POLSON - Ron Kohler focuses on earthworms dead at the bottom of the brush from her house before Flathead Lake, and the skunk cabbage death on the shores of spring, and wondered: What comes Next?
At its west, the sea-bed tramway is broken, where several teams have dug test excavation, two cisterns, a pond and installed two large carbon filter.
At its East, men are more in the workplace a ditch deep ditch along one side of the house Kohler, in an effort to funnel of smoke, gas
Forced, Kohler and his wife Barbara, their home for one night last week.
For its neighbours, north of the summer at home, where he
And Barbara temporarily displaced, 150 metres to the south to be, the location of the lake, where engineers first thought casts thousands of litres of gasoline, which, according to a recent truck wreck ends.
Instead, during that period, fuel its way northward, in the face of the earth, after a predefined route in prehistory, and Kohler, home in a part of the Ground Zero Battle to gather before the gas reached Flathead Lake.
If the accident took place two months from now, the waves would Lapping at Kohler-shore. But Flathead still 10 meters in full pool, and water in the pan East Bay is always between 150 and 200 meters, from which it will be presented in June.
“This is just buying time,” says Kohler, head in the background image on the bed of the lake.
“They talk about the establishment of a sewage treatment plant,” says his son, Robert, lives in the vicinity of Finley Point. “They have shown us, not images, but how to describe it is great. ”
How big?
“Grease treat enough water to the town of 8000,” says Ron Kohler.
Right here on her front lawn of the East Bank. What’s next?
If the gas does not come soon, perhaps.
The accident took place the afternoon of April 2. The truck driver tank double in possession of the cave transport Billings said that the reports of the Volunteer Fire Department, on stage, he pointed to a mirror of the right rear wheel of his second boat tank, which sometimes “puppy”, skidded The sidewalk.
Highway 35 is a narrow, winding road without shoulders for most of its north-south road between what is known as Fulkerson’s Corner, in the south-east of the flat head and Bigfork.
The gap seems wheelbarrow sucked, young animals inside, where he was overthrown. As foreshadowed long, the ground broke his head tankers as a sheet metal box, the release of 6380 litres of petrol.
Despite the winter and a wet spring, the soil until the fuel When quickly. There was no merger of gas, which means that virtually every drop had disappeared before the authorities could begin recovery efforts.
The tractor rig and the first oil remained upright, and on the highway. The long bar association of these two vessels, the film, in the wake of returned, and gasoline spilled in a 205-foot section of the barrow pit.
The accident Highway 2:40 arrested 35 hours for a six-hour period, was reduced to a transit station since the accident site, and has forced some students Polson - who, as a general rule, a 10 or a bus, and miles home - Detour more than 70 miles around Flathead Lake, to dot-Finley will do after school so far.
Mary Feistner bus drivers got back to Polson approximately 9 hours at night.
In a report from the insurance company vehicle Trucking, Carolina Casualty, Paul Rodgers of Cedar Creek Engineering said crews removes 1413 tons of contaminated soil from the crash, as 21 metres deep, as the beat before Foundation. Rodgers believes that the conquest of excavations 1539 gallons of gasoline overturned.
This 4841 gallons still wending its way beneath the surface, toward the lake bed, and apparently under Ron and Barbara Kohler’s yard and landscape.
The Kohler bought the property 20 years and have built their homes before 17 years. At that time, it was the only country in this part of the coastline.
Today it is one of 17 houses that share a good measure between experts and Kohler Highway 35
Just meters from the path of gasoline appears to be following both tested ever since the crash.
“This is good news,” says Ron Kohler’s happening, the President of the Association of the House and of the landlord’s house. “This leads to two or three owners concerned, contrary to the entire sub-division.”
What is the value of her parents, the lake at home? Robert miracle.
“There are 5000 litres of gas under their house,” he says. “You think someone is there to buy? What happens if we do not once sat on the beach in the summer, because it emits a smell of gasoline? ”
There are dozens of all sources of this part of the eastern shore, and it was
3 1 / 2 days after the incident, that gasartig Kohler noticed a smell in one of their properties, and one on the ground of their neighbours, Colorado Dennis Arnold established in the North.
In the week since, in the spring of death in sub-page covered with their balls. The leaves of skunk cabbage on banks began to shrink and the banana ermatten flowers.
“You have to ask if the trees are still,” said Robert Kohler.
Crews quickly widened, the two tanks of coal and installed carbon filters in the lake there is the bed, in which the feathers Release 100000 litres of water per day. The pond, and absorbent materials, in the case of raw materials which appears suddenly and overloading treatment.
Engineers from several test excavations dug between 9 and 12 metres deep in the bed of the lake, to ensure that the essence was not deeper in the soil and as stealthily their work.
