“Sprayed Loggers” Tom Fales, Arlene Rial, Frank Fales, Wayne Thorstrom, Rick Rial, and Rod Cudney

Interviewed by Beth Bosk - New Settler Interview, Issue #3, April 1985

Were the loggers surprised that they had been sprayed?

That’s the story—it’s [Louisiana-Pacific’s] attitude towards them. When they arrived at the site they were told they were going to be sprayed—that there would be spraying. When they asked, “was it safe?” the LP people sort of laughed at them and said, “Well, the only, thing that happens is that 20 years from now your teeth are going to fall out,” and they laughed at them. And then they said, “Well, if you smell it, don’t breath.” And then the last statement was, “If it starts coming towards you, run like the dickens!”

—Dr. Mills Matheson, physician

Beth Bosk: In times to come, they will probably call Arlene Rial the ‘Rosa Parks’ of Fort Bragg.

Rosa Parks was the tired black housekeeper from Montgomery, Alabama who after working hard all day, refused to relinquish her seat at the front of a city bus. Remember what followed?

For the past twenty-four years, Arlene Rial has worked hard raising herself a sturdy son.

She was not about to see him damaged by a suspect chemical. And when unbeknownst, he was sent to work at a site where G-P was spraying the herbicide Garlon-4 and subsequently fell ill—along with every other logger working along the perimeter of the spray site—she refused to let it go unheeded.

The following interview is actually portions of conversations that took place on a Sunday afternoon at the home Arlene Rial shares with her son, Rick, and her husband Wayne Thorstrom. Thorstrom works as a hook tender for G-P.

The other voices belong to four other men who found themselves working adjacent to the spray site...Tommy Fales, Tom Fales, and Frank Fales.

“They do not look like the kind of men who complain,” is the way Fort Bragg Advocate reporter Martin Hickel summed up his impressions of these loggers.

The interview picks up in the middle of Arlene Rial’s story. She has related how she started putting two and two together when none of Rick’s slow pitch ball team showed up for practice. They had all worked around the spray site and they were all home sick. She then began making inquiries as to what chemical had been sprayed and what was known about it...

Arlene Rial: … I called the toxicity center in Texas to find out just what Garlon was and the gal there told me it was one atom removed from Agent Orange and I almost had a heart attack at that time. After that, I immediately called several different newspapers and I said, “Are you aware that they are spraying a dangerous chemical not only in our community, but around people who are working”—and that’s how the whole thing got started. I called Okerstrom logging and told him, “Get the men out of Juan Creek because it’s contaminated.”

This is in the morning. In the afternoon my son came home from work and said, “Gee, thanks a lot, mom. The boss came out and said, ‘Your mommy called’. And you know, with the loggers, that looks really bad.”

I told him, “Never you mind, I’m going to do what I have to do.” Anyway, Ricky was sicker and sicker and I finally found out that Mills Matheson knows a bit about toxicology and I called him and made an appointment for my son and I was going to drive over to Willits with him to see what was going on, instead another boy got sick on the job that day and so I said, “Both of you go,” and I’ll have a conversation with Dr. Matheson later.” Which I did and Mills said that nothing had ever been proven about Garlon and it does look like flu-like symptoms. He took a urine and blood sample and froze them—because the only people evidentially who can find out if Garlon is in the blood or the urine is Dow Chemical Company and this is the fox again guarding the hen house.

Beth Bosk: Do you think the two Fales lost their jobs as a result of your activity?

Arlene Rial: Being that I was so verbal about shutting down Juan Creek because it was so dangerous, no one showed up to work at Juan Creek, which left them behind. And I believe the two men were fired as a direct result of being behind work. They were harassed from the day this happened and they have never been harassed before, these are men who are the absolute best in the woods; they wouldn’t have been fired because they couldn’t do their job.

They worded it cleverly; the bosses provoked an argument and then fired them. And their family was threatened and I was threatened as a direct result of this—not “I’m going to kill you.” Or anything like that. The essence was, “If you cause me anymore stress, I will countersue,” Even though we don’t have a lawsuit going yet—as yet, Okerstrom has a “commandante” under him—Dana Hastings. He called me and he also called Tom Fales’ family, talked to his wife, made him turn in all his equipment. Fired him and his son and threatened to sue them if anything happened as a result of this. He said he didn’t know they were going to spray, that he wasn’t responsible. Fact is, he wasn’t there.

