00:00:05
[sirens blaring] BILL DYER: I felt like I was in
a war zone with the explosions,
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the smell of smoke, the
smell of burning flesh, people screaming. PETER THOMAS: It was the
single most deadly automobile
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accident in American history. 99 vehicles, most
of them destroyed. 12 people died.
00:00:26
REPORTER: Identifiable? No. Not at all. PETER THOMAS: More
than 50 were injured.
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MIKE CURTIS: Total destruction. If I hadn't been there
and eye witnessed it,
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I don't believe I
could have believed. PETER THOMAS: The
accident happened along a three-mile
stretch of highway long
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known for dense, thick fog. But what was causing the fog? The victims and their
families wanted answers.
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[theme music] [music playing] PETER THOMAS: The accident
occurred on Interstate 75
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in Tennessee on a portion of
highway between Chattanooga and Knoxville. The highway was constructed
through a valley
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which lies between
the Cumberland and Great Smoky Mountains. From the time the highway
first opened back in 1973,
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there had been numerous
multi-vehicle chain reaction accidents in the
same three-mile section.
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The first occurred
just four months after the highway opened. Three people died
in a 17 car pileup.
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10 were injured. Just one month later, there
was a nine car accident. Although there were no
deaths, nine were injured.
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During the first six years
the highway was open, there was an average of one
multi-car accident each year.
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One of the largest was
in November of 1978, involving more than 60 vehicles. Six people were killed,
nearly 100 injured.
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All of the accidents had
one thing in common-- the sudden appearance of a
dense, thick fog reducing
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visibility to near zero. Tennessee State
Highway officials responded by installing fog
warning lights to warn drivers
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when fog was in the area. Highway patrol
officers were posted to stand watch every morning
along the fog prone area
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to make sure drivers
slowed down when the fog warning lights were activated. The combination of these
two systems worked.
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For 11 years, there were no
major accidents along the fog prone stretch of Interstate 75.
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But all of that changed
on December 11, 1990. [sirens blaring] WOMAN: It's a massive wreck.
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Everybody's bumping
into everybody. OPERATOR: I've had
several reports. I've had an explosion
in that area,
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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
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after another. MIKE CURTIS: A motor home
hit the front end of my truck after just seconds,
after I had gotten out.
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And a vehicle started
hitting the back of it. I'll never forget hearing
one, and he hit other cars
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and just knocked them out of
the way like they were nothing and came-- crashed just to
the right of that motor home.
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The explosion was such that
it almost knocked me down. PETER THOMAS: Mike Curtis
pulled this 14-year-old boy
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out of the motor home then
rescued the boy's mother. MIKE CURTIS: And I turned and
went back to get her husband.
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All I could see was fire. I could smell hair burning. His coat came off,
burning in my hands.
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[solemn music] It was probably the hardest
thing I've ever had to witness. The most helpless
feeling I've ever had.
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PETER THOMAS: The
man burned to death. 12 people were killed,
56 others injured,
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making it the largest vehicular
accident in American history. These pictures
were taken shortly
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after the accident, when most
of the fog had dissipated. MIKE CURTIS: The
vehicles that I saw,
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I don't even know if you would
classify them as vehicles. What normally was a pickup
truck was three foot
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in length, bodies still in it. PETER THOMAS: After 11 years
without a serious accident,
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the killer fog had struck again. But why? The families of the dead and
injured demanded answers.
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They wanted to know what
caused the dense, thick fog on December 11, 1990. [music playing]
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PETER THOMAS: On
December 11, 1990, 30-year-old Craig Piper was
driving his tractor trailer
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south on Interstate
75, on his way to visit his mother for the holidays. When he entered the thick, dense
fog, visibility was near zero.
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Within seconds, he crashed. [boom] [tires screeching] [glass shattering] [sirens blaring]
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The flames were
extremely intense, and I knew there wasn't any
way I could get him out.
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And I had to stand
there and watch this man burn in his vehicle. There wasn't really
anything I could do.
