take a hard
look at oil and gas operations throughout Wyoming and throughout
the West, scrutinizing environmental and safety records of
operators, keeping inventories of toxic chemicals, and demanding
realistic evacuation plans.
We were lucky no one was hurt
here in Clark, Wyo., but what have we learned? The week after the
blowout, Windsor got an Oil and Gas Commission permit to conduct
seismic exploration — using shallow blast charges to chart
underground gas pockets — on the same property where the
accident occurred. A week after that, the company got the go-ahead
to resume drilling on the site of the blowout. Most of us are back
in our homes now, but we don’t feel safe or comfortable. Some
of us are suffering rashes, respiratory ailments, headaches,
insomnia and other symptoms of stress. And many of us are ready to
run.
Deb Thomas lives in Clark, Wyoming, and
works as an organizer for the Powder River Basin Resource
Council.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline When a gas pipeline blows, you get out fast.
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