And if he didn’t know, he should have known and why didn’t he know, why wasn’t he there. That’s the point I’m trying to make. If it’s safe enough for the loggers, why weren’t the bosses out there? Let’s see them work around that spray. Either they know something we don’t know or maybe knows anything.

There’s a law that says a chemical company must produce evidence that a chemical is safe before they put it on the market or spray it into the atmosphere. Dow Chemical Company has not done this and this particular law has not been enforced. If that’s the case, then the fox again is in charge.

The public should speak out for the enforcement of these laws. When someone is parked eighteen inches from the curb in Fort Bragg, they definitely get a ticket and they’ve got to pay.

Beth Bosk: I got one of those too...

Arlene Rial: Those are trivial laws. Why don’t we enforce the important laws—the ones that protect the health of the people who keep this community going.

Beth Bosk: What happened the days that they sprayed?

Tom Fales: It’s hard to say “What happened”. It’s just that we went to work like ordinary and we didn’t have any idea that the spraying would be harmful, and I still don’t know if it is. We weren’t informed that they were going to spray. We just went to work like any normal working day.

We were falling timber adjacent to the spray area.

Beth Bosk: How far away?

Tom Fales: That’s a question that’s been asked a lot. You’d have to measure it for accuracy. My estimation would be, at one point, 400 yards.

Beth Bosk: Did you feel contact with the spray? Did you feel it on your body? Were you tacky?

Tom Fales: No.

Beth Bosk: Then what did happen to you?

Tom Fales: I thought I got the flu. I didn’t even associate with the spray. But that week, Friday, I thought I was coming down with the flu and didn’t really think anything about it until other workers working elsewhere around the site got sick. Then Mrs. Rial told me when she found out that I was sick, she advised me of a doctor who knew about herbicides and had experience with people who had been contaminated with herbicides. So, we went to him. That’s why we didn’t go to any other specified doctor—the one Hastings wanted us to go to. We went to him because we figured he’d know if we had the flu or if we had been contaminated. And that’s about it.

Beth Bosk: And you didn’t find out immediately. How do you feel about that, that there is no medical expertise that can tell you right off, “Hey, this is contamination? Or this is the flu”?

Tom Fales: My first impression is, anyone wouldn’t on purpose contaminate someone with a poison, so why should I have any fear? And then when someone suggests that, you look into it a little further. Some people do have the fear you could have some long-range effects from it. I don’t know. I don’t think it should be sprayed until they know more about it.

Beth Bosk: What is it like for you to be in the eye of the storm, the center of this controversy?

Tom Fales: I don’t know that I’m at the center. I just know that I am unemployed. I guess it’s a kind of wicked circumstance; I’ve never been fired or terminated. I’ve never had anybody question my ability to perform my duties. I could make a list a mile long of people I’ve worked for. So, it is a shock to be fired.

Beth Bosk: Were you given a reason?

Tom Fales: My son was the same way. I don’t know if he’s been fired. They told me he didn’t have a job. We really haven’t been given a reason. We’re supposed to know why.

Arlene Rial: Did all of you see the helicopter?

Frank Fales: No.

Arlene Rial: I was talking to a pilot, and he said it happens all the time—spills. And I said, “Well, I haven’t heard about any spills,” He said, “When the helicopter turns around to re-spray, they’re supposed to turn off their engines,” and he said, “In many cases they don’t.” He said one time he was even parked on the street corner on a Sunday and they were spraying the pear fields over Ukiah and they came around and didn’t turn off their pumps and a lot of the spray hit some of the houses that were there. Imagine getting poisoned right down your chimney, and no one’s complaining. The reason I’m pushing this is because I think the people in this community ought to speak out. Because, why should they just sit there and allow themselves to be poisoned. Look how young these guys are. Do you think they deserve to have poor health in their future?

Wayne Thorstrom: There were no foresters out there. Nobody out there to direct them as to what they can do or should do. No bosses. Okerstrom should have been out there. L-P’s forester should have been out there. Tommy Fales boss, Hastings, should have been out there. Even the Water Quality Control Board. Even the Department of Agriculture should have been out there to take tests the same day, at least the day after. And nobody was out there but the workers with nobody to direct them. And that is totally against the rules when it comes to spraying herbicides. People have to be notified.

