There are times to talk. There are times to stay silent. Times of tragedy are times for both talking and staying silent and for exercising the options with extreme care. It is a measure of human imperfection that no one ever gets it exactly right.
On Aug. 19, 2000, in Eddy County, NM, 10 people perished when a natural gas pipeline ruptured and its contents ignited. Two people sustained injuries; one of them later died. The victims were members of three families camping near the Pecos River.
It is the good fortune of everyone else in the world not to have been at the scene at the time of the explosion. It is the good fortune of nearly everyone not to be able to imagine the horror of that moment. It is, however, fairly easy to imagine what will happen in the coming weeks and months.
Speculation and criticism
There will be speculation about causes of the pipeline's failure. While speculation remains intense, the pipeline owner, El Paso Natural Gas Co., will come under severe criticism. After a respectful few days or weeks have passed, interest groups will renew alarms about pipeline safety. Politicians will call for tougher permitting and safety standards, possibly for a halt to pipeline construction altogether. The gas industry will feel obliged to respond with statistics documenting the safety of pipelines relative to other forms of transportation. Tough questions will bombard El Paso. The company's lawyers will recommend silence. The company's public relations representatives will want to offer answers.
And 11 people will remain dead, one injured, others grieving.
What's important here?
It's important that El Paso and the gas industry never lose sight of the human dimension of this tragedy. Statistics documenting the safety of pipelines do not respond appropriately to what has been lost. El Paso and the industry should forget about statistics when discussing the incident.
It's important that the industry and its regulators determine the failure's cause. The process will be technical and time-consuming. By the time answers are in hand, public interest may well have dissipated. The information nevertheless will be supremely important.
It's important that the industry apply whatever it learns about the rupture's cause to every pipeline, existing and planned, to keep this type of disaster from happening again.
It's important that people with incomplete evidence and partial theories about the cause stay quiet and out of the way of the formal investigation.
It's important that the tragedy, horrible as it is, not become a reason for people to forgo access to an increasingly important fuel, which nearly all the time does not escape containment and cause death.
And it's important that in the contests between lawyers and public relations representatives at El Paso, the latter usually prevail. As long as people and pipelines coexist, people deserve information about what risks lie beneath their feet.
Starting the dialog
William A. Wise, president and chief executive officer of El Paso Energy Corp., the pipeline's parent company, started the post-accident dialog as well as can be expected. "This is a tragic accident, and our heartfelt condolences go out to the families involved," he said, then noted efforts of his company and federal investigators to determine "as quickly as possible" the accident's cause. "The investigation will help the company determine whether any corrective or preventive measures should be implemented in other locations. We will provide information as soon as it is available."
Wise's statement properly acknowledges the irretrievable losses caused by this disaster and focuses attention on what El Paso-and by extension its industry-can reasonably seek to achieve: prevention, within limits of human imperfection and natural unpredictability, of a recurrence. The statement also promises information.
Neither Wise, nor the gas industry, nor government investigators, nor industry opponents in the streets and in government will respond perfectly to the accident in New Mexico. No one should expect them to. To tragedies like this, perfect response requires a simultaneous exercise of total empathy, unwavering composure, and technical flawlessness unachievable by mortal humans. But that shouldn't keep anyone from trying, least of all El Paso and its industry.
