Documentary premieres in Weyauwega
By James Card
The film opens with a middle-aged woman in her kitchen. The clock on the counter marks the day as March 4.
She makes her morning coffee and she hears a distant rumble. She leans over to look out the window. There is a concerned look on her face. This simple scene hits the viewer in the pit of the stomach: something very bad is about to happen.
The first showing of “The Great Weyauwega Train Derailment,” started a little late because people kept pouring into the Gerold Opera House. Volunteers pulled out more chairs from storage for the more-than-expected crowd. The balcony was full and the tables were full.
Once everyone was settled, Wega Arts director Ian Teal grabbed a microphone and addressed the audience. There was a round of applause before he could speak.
“If you find something that is not factual, we don’t care. This is what people remembered. The movie runs about an hour and 55 minutes which is about twice as long as we were expecting. But we hope you enjoy it,” he said.
A large part of the film is based around personal and eyewitness interviews of people remembering the event.
The main drivers of the storyline are from the volunteer firefighters who responded to the scene and dealt with the emergency response for days after.
Woven between the recollections is archival footage, news footage, old photos and stunning aerial photography.
There is also an interlude of a group of high school students who interpret the event that happened years before they were born through artwork and building a timeline of events that led up to the derailment.
Edge of annihilation
On the morning of March 4, 1996 there was a fire down by the railroad tracks and local firefighters arrived at the scene. They did what they were trained to do: fight fires.
After a while a train engineer came running down the tracks with the manifests in hand. Those documents listed the materials contained in the rail cars.
Of the derailed cars, seven held liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), seven held propane and two held sodium hydroxide.
There was also a car of nitrogen fertilizer. The same stuff used in the Oklahoma City bombing.
A nearby gas station and high-tension power lines added to the danger.
If the nearby processing plants were damaged, a toxic cloud of ammonia could form and there was a chance of a dust explosion from the feed mill.
One firefighter said the blast could produce shrapnel that would be, “Sheets of steel a quarter-inch thick that could go up to one-and-a-half to two miles in any direction.”
As this information was processed, the responders understood the severity of the situation: the city could be leveled.
Jim Baehnman, the assistant fire chief at the time, made the decision to evacuate all residents of the Weyauwega. People were asked to leave their homes; most believed it would be cleared up in a couple hours.
Groceries were left on the table and pets were left behind.
They had no idea that they would not be able to return to their homes until March 20.
School was cancelled. Power and gas lines were shut down. The city went dark. Roadblocks went up.
Memories captured
The film captures many emotional moments: some are heartbreaking, some are funny and some are bizarre.
Mary Jane Baehnman recounted how a dog was rescued, then brought safely to a farm where it was promptly run over.
In another interview, a young man remembers how as a kid, he and his cousin rode their bikes up to the fiery scene as if it were no big deal. Then he ponders (with his father next to him) how times have changed – comparing the laissez-faire parenting back then to the helicopter parents of today.
Another oddity, Fire Chief Gary Hecker was on vacation in the Bahamas during the derailment. He heard about it from a newspaper published by the cruise ship.
The derailment was reported around the world.
When he returned to Milwaukee Hecker was patched through to the operations center and made contact with one of his lieutenants.
“Where are ya?,” he asked.
“I’m in Milwaukee,” said Hecker.
“Well, grab your bags, jump on a plane and go the opposite way,” said the lieutenant.
The significance of the film should be put in perspective. Not many towns have a sculpture or a mural by a famous artist in their city center. Many towns will never be immortalized in the pages of a novel or a book of creative nonfiction.
Weyauwega, however; now has a professionally made documentary of the greatest disaster in the city’s past. It is an artistic, historical and cinematic treasure for the community.
Teal has mentioned that he intends to enter the film in other film festivals and show it again at the Weyauwega International Film Festival in November.