The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017 by Hope Jahren

Author:Hope Jahren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The residents of Porter Ranch were very concerned, however, about what the inhalation of the gas might do to their brains and their lungs. Some residents found the smell of gas so overwhelming that they sealed their windows and doors and refused to go outside. Others could not smell the gas and experienced no symptoms. Sometimes those with severe symptoms and those without lived in the same household. In the absence of reliable information from SoCalGas or state agencies, the residents of Porter Ranch underwent their own transformation: they became amateur scientists, epidemiologists, sociologists, political theorists. They began to develop their own hypotheses.

“Yellow spots,” Charles Chow said, “are coming out of the atmosphere.”

I met Chow, a 76-year-old retiree with mirthful eyes and springy joints, in his driveway in late January. He was installing new shocks on his 1992 burgundy Cadillac Brougham Elegante. Beside the Cadillac was a 1986 Silver Spirit Rolls-Royce. In the street, which is called Thunderbird Avenue, there was a 2002 Black Thunderbird. Chow pointed out the spots. They were about the size and color of a yellow split pea. They had appeared on the windshields of his cars, on the Cadillac’s vinyl roof, on the canyon-facing windows of his home.

Chow first became concerned about the Aliso Canyon leak in October, when Chaka Khan, his Chihuahua/miniature pinscher, began having severe respiratory problems. His wife, Liz, began suffering chronic headaches, eye irritation, and a sore throat. Her doctor said there was nothing he could prescribe her. The only thing she could do, he said, was to leave Porter Ranch. Most of their neighbors fled before Thanksgiving. On their block alone, Chow estimates that 15 households, mostly retirees, relocated. Since then the Chows have driven four times a month to a vacation rental they share on the Baja Peninsula, 60 miles south of the border, “just to get out of the atmosphere,” Chow said. In the Mexican air, Liz’s symptoms vanished.

Chow was soon joined in his driveway by Rick Goode, a neighbor of 25 years with a slender build and a birdlike gait. Goode wanted Chow’s advice about legal representation: about two dozen plaintiffs’ firms had descended on Porter Ranch since October, competing to sign as many clients as possible. What did Chow think of Robert Kennedy’s firm? Or Weitz & Luxenberg, which had sent Erin Brockovich to solicit clients? The previous week Brockovich told reporters that she “started feeling kind of dizzy” within 10 minutes of arriving in Porter Ranch. Chow ruled her out.

“You don’t get sick that fast,” he said.

“I’ve been having terrible headaches,” Goode said. “Have you?”

“My wife has headaches every day, sore throats,” Chow said. “I don’t. We both live in the same house. Everybody is different.”

Liz returned from a doctor’s appointment. She removed her sunglasses to reveal a new cyst on her eyelid. She searched for a word to describe her general condition since October. “A malaise,” she said finally.

Barbara Weiler, 64, who was walking her dog very slowly several blocks away, first experienced the malaise in gym class.

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