02x03 - k*ller Fog

[bunniefuu]

[music playing]

[dramatic music]

[sirens blaring]

BILL DYER: I felt like I was in a w*r zone with the explosions,

the smell of smoke, the smell of burning flesh,

people screaming.

PETER THOMAS: It was the single most deadly automobile

accident in American history.

vehicles, most of them destroyed.

people died.

REPORTER: Identifiable?

No.

Not at all.

PETER THOMAS: More than were injured.

MIKE CURTIS: Total destruction.

If I hadn't been there and eye witnessed it,

I don't believe I could have believed.

PETER THOMAS: The accident happened

along a three-mile stretch of highway long

known for dense, thick fog.

But what was causing the fog?

The victims and their families wanted answers.

[theme music]

[music playing]

PETER THOMAS: The accident occurred on Interstate

in Tennessee on a portion of highway between Chattanooga

and Knoxville.

The highway was constructed through a valley

which lies between the Cumberland

and Great Smoky Mountains.

From the time the highway first opened back in ,

there had been numerous multi-vehicle chain

reaction accidents in the same three-mile section.

The first occurred just four months

after the highway opened.

Three people died in a car pileup.

were injured.

Just one month later, there was a nine car accident.

Although there were no deaths, nine were injured.

During the first six years the highway was open,

there was an average of one multi-car accident each year.

One of the largest was in November of ,

involving more than vehicles.

Six people were k*lled, nearly injured.

All of the accidents had one thing in common--

the sudden appearance of a dense, thick fog reducing

visibility to near zero.

Tennessee State Highway officials

responded by installing fog warning lights to warn drivers

when fog was in the area.

Highway patrol officers were posted

to stand watch every morning along the fog prone area

to make sure drivers slowed down when the fog

warning lights were activated.

The combination of these two systems worked.

For years, there were no major accidents along the fog

prone stretch of Interstate .

But all of that changed on December , .

[sirens blaring]

WOMAN: It's a massive wreck.

Everybody's bumping into everybody.

OPERATOR: I've had several reports.

I've had an expl*si*n in that area,

and they're still piling up.

BILL DYER: As I rolled down the window,

I could hear the cars just crashing into each, other one

after another.

MIKE CURTIS: A motor home hit the front end of my truck

after just seconds, after I had gotten out.

And a vehicle started hitting the back of it.

I'll never forget hearing one, and he hit other cars

and just knocked them out of the way like they were nothing

and came-- crashed just to the right of that motor home.

The expl*si*n was such that it almost knocked me down.

PETER THOMAS: Mike Curtis pulled this -year-old boy

out of the motor home then rescued the boy's mother.

MIKE CURTIS: And I turned and went back to get her husband.

All I could see was fire.

I could smell hair burning.

His coat came off, burning in my hands.

[solemn music]

It was probably the hardest thing I've ever had to witness.

The most helpless feeling I've ever had.

PETER THOMAS: The man burned to death.

people were k*lled, others injured,

making it the largest vehicular accident in American history.

These pictures were taken shortly

after the accident, when most of the fog had dissipated.

MIKE CURTIS: The vehicles that I saw,

I don't even know if you would classify them as vehicles.

What normally was a pickup truck was three foot

in length, bodies still in it.

PETER THOMAS: After years without a serious accident,

the k*ller fog had struck again.

But why?

The families of the dead and injured demanded answers.

They wanted to know what caused the dense, thick fog

on December , .

[music playing]

PETER THOMAS: On December , ,

-year-old Craig Piper was driving his tractor trailer

south on Interstate , on his way to visit

his mother for the holidays.

When he entered the thick, dense fog, visibility was near zero.

Within seconds, he crashed.

[boom]

[tires screeching]

[glass shattering]

[sirens blaring]

The flames were extremely intense,

and I knew there wasn't any way I could get him out.

And I had to stand there and watch

this man burn in his vehicle.

There wasn't really anything I could do.

Flames were too big.

I didn't have a fire extinguisher.

I just had to stand there and watch this man burn alive.

PETER THOMAS: Craig Piper's mother wanted answers and hired

attorney Doug Fees, who was not only a lawyer,

but also an engineer.

She wanted Fees to find out what caused

the terrible fog that was responsible for her son's

death.

She said the two people in that car were k*lled

and that her son had been burned alive in this tractor trailer

and was wondering if there was anything

that I could do to help her.

PETER THOMAS: The accident occurred along Interstate

at its lowest point in the valley,

about a half-mile from where the interstate

crosses the Hiwassee River.

Because of its location, fog has always

been common in this area.

Fog is basically a cloud which forms on the ground.

Fog occurs when there is too much water in the air

for the atmosphere to absorb.

Since cooler air holds less moisture

than warm air and cool air gathers in low lying areas,

the valley through which Interstate passes

is perfect for the formation of natural fog.