Arlene Rial: It’s the company being irresponsible. Thinking that the workers are not going to pay attention. They’re just going to go along with the program. They’re not going to protest because they’ve been out of work six months already and they’re behind in their bills and they’re going to keep their mouths shut because they want to work. What they’ve got to do is speak out.

Tommy Fales: There was a forester out there. He was there all week and he never told us nothing about the spray.

Rod Cudney: I’m a truck driver. I work for Ed Kelly in Willits. He got sick too. Too sick to come here today. We were out there pulling out logs for three days and when we both got sick we didn’t think much of it till we heard about all these guys. So I came over to try to figure out what’s going on.

Frank Fales: I’m a faller. I work for Dana Hastings, falling contractor. We weren’t working with the men from Okerstrom. Ricky Rial, those men. We were in a different area falling trees right next to the clear cut. I didn’t even know they had sprayed. But no matter where you were affected. I had a funny taste in my mouth and I had a bad headache. Halfway through the day, we were all sick. And I asked—and he goes “Oh, they sprayed out here yesterday.”

Beth Bosk: Then what happened?

Frank Fales: Just got sicker. Throwing up, diarrhea and severe headaches. Kind of been real weak since then.

Beth Bosk: Did you return to work after the spraying started?

Frank Fales: We had to finish the spot. See, that was the idea—get in there and get the timber down so we could be done there and move to another area. We had to get that spot finished.

Beth Bosk: Were you sick at the time you were finishing up?

Frank Fales: Everybody was. Most of us, we have to work. Sick or whatever. We’re not millionaires. We have to work every chance we get.

Tom Fales: Frank worked on a Monday after the spraying. I reported the spraying to my employer, and he in turn reported it to Okerstrom. Then Okerstrom got in touch with him and said, “Don’t worry about it.” That he had contacted L-P and they had said not to worry about it, you cannot be harmed by it. So, we were not told not to go back up there—weren’t told either way.

Beth Bosk: Then you lose your job…

Arlene Rial: You don’t have to be afraid of saying that you were fired. Those guys sprayed you. You didn’t spray them. You guys were injured, not them.

Frank Fales: It’s been kind of hard to go to work. They tried to split us up. Usually we work together. We’re in one area, and maybe 150 yards over there, Tommy is chopping and then Tom’s over next to him, and then my brother and me. Sometimes even all three of us will work together. That’s the way we used to do it. After this happened, and after we went to the doctor...

Tom Fales: ...a certain doctor...

Frank Fales: Yeah. They got mad because we went to a certain doctor and said that L-P and Steve Okerstrom is our bread and butter—telling us not to blow this out of proportion. But we were worried about our health more than anything. A few of us were pretty sick. Tommy was throwing up blood. Charlie’s not here today because his wife just lost the baby she was carrying.

Tom Fales: The reason why we didn’t think anything about it at first was because Tommy and I drink out of the same bottle. We’re closely associated. So, it didn’t excite us when we got sick. We just thought for all the world that it was the flu.

Frank Fales: Then other people started getting sick. Like the truck drivers. We never even saw them. We’re down in the brush and Rick, he’s way above us. You see the clear cut is in the middle and we’re all working around the clear cut separated from each other. We didn’t have any direct physical contact with each other like you’d expect if it were the flu.

Then they sprayed right into the middle of it.

Rick Rial: And we were right on top breathing that.

Frank Fales: And that wind comes right up that big gulch and it kind of crops down inside of that bowl there for awhile then Phoom! It blows up over again. Like we’re falling a tree and the wind is coming up out of the bowl.

Beth Bosk: What happened to you Rick, where you were?

Rick Rial: Me and my choker setter started feeling sick. We started getting body aches. I wasn’t sure if I wasn’t just getting tired because it was towards the end of the day. So you jump into the car at quitting time and Dean, he was teasing us—he told us to look into the mirror and look at our faces. Our faces were just beet red—burned looking. And so I looked at Kevin and his face was just glowing from the neck up. And from then on, I just stayed feeling sick. Kevin got sicker than I did. He didn’t make work that next Monday.

Beth Bosk: What else has happened since the spray in terms of your relationships with the various companies you work for?