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Flames were too big. I didn't have a
fire extinguisher. I just had to stand there and
watch this man burn alive.
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PETER THOMAS: Craig Piper's
mother wanted answers and hired attorney Doug Fees, who
was not only a lawyer,
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but also an engineer. She wanted Fees to
find out what caused the terrible fog that was
responsible for her son's
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death. She said the two people
in that car were killed and that her son had been burned
alive in this tractor trailer
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and was wondering if
there was anything that I could do to help her. PETER THOMAS: The accident
occurred along Interstate 75
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at its lowest point
in the valley, about a half-mile from
where the interstate crosses the Hiwassee River.
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Because of its
location, fog has always been common in this area. Fog is basically a cloud
which forms on the ground.
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Fog occurs when there is
too much water in the air for the atmosphere to absorb.
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Since cooler air
holds less moisture than warm air and cool air
gathers in low lying areas,
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the valley through which
Interstate 75 passes is perfect for the
formation of natural fog.
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But the fog described
by the accident victims was extremely thick and dense. Was the fog on the
day of the accident
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naturally produced or was
it caused by one or more of the local industries nearby?
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WAYNE T. DAVIS: On
those three days, there was some
amount of river fog, although it was
relatively small.
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On all three days,
there was a very noticeable emission of
fog-related water vapor
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from the Bowater facility. PETER THOMAS: The
Bowater Paper Company is located three miles to the
east of the interstate highway.
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It is the largest producer
of newsprint in North America and releases large quantities of
water vapor into the atmosphere
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24 hours a day as part of
the manufacturing process. Wayne Davis recommended
that the state of Tennessee
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conduct a more
detailed study in order to understand the cause
of the fogging conditions.
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The state decided not to
fund a more detailed study, but elected to
install a fog warning
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system along the highway
and posted state troopers to patrol the fog prone
stretch of highway
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each and every morning. For 11 years, the system worked. Between 1979 and
1990, there were
00:08:35
no serious
multi-vehicle accidents along the three-mile
stretch of Interstate 75.
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The system worked--
until December 11, 1990. [dramatic music] The Wayne Davis study was
an important starting point
00:08:51
for Doug Fees, but
the Davis study was conducted 12 years earlier. Fees needed to know what caused
the fog on December 11, 1990.
00:09:03
Doug Fees heard
about a scientist who was using computers
to track weather conditions and pollutants.
00:09:11
Was it possible
that science could recreate the weather condition
on the day of the accident?
00:09:21
[solemn music] PETER THOMAS: Attorney
Doug Fees wanted to know if the thick, dense fog
on the morning of the accident
00:09:27
had been produced naturally
or was caused by one or more of the local industries or
some combination of both.
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To find out, he hired
Dr. Alan Eschenroeder who teaches civil engineering
at Harvard University.
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His area of expertise
is risk management, and he also runs a consulting
firm which specializes
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in air quality modeling. Eschenroeder gathered
weather information about the morning
of the accident
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from Knoxville and
Chattanooga airports, as well as from two
nuclear power plants,
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one only 18 miles
from the scene. Weather records indicated that
there were few, if any, clouds
00:10:05
on the morning of the accident. Winds were light. And the temperature
dropped rapidly the night
00:10:11
before from a high of 60
degrees in the afternoon to almost freezing. This 30 degree
drop in temperature
00:10:20
could cause a weather
phenomenon called an inversion. An inversion occurs when the
temperature on the ground
00:10:28
is cooler than the
temperature in the atmosphere. This prevents air and
moisture from dissipating
00:10:34
into the atmosphere,
pushing the moisture back towards the ground. Very early on the morning of
the accident, a helicopter pilot
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flying over Interstate 75
noticed a mushroom-shaped cloud similar to this one
over the Bowater paper
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mill smokestacks three miles
east of the accident site. Eschenroeder believes this
was visual confirmation
00:10:57
of the inversion. Water vapor is
produced naturally, coming from evaporation
from lakes, streams,
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rivers, and ground moisture. Dr. Eschenroeder calculated
that the evaporation rate
00:11:10
of the natural bodies
of water in the area was only 392 gallons per day. This was barely enough to
create even a light fog,
00:11:18
let alone the dense, thick fog
described by accident victims and rescue personnel.
