Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2004 | 9:04 a.m.
WE GOT AWAY with another accident. Who noticed?
Rob Schlegel did. So did I, but I put it where I put most important matters of the day which means I was bound to forget about it, which I did. Fortunately, Rob jogged my memory.
The story was not a major one, thankfully, because no one got hurt. The other newspaper devoted less than a handful of inches in the Sunday edition covering the event and that was about the only chance the public had to find out about the accident that closed both sides of Interstate 15.
It was a tanker truck that burned so brightly and so intently that all traffic stopped on the interstate just south of Sahara Avenue early Saturday morning. I don't know what it was carrying, presumably fuel of some kind, but it burned red hot enough for people blocks away from the site of the accident to feel the heat.
We can question forever why such an event is no longer considered the kind of news that television stations and news channels break into whatever programming is regularly scheduled to report the accident, but the fact is that we have become inured to such accidents. To the extent that when they occur they not only don't make the headlines, they also barely get a mention. Instead, they are relegated to the back ends of the newspapers, the part most news readers seem to miss.
So, why am I mentioning this accident, especially since no one was hurt? For a few reasons. First and foremost, to make sure everyone understands that accidents still happen. They occur when they are least expected, when the public is least able to handle them, and they happen despite our every desire that they do not!
Secondly, accidents with tanker trucks are not unlike the kind of accidents that will occur when the federal government starts shipping high-level nuclear waste from power plants around the country bound for Yucca Mountain. Even though the government tells us that accidents will not happen, and that radioactive plutonium and other deadly waste products will not leak, the fact remains that they will.
Last week we got lucky. The only thing that happened is that the main artery into and out of Las Vegas was shut down for a few hours until the mess could be cleaned up and the freeway reopened. A fire raged, people were inconvenienced and, after awhile, life went on.
We read constantly about trucks falling off bridges into rivers, trains burning out of control in tunnels that were not built to contain the enormous heat generated by such accidents, and cars creating miles-long accidents on crowded freeways because a driver fell asleep or dropped a cellular phone long enough to lose sight of the road ahead.
So what is it about the people in this country that makes us believe that just because President George W. Bush says so, that these accidents, which are as common as a winter cold, will stop happening? The truth is they won't. No matter who tells us otherwise.
And, given the overcrowded nature of our highway system, the chances are better than not that these accidents will get worse, not better. Think about driving along the freeway next to a convoy of trucks labeled "high-level radioactive waste, keep away." What do you think your reaction will be as you try to inch on by those deadly cargo-carrying behemoths, knowing full well your lives and those of your passengers hang in the balance of how well you handle that simple maneuver. Sweaty hands, anyone?
And don't even get me started on the railway system. To even think that a train full of deadly nuclear waste won't run off the rails, just like every other kind of train does, is folly.
As the Bush administration moves full speed ahead in trying to open Yucca Mountain as soon as possible, and as some money-hungry leaders in our community push equally as hard for the mothers and fathers in our state to "accept" their fate and trade their kids' futures for the promise of a few dollars, remember that tanker truck that burned the other day right in our backyard. Remember how the freeway was closed and remember the heat that neighbors felt from blocks away.
Now, think what that would have been like if it had been a nuclear waste-laden truck. Think about the deaths that would have resulted. Think about the economic devastation that would have occurred when the word spread that Las Vegas was no longer safe. Think about how much the federal government would care about us, our families and our tourist industry once the waste was no longer their problem.
Think. Think. Think.
Think. Think.
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