Recent television images of chemical smoke billowing from overturned trucks in central Utah raised a question: What if these accidents had occurred on congested freeways in the state's most densely populated area?
The answer, of course, is that they have occurred - or at least similar types of chemical spills have clouded our air and continue doing so with some frequency.That raises a second question: Has local government done everything it can to warn when such accidents happen?
The answer to that, unfortunately, is no. Five years ago Salt Lake City suffered its worst hazardous chemical leak in recent memory. At the time, officials said the city needed to erect a series of warning sirens to avert future problems. But silence still prevails.
We live in a stimulus-response society. Like Pavlov's dog, we salivated over the alarm bells of that leak when it happened, calling for reforms and procedures, then soon forgot and went about our merry ways. Today, given the state's rapid growth rate, many residents of the Salt Lake area may never have learned of this near-tragedy.
If so, let me educate you. It began on a lazy Sunday afternoon, the worst possible time for an emergency, when a hose coupling came loose from a railroad tanker at Thatcher Chemical, 1900 W. Fortune Road. Many people in the area were enjoying leisure pursuits. Many others were in church. They couldn't have seen or heard warnings about the invisible plume of sulfur dioxide even if the city had been able to persuade Sunday television and radio crews to broadcast them.
Employees waited more than 30 minutes to call the fire department while the gas spread. Only two police officers were available to begin evacuating 13,000 people. When help arrived, much of it drove right through the plume and required help of its own. Later, other people innocently drove into the gas, learning first-hand of its itching and burning symptoms.
In the end, 322 people were sent to hospitals and 200 were treated by an emergency command post. The good news is no one died or suffered serious injury.
Not long after, the mayor's Local Emergency Planning Committee unveiled a plan to install sirens at strategic locations to warn people of future emergencies. The cost for three sirens was announced at $75,000. Five years later, the committee still meets, but it has yet to raise the money.
Jeffery G. Rylee, a fire battalion chief who sits on the committee, said much has been done to improve the organization necessary to respond to future disasters. He doesn't hesitate to say emergency workers are better prepared than they were five years ago, and he hopes a new federal alert system one day will provide chips in televisions and radios that allow emergency workers to automatically turn on sets and communicate with people.
But that day is far off. Sirens are available now and serve much the same purpose.
The committee has tried to get donations. It has tried for a community block grant - federal money distributed annually by the city. But the request never gets serious consideration.
Human nature has a lot to do with it. Once an emergency passes, cities would no sooner erect warning sirens than they would erect a stop sign at an intersection where no one yet had been killed. Public officials know that advance planning seldom gets immediate praise, but they forget that it virtually never results in regrets.
Make no mistake. Chemical spills are not rare occurrences. Last month a study released in Washington found that toxic chemical spills or accidents are reported about five times per month in Utah. They happened 60 times in Salt Lake County from 1993-1995. Statewide, 11 incidents forced evacuations during that time.
State officials note that many of these spills were minor, and most posed no danger to society. But that is hardly a reason for society to let down its guard.
Hazardous waste spills can be as fearsome to modern life as the bubonic plague was to medieval Europe. They can strike without warning and spread their deadly gasses before many have a chance to react or escape. As the recently evacuated residents of Mona, Lehi and Genoa know, a community can never be too prepared for the unexpected.
The question isn't why Salt Lake City has failed to erect warning sirens, it is why the rest of the Wasatch Front hasn't done so, either.