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An explosion on a pipeline put Bellingham City employees Local 114 to one of the biggest challenges they have faced.

But their prompt action kept the explosion—as bad as it was—from turning into a city-wide catastrophe.

Council 2 members who helped These Council 2 members assisted in the 1999 Bellingham pipeline explosion: Dispatchers: Stephanie Haller, Faith Foster and Cindy Sleuys. Public Works Employees: Harvey Berwick, Jay Greenwood, Myron Hendrickson, Robyn Arbogast, Keith Smith, Myron Carlson, Kip Dunlap, Chuck Berlemann, Gary Gilfrilen and Ricky McWilliams.

The drama began when Don Alderson, a Water Department employee, called in to report an outdoor odor. Whatever the smell was, he told dispatchers, it was coming from Whatcom Creek, near his house. And it was sending his dog into seizures.

Fire Department dispatcher Cindy Sleuys issued an evacuation alert to fire fighters who had by now arrived at the creek. But it was too late. Fumes from 277,000 gallons of gasoline that had leaked from the ruptured pipeline exploded in a fireball that burned more than a mile of park land.

The explosion claimed the lives of a teenage boy and two 10-year-old boys who, authorities said, set off the explosion by playing with a fireplace lighter.

Alderson was unhurt, but his home was destroyed.

Sleuys, the most senior of six dispatchers in the room at the time, stayed at her post to direct emergency personnel. Two hours elapsed before she knew whether her husband, a fireman whom she had dispatched to the scene, was alive.

AFSCME members throughout the city rushed to respond to the emergency. The explosion nearly destroyed the city’s wastewater treatment plant, which serves about 70,000 people. Restoring power to the plant was necessary to prevent a more widespread disaster from exposure to contaminated water.

“At one time, we were down to a foot-and-a-half in one of the reservoirs,” says Chuck Berlemann, a maintenance technician with the Public Works Department. The level represents about an hour’s supply or less.

Power was finally restored to the pumps, water pressure was raised and a localized disaster—as bad as it was—was kept from turning into a major catastrophe.

(Information for this report was obtained from AFSCME Public Employee.)