00:11:24
Eschenroeder was
convinced-- there had to be another
source of water vapor which caused the thick fog.
00:11:32
He noticed a series
of ponds which straddled the interstate
highway on two sides.
00:11:38
These were wastewater
treatment ponds which belong to the Bowater Paper Plant. These ponds were used to clean
the industrial wastewater
00:11:47
from the paper mill. In two of the ponds,
aerator fans would propel the water up into the air.
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Most of the water dropped
back into the ponds. Some of it did not. ALAN ESCHENROEDER: And
that's called drift.
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The drift droplets are things
that drift away from the site of where they are formed.
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All the other droplets
fall back to Earth or fall back to the pond
where they originate.
00:12:09
So we had to do some
original calculations in an engineering
estimate fashion for emission of those droplets.
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PETER THOMAS:
Eschenroeder calculated that these wastewater treatment
ponds added 10 million gallons
00:12:23
of water vapor into the
atmosphere in the 24 hours preceding the accident,
far more than the 392 gallons
00:12:32
from the natural
bodies of water. At the paper plant itself, an
additional 1.5 million gallons
00:12:39
of water vapor
was being released each day from the smokestacks. But it wasn't just water
vapor that was being released
00:12:47
from these smokestacks. Paper plants released
what are called particulates, as waste from
the paper production process.
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Particulates are
microscopic particles which become surfaces on which
water vapor can condense.
00:13:02
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
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to form in the surfaces
of these microparticles, these condensation nuclei. PETER THOMAS: But how
could Eschenroeder
00:13:16
tell if the water vapor
from the Bowater Paper Plant three miles away caused the
fog on the interstate highway
00:13:24
on the day of the accident? He found part of the answer
on this aerial videotape
00:13:30
shot by a local videographer a
few hours after the accident. Eschenroeder recognized
the wind pattern
00:13:37
as a drainage flow, which
carries cooler air down into the valley. But Eschenroeder needed
to know in which direction
00:13:45
the drainage flow was heading. To do that, he needed to
know the exact position of the airplane.
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Using navigational charts,
calculating the position of the sun from the glint
angle off the wing and ground
00:13:59
references, he identified
the plane's position relative to the paper mill and
the accident site.
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The videotape
convinced Eschenroeder that the drainage flow
wind pattern was headed
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west from the location
of the paper mill towards the accident site. ALAN ESCHENROEDER: As to
the cause of that accident
00:14:18
that day, there's no doubt in
my mind that the industrial fog created by water emissions
from that Bowater paper mill
00:14:26
was a major factor-- the major factor,
preponderant major factor-- in forming the fog that
caused the accident.
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PETER THOMAS: Attorney Doug
Fees now had scientific evidence and proceeded with the
civil suit he filed
00:14:40
earlier against the
Bowater Paper Company and the state of Tennessee. [music playing]
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PETER THOMAS: As Mike Curtis
drove onto Interstate 75 on the morning of the accident,
the sun was so strong he
00:14:58
took his jacket off in the car. When Curtis approached
the fog zone, the fog warning lights in
one direction weren't working
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and those in the
other direction had been blinking continuously for
three days and were ignored.
00:15:12
The daily police fog patrols had
been abandoned years earlier. Once in the thick fog,
visibility was near zero.
00:15:22
Mike Curtis never
saw what he hit. Curtis heard crashes,
people crying for help, the explosions.
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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.
00:15:39
MIKE CURTIS: A 12 or
13-year-old boy, so I got out. His mother was inside screaming,
and the adrenaline was pumping.
