Smoke on the water

Smoke from Saturday's tanker crash, as seen from the river. Photo/Grove Pashley, L.A. River Kayak Safari

They’ve spotted swallowtail butterflies and hummingbirds, osprey and egrets, lizards and toads. They’ve glided by willow trees, eavesdropped on serenading coyotes, marveled at a hawk enjoying the catch of the day. But what they hadn’t experienced, until last Saturday, was a manmade inferno closing in on what’s rapidly becoming an unlikely recreational hot spot: The L.A. River.

Those who know the river most intimately—the folks who walk, fish or bicycle beside it, along with the hardy souls who take to its waters by kayak—were unnerved, to say the least, by the tanker truck crash Saturday morning in Elysian Valley that sent thousands of gallons of gasoline heading straight toward one of the river’s most popular stretches.

“We came around the bend and there was this huge fiery thing going on,” said Anthea Raymond of L.A. River Expeditions, who had just led a group of kayakers on a river trip Saturday morning and was returning by bicycle to their starting point, a newly-opened pilot recreation zone near Fletcher Drive. “It was a crazy situation because it was just so unusual. Who would have expected that the flames would be shooting through the sewers and blowing up manholes and blow-torching, basically, the foliage on the western side of the L.A. River?”

Amazingly, no one was hurt in the accident—and that includes, apparently, the river itself.

“It was a huge fire and we got really lucky on the environmental part,” said Andrew Hughan, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “We can say with very high certainty that no actual gasoline got into the river.”

The high flammability of the gas, the hot weather and a sandbar in the path of the spill added up to a “perfect storm of goodness” that kept the fuel out of the water, Hughan said. Contrary to some reports, he said, “the river itself was not on fire.”

He said, however, that “there is some particulate matter in the sandbar.”

“We’re leaving it there,” he added, saying that it would be more damaging to the environment to remove the material than to allow it to remain in place and let nature take its course.

HazMat workers on blackened river bank. Photo/California Department of Fish and Wildlife

Some gasoline also got into a massive storm drain near the crash site, which took place at the intersection of the 5 and 2 freeways and prompted major lane and tunnel closures. The city Bureau of Sanitation’s Watershed Protection Division brought in a team to flush things out. “The goal was to suck up all the product that was in the storm drain” with vacuum-equipped trucks, said Steve Pedersen, chief inspector for the division. The gas-and-water mixture was placed in a holding tank, to be hauled away after tests were completed.

Pedersen said contractors hired by the city have since inspected the storm drain “looking for sheen, looking for globules of oil,” and found none.

Lewis MacAdams, founder and president of Friends of the L.A. River, praised the emergency response to the accident but said the welter of official agencies responsible for the river at the federal, state and local levels shouldn’t be too hasty in declaring the situation resolved.

“When I was down there on Monday, there was a very strong smell of gasoline,” MacAdams said.

He said his organization will be watching the situation closely in hopes of ensuring that there is appropriate follow-through on the spill. “The whole idea was ‘We’ll just leave it the way it is because if we turn over the earth, that might disturb something else.’ I think it deserves to be looked at in more depth.”

Paradoxically, some river enthusiasts say that the brush with catastrophe may have been a good thing because of the public attention it has garnered for the waterway, which after decades as a gritty, concrete-lined expanse dedicated chiefly to flood control is experiencing a rebirth as a more natural and recreation-friendly environment. Some of the endeavors underway include  a multimillion dollar L.A. River revitalization and bikeway project near Universal Studios, the North Valleyheart Riverwalk from Studio City to Sherman Oaks and the Los Angeles River Pilot Recreation Zone, which was inaugurated this spring, attracting hundreds of kayakers to the river where they can legally paddle for the first time in decades.

Kayakers on the L.A. River. Photo/Los Angeles Times

“It’s a moment when the way people look at the river and the way people use the river is changing,” MacAdams said. “People are now seeing things like the kayak trips…and suddenly that’s threatened by gasoline coming down the river. And people’s reaction is appalled and worried, rather than ‘Who cares?’ ”

The outpouring of concern has included a series of river photos and videos posted to social media showing the aftermath of the crash.

One video, shot by Grove Pashley of L.A. River Kayak Safari as he led a kayaking group on the river Saturday morning, juxtaposed the idyllic peace of the area known as Little Frog Rapids with images of menacing grey smoke straight out of an urban disaster movie.

“It’s just a really beautiful spot…Normally you hear birds, and all kinds of lovely wildlife in that area. And this particular trip, it was like, ‘Wow, I feel like we’re in a war zone’ because all of a sudden you had these helicopters above us,” Pashley said.

Another video, shot by Raymond, the L.A. River Expeditions kayaking guide, captured the hot orange flames visible from the river bikeway.

By mid-week, guides from both companies were eager to shrug off the drama and get back in the river, which has reopened for kayaking.

“There are still people who, of course, think the river’s dirty, who think it’s dangerous,” Raymond said. “Certainly on this stretch, neither of those things are true…The way to keep persuading those people is to show that people are back out here and we’re having a great time.”

“We did have to cancel a couple of trips, obviously, on Saturday and Sunday,” she added, “and those people are all rarin’ to go. All our trips are sold out.”

Flames and smoke along the river bikeway. Photo/Anthea Raymond, L.A. River Expeditions

Posted 7/17/13