Frank Fales: They don’t say, “Don’t say anything about the spraying. Don’t talk to people”. They put it in different ways. But you know what they’re saying. Before we go into a layout, we go in and have a fallers meeting and they tell us the log lengths that they want and how they want the job done. So, we went to the meeting and there were three choppers that were there, myself, my brother and Mark Thompson were there at the meeting and there were a bunch of other choppers there and we were just standing there together and one of the L-P head foresters—I don’t think I should mention any names—right in the middle of talking about logs he says, “People shouldn’t take a little thing and make it into a big thing.” And he leaned towards us and looked right at us. Then he started talking about logs again. But he had to get that in there...

Wayne Thorstrom: ...to get the message across to everybody. But he sure wasn’t out there getting sprayed.

Beth Bosk: So, how many people were actually out there at last count?

Frank Fales: There were about ten: Charlie, Tommy, myself, Mark Thompson and Tom—five choppers and Dean Stevens and Rick Rial and Doug and two truck drivers and Ronny Leavit and Kevin Strechter and the CAT box. That’s 12, 15 people now.

Beth Bosk: Do you men belong to any kind of trade association? The wood-workers union?

Frank Fales: No. We’re gyppo...

Arlene Rial: There’s no way these guys have protection. None. And that’s why the company will always take advantage of them. Because there is nothing to buffer the company from the men. The company does what it damn well pleases, and all the workers have to take it because they depend on that for their subsistence.

Beth Bosk: The woodsmen G-P is trying to get rid of now—the ones they just laid off, are those the fellows who unionized who do essentially the same work that you do—who they’re saying the gyppo operators do a much better job at?

Wayne Thorstrom: Yeah. G-P has laid off seventy loggers and truck drivers and mechanics. They’re going to have to find work somewhere in their occupation so they’ll probably go to work for a lot of these gyppos.

I think somebody should find out why these guys lost their jobs. Tom has been in the woods for thirty-some years. He’s a professional faller, and I worked for him when I worked for A.J. Grey, in the early sixties and he’s probably one of the best fallers you find in the woods. He has one of the best reputations as a clean faller—save a tree. I feel he is being discriminated against because of this problem. Somebody just flew off the handle because they don’t want this publicity.

Frank Fales: All of us young choppers, we all look to him for advice—how to fall a tree—and he’ll stick us into a strip or something. If we have a bad tree, we’ll ask Tom to come look at it and give his opinion and some of us have him fall it. [laughter]

You have to understand, the timber is expensive, and when you take a 20,000 (board) foot tree which could build five or six three bedroom houses and you send it down a hill and you blow it up, you’ve got nothing. That’s where guys like Tom, they know what to do with those kind of trees and they’ll stretch them out. That’s where you get your houses.

I think they took Tom as kind of the ring-leader. Putting ideas into our head—which wasn’t the case. I think they figured if they got rid of him then we’d all hush up about it.

Wayne Thorstrom: Tom and I, we’ve had two deaths in our family related to logging. My father got killed in 1961—he was forty-five years old. Tom’s brother was killed in the woods, and I feel this as being a logger for sixteen years—the woods is dangerous enough as it is. And then when you go out there and spray a herbicide and make it more dangerous to your health, I don’t think that’s fair to loggers. When you take the occupational hazards of the job and then you add this Garlon 4 to it, your chances of retiring are very slim. Retiring with a full retirement and not being disabled is the combination you look forward to. You’ve got to take care of your own health in the work environment.

You’ve got to put 100% out there, and if these guys had a problem with the Garlon 4 and they were only half effective in the woods, it could cause an industrial accident.

Tom Fales: If it were the Garlon 4 that caused the diarrhea, that would surely make you lose some of your concentration. It could be deadly then.

Wayne Thorstrom: Talk to any of Tom’s past employers and you would find a job done 100% in making money for the company. And as far as safety around operators and his fellow employees, you couldn’t find a better old growth faller and with old growth, you’ve got to know what you’re doing. He’s probably helped out hundreds of boys coming up the ladder. He’s been a leader in falling in the woods.

Beth Bosk: Around seven years ago, the county was sprayed right and left with Phenoxy herbicides—all around the fringes of Sherwood Ranch for one area where women there reported frozen feelings in their fingertips and were told by their doctor it was from working in the garden. But their fingertips never froze in the years after that.

