Whatcom Creek, The Day the Creek Caught Fire
Near Bellingham, Washington
Whatcom Creek runs through the center of Bellingham from Lake Whatcom in the east to the bay in the west. It passes through Whatcom Falls Park, a two-hundred-and-forty-one-acre natural area with four sets of waterfalls and miles of walking trails in the middle of the city. On June tenth, nineteen ninety-nine, the creek was at the center of a disaster that killed three people and damaged property across a wide area of Bellingham.
At three twenty-five in the afternoon, an underground gasoline pipeline operated by Olympic Pipeline Company ruptured at the point where it crossed Whatcom and Hannah Creeks. The pipeline was carrying gasoline south from refineries in Whatcom County toward terminals in Seattle and Portland. A pressure relief valve that had been improperly configured failed to open; a surge of pressure broke the line.
Gasoline began pouring into Hannah Creek, which runs into Whatcom Creek. The creek turned pink. People in the surrounding neighborhoods called nine-one-one to report the smell of gasoline.
The Bellingham Fire Department arrived, evaluated the situation, and evacuated the area. But the spill had continued for nearly an hour and a half before the explosion came. At five-oh-two in the afternoon, the gasoline ignited.
A fireball traveled down Whatcom Creek. The black smoke plume rose thirty thousand feet and was visible from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Anacortes, Washington. The fire exceeded two thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
Three people died. A young man named Liam Wood, eighteen years old, had been fly fishing in the creek and was rendered unconscious by gasoline fumes before the explosion. He drowned.
Two ten-year-old boys, Wade King and Stephen Tsiorvas, were playing near the creek confluence when the explosion occurred. They survived the blast but sustained severe burns and died the next day at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. A three-year federal investigation found multiple failures: improperly trained employees, a faulty computer control system, and a pipeline damaged by a construction crew in nineteen ninety-four that had never been repaired.
Olympic Pipeline and its parent company pleaded guilty to several charges. The settlement was one hundred and twelve million dollars, the largest of its kind at the time. Wade King Elementary School in Bellingham was named in the boy's memory in two thousand and seven.
