Bellingham Comments from Digital Recorder - EISs for the Proposed ...

GATEWAY PACIFIC TERMINAL EIS SCOPING HEARING VOL. II
COURT REPORTER: BETH DRUMMOND PROCEEDING DATE: October 27, 2012
Page 88
1 side of the tracks, and there's only one way in and one way
2 out. There are other streets in my community that have the
3 very same situation, where there's only one way in and one
4 way out.
5 If you go a little south to Mount Vernon, you
6 have a whole community where there's only, basically, one
7 street in and one street out, with the emergency facilities
8 on the other side of the tracks. And I suspect this is true
9 up and down the coast of Washington, as well as in Oregon.
10 There are about 18 to 20 new trains that will be
11 going by our house if this project is approved, and that
12 with a mile-and-a-half-long train that I understand it's
13 going to be between six and seven minutes per train, which
14 will add two hours per day of services that will not be able
15 to be provided.
16 In addition, on one occasion, a train parked
17 across the track for up to three hours, blocking any
18 services. In the last year, my next door neighbor that was
19 91, right before he died, had numerous occasions to have 911
20 emergency services.
21 Just this last winter, we had three separate
22 groups of people knocked on our door who got caught in the
23 Sound while they were crabbing and needed emergency -- one
24 group of which needed emergency services because they were
25 so hypothermic.