It’s October 11 and three of us are in a car driving on The Highway of Hades, I-94.  Dr. Reagent and Professor Palette and I are headed for Kalamazoo to meet Dr. Kermit for dinner.  Four old friends, out for an evening.  

Just east of Kalamazoo, we encounter taillights.  Two hours late, we arrive at the restaurant where Dr. Kermit has been patiently waiting as we’ve phoned him repeatedly from the car to tell him that another 15 minutes has passed and we’ve crept forward  another 100 yards. After dinner, the highway was still closed, so we had another long drive home on back roads. 

Here’s what happened, according to news reports we later read.  

Some guy from Flint was tooling along the highway in his van, pulling a little trailer with some barrels full of chemicals.  Apparently, someone had tipped off the State Police that the barrels might contain hazardous materials, so they found the guy and pulled him over and then did what anyone would do in such a situation:  They closed I-94 in both directions for over 7 hours.  

The Kalamazoo Gazette reported on September 20 that “In five of the seven barrels, investigators found items such as a duffel bag, motor-oil containers, electronics equipment, electric tape and sewing needles and thread.”  

The other two barrels contained chemicals that the guy said he was going to use to make artificial rubies, but which the chairman of the Western Michigan Chemistry Department indicated would be a pretty tough thing to do.  Apparently, one of the barrels contained chemicals that, if mixed, “could cause a fire, they could cause some kind of chemical reaction.” (I’m quoting from the newspaper again, which was quoting a guy from the EPA.)

So, for over seven hours, thousands upon thousands of people were forced off the expressway and onto surface streets.  Thousands of gallons of gasoline and diesel were burned while we all sat on the highway in the massive traffic jam.  People missed appointments, meals, family time.  Undoubtedly, someone in that tangle of traffic was on her way to have a baby or on his way to have kidney dialysis or on the way to catch a plane to go to her daughter’s wedding or…..well, we were all headed somewhere important to us.  

Life was so much nicer when this was a free country and risk was not a dirty word.

                               by Jim Whitehouse

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