But the fog described by the accident victims

was extremely thick and dense.

Was the fog on the day of the accident

naturally produced or was it caused by one or more

of the local industries nearby?

WAYNE T. DAVIS: On those three days,

there was some amount of river fog,

although it was relatively small.

On all three days, there was a very

noticeable emission of fog-related water vapor

from the Bowater facility.

PETER THOMAS: The Bowater Paper Company

is located three miles to the east of the interstate highway.

It is the largest producer of newsprint in North America

and releases large quantities of water vapor into the atmosphere

hours a day as part of the manufacturing process.

Wayne Davis recommended that the state of Tennessee

conduct a more detailed study in order

to understand the cause of the fogging conditions.

The state decided not to fund a more detailed study,

but elected to install a fog warning

system along the highway and posted state troopers

to patrol the fog prone stretch of highway

each and every morning.

For years, the system worked.

Between and , there were

no serious multi-vehicle accidents

along the three-mile stretch of Interstate .

The system worked-- until December , .

[dramatic music]

The Wayne Davis study was an important starting point

for Doug Fees, but the Davis study

was conducted years earlier.

Fees needed to know what caused the fog on December , .

Doug Fees heard about a scientist

who was using computers to track weather

conditions and pollutants.

Was it possible that science could

recreate the weather condition on the day of the accident?

[solemn music]

PETER THOMAS: Attorney Doug Fees wanted

to know if the thick, dense fog on the morning of the accident

had been produced naturally or was caused by one or more

of the local industries or some combination of both.

To find out, he hired Dr. Alan Eschenroeder

who teaches civil engineering at Harvard University.

His area of expertise is risk management,

and he also runs a consulting firm which specializes

in air quality modeling.

Eschenroeder gathered weather information

about the morning of the accident

from Knoxville and Chattanooga airports,

as well as from two nuclear power plants,

one only miles from the scene.

Weather records indicated that there were few, if any, clouds

on the morning of the accident.

Winds were light.

And the temperature dropped rapidly the night

before from a high of degrees in the afternoon

to almost freezing.

This degree drop in temperature

could cause a weather phenomenon called an inversion.

An inversion occurs when the temperature on the ground

is cooler than the temperature in the atmosphere.

This prevents air and moisture from dissipating

into the atmosphere, pushing the moisture

back towards the ground.

Very early on the morning of the accident, a helicopter pilot

flying over Interstate noticed a mushroom-shaped cloud

similar to this one over the Bowater paper

mill smokestacks three miles east of the accident site.

Eschenroeder believes this was visual confirmation

of the inversion.

Water vapor is produced naturally,

coming from evaporation from lakes, streams,

rivers, and ground moisture.

Dr. Eschenroeder calculated that the evaporation rate

of the natural bodies of water in the area

was only gallons per day.

This was barely enough to create even a light fog,

let alone the dense, thick fog described by accident victims

and rescue personnel.

Eschenroeder was convinced-- there

had to be another source of water vapor

which caused the thick fog.

He noticed a series of ponds which

straddled the interstate highway on two sides.

These were wastewater treatment ponds which belong

to the Bowater Paper Plant.

These ponds were used to clean the industrial wastewater

from the paper mill.

In two of the ponds, aerator fans would propel

the water up into the air.

Most of the water dropped back into the ponds.

Some of it did not.

ALAN ESCHENROEDER: And that's called drift.

The drift droplets are things that drift away from the site

of where they are formed.

All the other droplets fall back to Earth

or fall back to the pond where they originate.

So we had to do some original calculations

in an engineering estimate fashion

for emission of those droplets.

PETER THOMAS: Eschenroeder calculated

that these wastewater treatment ponds added million gallons

of water vapor into the atmosphere in the

hours preceding the accident, far more than the gallons

from the natural bodies of water.

At the paper plant itself, an additional . million gallons

of water vapor was being released

each day from the smokestacks.

But it wasn't just water vapor that was being released

from these smokestacks.

Paper plants released what are called

particulates, as waste from the paper production process.

Particulates are microscopic particles

which become surfaces on which water vapor can condense.

And this leads to fog.

You not only had the fog potential from the presence

of the water vapor, but you had a place for it

to form in the surfaces of these microparticles,

these condensation nuclei.

PETER THOMAS: But how could Eschenroeder

tell if the water vapor from the Bowater Paper Plant

three miles away caused the fog on the interstate highway

on the day of the accident?

He found part of the answer on this aerial videotape

shot by a local videographer a few hours after the accident.

Eschenroeder recognized the wind pattern

as a drainage flow, which carries cooler air down

into the valley.

But Eschenroeder needed to know in which direction

the drainage flow was heading.

To do that, he needed to know the exact position

of the airplane.

