The Inevitable Then
For Waverly, Tennessee
When the train derailed
in downtown Waverly,
some children wondered
how such thunder
could erupt on a perfect starry night.
Some people thought
an aftershock
from the Parsons quake
a week before
was conspiring to keep the town awake.
The domino tumble
of twenty four cars
turned dystopian
the humble idyll
and among the wreckage two dragons lay,
bellies filled
with liquid gas
ready to belch
each a fountain of fire
at the blink of an eye or break of day.
The shock was raw,
dust still settling,
the railway blocked,
downtown covered
by boxcar carcasses sprawled in a spree.
The tanker shells
lay like possums,
quiet as gravestones
toppled by time,
eerily buried in the twisted debris.
The long night
turned to morning,
and the fog dispersed
like a crowd grown impatient
as hope grew stronger with the brightening light
that the very worst
had been avoided.
With two fire trucks
standing by,
the way was cleared to clear the site.
With chain and hammer,
courage and skill,
crews and cranes
set to the labor
of the layered intricate untangling,
ever delicate
with the dragons,
even daring
to drag one off
the blockaded rails inch by inch.
The air was frigid
as was the hose-water
keeping the sleepers
drowsy with cold
until the hazmat team arrived.
The breeze turned warm
the next afternoon,
an abrupt about-face
of 30 degrees,
and the sun was an omen in the sky.
Twenty minutes
before the transfer,
checking the vitals,
all signs go.
Then the then. The inevitable then.
At 2:48
a vapor trail
was spotted seeping
from the sleeper…
The liquid gas boiled in an instant!
A massive fireball
visible for miles
unleashed a heat scythe,
an incinerating ripple
devouring mercilessly all in its radius,
extinguishing the lives
of the noble sixteen,
leveling buildings,
flinging shrapnel
over the town in a firestorm mania,
hundreds injured
flooding the burn units,
ambulances speeding to
Atlanta, Cincinnati,
a 20-foot crater, the grand finale.
Where to place
the blame for this?
The engineer
who failed to release
the brake that wore the wheel down
that sent the train
catapulting
like so many
bowling pins,
a strike on downtown Waverly?
Or the transport chief
who cooled his gas
to liquid fuel
and poured it all
into a tanker with a single wall?
Or Mother Nature’s
negligence
to let slip through
her winter net
a balmy day to trigger the blast?
Or that human
tendency
that once the initial
threat has passed
to let one’s guard down a little way?
Or none but this:
and that is, to live
by learning is
a way of sorrow,
slow tracks laid toward a better day?
NOTES
— At about 10:30 p.m. on February 22, twenty-four cars of a 92-car Louisville and Nashville Railroad freight train derailed in the downtown area of Waverly due to a wheel disintegration due to a brake left engaged. Among the debris were two tanker cars carrying liquefied petroleum gas (propane, or LPG) in what proved to be inadequate single-walled containers. Two days later, on February 24, hazmat units came to transfer the liquid propane from the wrecked tankers. This day turned out to be significantly warmer than what it had been the previous few days. This warming trend is a possible culprit in creating propane instability. A vapor leak was noticed right before beginning the transfer, and before anyone could even react, the leak triggered a BLEVE (a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion), a massive explosion that destroyed nearby buildings, killed sixteen people, including the police chief Guy Barnett and the fire chief Wilbur York, wounded over 200 others, and left a 20- ft crater, impacting federal hazmat procedures far into the future, including the creation of FEMA (The Federal Emergency Management Agency).
— An aftershock from the Parson’s quake: According to the USGS, there was a magnitude 2.2 earthquake 8km north of Parsons, Tn at 6:06PM on February 15, 1978. Parsons is roughly 40 miles sw of Waverly as the crow flies.