00:15:46
And I ripped the window
out and got her out. PETER THOMAS: After saving
the boy and his mother,
00:15:52
Curtis tried to save the
father, but he burned to death. There was also
tragedy for a woman
00:15:59
driving with her granddaughter. This is all that
was left of the car. OFFICER: This car was
smashed completely flat
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like an accordion. TOM L GRAHAM: The
car was compacted down to something in the
neighborhood of 30 inches long.
00:16:12
By some miracle,
this little girl lived through the entire thing. PETER THOMAS: The
grandmother died.
00:16:18
Randall McKeehan
and his two children also suffered a loss that day. They lost a wife and mother
when Judith McKeehan burned
00:16:26
to death in the accident. RANDALL MCKEEHAN:
There wasn't no body. She was over 90% gone.
00:16:33
It was like she'd been cremated. And there wasn't
nothing to view. She still had remains,
ashes, which I'm not saying
00:16:47
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,
00:17:03
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.
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PETER THOMAS: Doug
Fees' case was set for trial in 1994, more than
three years after the accident.
00:17:32
Bowater disagreed with the
scientific calculations used in the Eschenroeder
study and hired
00:17:37
its own scientific expert. Dr. George McVehil is a
meteorologist from Denver. His study concluded
that Bowater's
00:17:45
contribution to the fog
on the day of the accident was less than 1%. GEORGE E. MCVEHIL:
Our conclusion
00:17:52
was that the fog formed by a
natural process due to mixing of moist air at different
altitudes at about 9 o'clock
00:18:02
on the morning of December
11, after the sun had come up and heated
the ground enough
00:18:07
to start the mixing process. And that, in a very abbreviated
and simplified form,
00:18:13
is what caused the
fog on that morning. PETER THOMAS: But
shortly before the trial,
00:18:17
the courts ordered Bowater to
release a study it commissioned in 1979 from its own
consulting firm, Environmental
00:18:26
Research and Technology. In it, ERT states that
"preliminary evidence suggests
00:18:34
that Bowater
operations contribute to local vapor flux and fogging
problems in the Calhoun area."
00:18:43
Doug Fees never got the chance
to prove his case in court. Before the trial, the
state of Tennessee
00:18:50
reached an out-of-court
settlement with Fees on behalf of the families he represented.
00:18:56
Because of the malfunctioning
fog warning system, the state settled
for $800,000 and also
00:19:03
agreed to install a $4
million computerized fog detection system. When the fog reaches
a certain density,
00:19:11
large signs automatically notify
drivers of fog in the area and sensors trigger gates
on key entrance ramps,
00:19:19
closing access to the highway. Bowater also
settled out of court with 30 victims and
families represented
00:19:27
by Doug Fees and other
attorneys for $11 million. Bowater continues to
maintain that the paper
00:19:34
mill and treatment ponds had
nothing to do with the fog on the day of the accident.
00:19:40
However, Bowater
agreed to limit its use of treatment Pond Number four,
which sits near the highway.
00:19:48
AH BARASH: But the issue
isn't whether or not Pond 4 is a contributor to
fog, whether natural water
00:19:55
conditions that are
in the community are contributors to fog. The real point is that fog
exists in that particular place
00:20:04
from time to time. It's natural fog, and
the traffic control mechanisms on the
highway have to be
00:20:11
sufficient to warn motorists. PETER THOMAS: Despite
the settlement and the new fog warning
system, many still
00:20:19
believe the highway is unsafe. Warnings are never the
answer when you can do better.
00:20:26
Closure of Pond 4 is not
enough to solve the problem. [solemn music] The chance of this
happening again
00:20:38
has been substantially
reduced, but the risk has not been eliminated, nor
has the hazard been eliminated.
00:20:47
This is only the third
time I've been here. It's-- and any officer
would tell you that,
00:20:54
you know, this is a-- to me, it's a memorial site. That bridge is a memorial
because a lot of people
00:20:59
died here, needlessly. [music playing]