Using navigational charts, calculating the position

of the sun from the glint angle off the wing and ground

references, he identified the plane's position relative

to the paper mill and the accident site.

The videotape convinced Eschenroeder

that the drainage flow wind pattern was headed

west from the location of the paper mill

towards the accident site.

ALAN ESCHENROEDER: As to the cause of that accident

that day, there's no doubt in my mind that the industrial fog

created by water emissions from that Bowater paper mill

was a major factor--

the major factor, preponderant major factor--

in forming the fog that caused the accident.

PETER THOMAS: Attorney Doug Fees now had scientific evidence

and proceeded with the civil suit he filed

earlier against the Bowater Paper Company

and the state of Tennessee.

[music playing]

PETER THOMAS: As Mike Curtis drove onto Interstate

on the morning of the accident, the sun was so strong he

took his jacket off in the car.

When Curtis approached the fog zone,

the fog warning lights in one direction weren't working

and those in the other direction had

been blinking continuously for three days and were ignored.

The daily police fog patrols had been abandoned years earlier.

Once in the thick fog, visibility was near zero.

Mike Curtis never saw what he hit.

Curtis heard crashes, people crying

for help, the explosions.

I knelt down and asked God to help me to get through it.

PETER THOMAS: He helped a young boy caught inside a motor home.

MIKE CURTIS: A or -year-old boy, so I got out.

His mother was inside screaming, and the adrenaline was pumping.

And I ripped the window out and got her out.

PETER THOMAS: After saving the boy and his mother,

Curtis tried to save the father, but he burned to death.

There was also tragedy for a woman

driving with her granddaughter.

This is all that was left of the car.

OFFICER: This car was smashed completely flat

like an accordion.

TOM L GRAHAM: The car was compacted

down to something in the neighborhood of inches long.

By some miracle, this little girl

lived through the entire thing.

PETER THOMAS: The grandmother died.

Randall McKeehan and his two children

also suffered a loss that day.

They lost a wife and mother when Judith McKeehan burned

to death in the accident.

RANDALL MCKEEHAN: There wasn't no body.

She was over % gone.

It was like she'd been cremated.

And there wasn't nothing to view.

She still had remains, ashes, which I'm not saying

could be identified.

But still knowing that she died in that vehicle,

I did the best I could to get everything, all the ashes out,

and I spread them across that field right out there.

[crying]

And I just--

I guess that was the only thing I knew to do.

PETER THOMAS: Doug Fees' case was

set for trial in , more than three years after the accident.

Bowater disagreed with the scientific calculations

used in the Eschenroeder study and hired

its own scientific expert.

Dr. George McVehil is a meteorologist from Denver.

His study concluded that Bowater's

contribution to the fog on the day of the accident

was less than %.

GEORGE E. MCVEHIL: Our conclusion

was that the fog formed by a natural process due to mixing

of moist air at different altitudes at about o'clock

on the morning of December , after the sun had

come up and heated the ground enough

to start the mixing process.

And that, in a very abbreviated and simplified form,

is what caused the fog on that morning.

PETER THOMAS: But shortly before the trial,

the courts ordered Bowater to release a study it commissioned

in from its own consulting firm, Environmental

Research and Technology.

In it, ERT states that "preliminary evidence suggests

that Bowater operations contribute

to local vapor flux and fogging problems in the Calhoun area."

Doug Fees never got the chance to prove his case in court.

Before the trial, the state of Tennessee

reached an out-of-court settlement with Fees on behalf

of the families he represented.

Because of the malfunctioning fog warning system,

the state settled for $, and also

agreed to install a $ million computerized fog

detection system.

When the fog reaches a certain density,

large signs automatically notify drivers of fog in the area

and sensors trigger gates on key entrance ramps,

closing access to the highway.

Bowater also settled out of court

with victims and families represented

by Doug Fees and other attorneys for $ million.

Bowater continues to maintain that the paper

mill and treatment ponds had nothing to do with the fog

on the day of the accident.

However, Bowater agreed to limit its use

of treatment Pond Number four, which sits near the highway.

AH BARASH: But the issue isn't whether or not

Pond is a contributor to fog, whether natural water

conditions that are in the community

are contributors to fog.

The real point is that fog exists in that particular place

from time to time.

It's natural fog, and the traffic control

mechanisms on the highway have to be

sufficient to warn motorists.

PETER THOMAS: Despite the settlement

and the new fog warning system, many still

believe the highway is unsafe.

Warnings are never the answer when you can do better.

Closure of Pond is not enough to solve the problem.

[solemn music]

The chance of this happening again

has been substantially reduced, but the risk

has not been eliminated, nor has the hazard been eliminated.

This is only the third time I've been here.

It's-- and any officer would tell you that,

you know, this is a--

to me, it's a memorial site.

That bridge is a memorial because a lot of people

died here, needlessly.

[music playing]