This was not the case.
Several days of tests, according to sources, revealed levels of consistency “organic vapours” - “with their nice words for him,” says Robert - in the case of 120 to 180 parts per million.
On Thursday, but it was riddled with 900 parts per million, and the dissolution of the review of oil at the beginning of 3000 showed, water parts per billion. Robert said, not more than 50 parts per billion is safe for drinking water.
“I think they want to see raw materials,” he says, “so that they know for certain where he is.”
“It’s a fairly complex incident,” said Cooley Carey, a spokesman for the Lake County Office of Emergency Management. “Engineers are surprised how far north of the source of fuel. It is already very unpredictable. ”
Each incident is unique, “says Cooley. “But it is a cause more problems because of the way it comes from the mission (mountains) Front,” she says. “Baseless and feathers are so unpredictable. It is very difficult. This is a case where it is not only the soil and garden. Every day there is a new scenario. ”
For Kohler, Thursday, the latest news. Ron seized what they call the storage space at the bottom of their homeland, and was quite certain that the gas, he smelt smoke.
He called Robert, dealing with the assessment of his father, and soon there were people in installing surveillance systems to the facilities inside the apartment, while others dug a ditch in the depths of the house of the Foundation.
The gap was filled with gravel, and the tubes were installed in an effort to end the exhaust gases before in the course of this trip, and at home.
“It was a nightmare,” says Robert.
“For Arnold and me,” says his father, “it was a change of life.”
If that had happened only half an outage miles north of where it did, it was poured gasoline in wetlands along the east coast.
“It would be everywhere,” says Robert.
In other places, such as near Blue Bay, Highway 35 along the coast of Flathead Lake. A similar incident in the summer there would dump thousands of gallons of gasoline directly into Flathead Lake.
Ron Kohler said five or six years, nearly Fulkerson’s Corner, a heavyweight took the blackout “men in white suits” cleanup - which is exactly what he does not know.
“I have never seen a word more,” he says. “I do not know whether hazardous waste or what. Semblé needed for quite a silence.”
In the late 1970’s or early 80, another tanker truck overturned on Highway 35 - not too far from the crash site - and exploded. A house burned close to the earth in the accident.
East-side residents asked for a long time, while a total ban on trucks on Highway 35, to a minimum of restrictions on the types of heavy trucks - and cargo - this way can happen. US Highway 93, on the west coast, is a much safer, modern road network, with the streets and around the shoulders, and much of its route is far from the lake, they say.
“I think this type that have a large Truckern lobbyist organization, he never made,” said a resident in the vicinity, Kari Ferguson.
But industry argues Trucking, it is not only prevent the illicit traffic of lorries passing through a highway funded by the Government, it is unfair to the residents in the west of the coast until the shoulders over the movement of trucks.
“Like many highways stop for heavy goods traffic,” Spook Says Stang, Executive Vice President of the Montana Motor Carriers Association. “Are you close to the cut-off of the road from St. Regis to heaven, because it goes along the Clark Fork River? It was an unfortunate coincidence, but I know that the company Trucking is doing everything possible to see and Be it sets corrected. ”
Many prefer Truckern Highway 35, because, although the maximum speed is only 50 km / h, the east bank offers another level as Highway Route 93, on the west bank. Steilen mounted on Highway 93, the most expensive, both in time and fuel consumption, for Truckern.
“Our main argument was likely that the industry pays Trucking
53% of taxes and duties on the roads which are in Montana, although we are only 10 percent of vehicle-miles, “said Stang.” We pay to use that road transport. Unfortunately, as long as we have gas and diesel engines of our vehicles, we must be able to carry them to humans. ”
Still, last week, Jim Lynch, director of the Montana Department of Transportation, to its staff to consider whether the state still has options for limiting heavy goods traffic on Highway 35
The department has long maintained that he could not, because the highway receives federal funding, said Stang and his association would be to say that any attempt would be a form of interference with the functioning of international trade. ”
DOT According to the statistics, between 2003 and 2007, there were 297 car accidents on Highway 35 between Polson and Bigfork, and involved 29 trucks.
Stang, the statistic indicates that if national trends, which represents nearly 22 truck accidents were the mistakes made by other drivers.
But the incident on April 2 steps with someone else, and Robert Kohler says it makes no sense for trucks of materials, damage to Flathead waters from this line, if is a sure way of getting rid of the other side of the lake.
“This road is so narrow, and is located directly on the lakeshore,” he says. “(Highway) 93 is a great big alleys near the highway.”
What’s next? For Kohler, the restrictions on movement of heavy vehicles on Highway 35 may not be that the incident that their lives.