At that time, many loggers were in direct contact with the same chemicals and there was no audible complaint from the logging community. Seven years later, that has changed. You’re coming forward and seeking medical attention. What has happened?

Rick Rial: I talked with a few of the loggers that were sprayed seven years ago and they complain about it now. They could kick the shit out of themselves for not complaining then.

Wayne Thorstrom: Six years ago they sprayed Agent Orange up in Usal and the union protested against it. I met with Jim Coons of Georgia-Pacific and told him that our loggers were not going to work in these areas while they were spraying or even after. The flashpoint of this is dangerous. When you have a fire, the stuff stays on the trees or in the roots and it could have a toxicity to the workers a few years down the line if there is a forest fire in there. So because of pressure from the union and whatever pressures, they stopped spraying—this is before the initiative banning the aerial spraying of Phenoxy herbicides passed—so he said there would not be any winter work for some of the loggers because they were thinking about drilling holes and injecting stuff like this Garlon, and I told him as chief job steward that our loggers were not going to do that either. So he said, “Fine, we’ll get someone else to do it.”

And, they brought the gyppos in.

Then we had a fire close to the WRP road and what they did there was when they sprayed the stuff it killed the tops of the trees on the east side, and the underside where it didn’t hit, it was still growing. So, it really didn’t do the job. And all that drainage was down into the Eel River.

So, we had a fire up there, and I told the crew if the fire jumps that road up there, we’re going home. And everybody agreed. Out of all the loggers I’ve spoken to since this last spray, every one of them is against it. There’s not one logger who I’ve spoken to who’s for spraying any kind of a herbicide.

The executive board of the union sent a letter to the supervisors to ban all spraying in Mendocino County and not submit the loggers to this.

People have to eat this dust, bark, whatever, and they suffer everything from white finger damage to hearing loss. Through the union, we developed a lot of new safety precautions for the company and now that all the G-P loggers are going to be eliminated eventually, all these guys are going to be out in the cold. Who’s going to represent them? These are the guys these big companies think they can spray, and spray, and not warn them ahead of time. We’re going backwards instead of forward. I believe in organized labor. Who’s going to represent these fellows?

Beth Bosk: I was at the hearing in Ukiah when the petition asking for the ban of herbicide spraying was presented to the Supes. Board Chair, Marilyn Butcher’s behavior was absolutely crass. Here are more than 250 folk choking the corridors, extremely concerned about things such as their children’s’ health, potential genetic damage, carcinogenetic consequences, the whole question of the right to at least choose one’s own poisons—and what Marilyn Butcher frets about throughout the very short hearing is that she’s going to be late for a luncheon engagement.

After the third mention of this luncheon date, someone in the hallway muttered, “What did she say, ‘let them eat cake.’?”

But it was John Cimolino who was especially interesting. He gave a fairly impassioned speech, for him, in support of banning Phenoxy herbicides. He’s become convinced that they are dangerous. And he got a rousing applause. So afterward, I went up to talk to him and said, “Hey, John, some charisma is still there after all those years. Why aren’t you speaking out stronger against Garlon and bringing Redding and Butcher along with you?” You see, despite what they claim, there really are measures the supes could try involving nuisance ordinances and water districts if they wanted to get rid of the stuff, And he said to me, “Garlon is so safe I would take a shower in it.”

Good thing you men have come forward to represent yourselves.

Wayne Thorstrom: There’s those in the union who say some of the supervisors are in G-P’s pocket.

Arlene Rial: I called the Department of Agriculture and they said, “There’s no problem. The spray happens all the time. Too bad the guys were out there. Too bad they’re sick. But the doctor says it sounds like flu.”

Well, the flu symptoms are exactly what the symptoms are if you are sprayed with a herbicide.

Beth Bosk: You’re not getting any clear cut medical feedback, are you. They tell you, you got there too late for decisive tests of either your blood or your stools. They tell you the only lab that makes the determination as to whether or not it’s Garlon contamination is the very manufacturer.

Rick Rial: I don’t care what they say. There wasn’t one guy working out there who didn’t end up sick. And everybody had the same kind of symptoms. You can’t tell me my face turned burnt red because of the flu.

Arlene Rial: If indeed they had the flu, the flu’s very contagious. I would have had it, Wayne would have had it, Tommy’s wife would have it. The only person in all the family’s who had flu-like symptoms other than the men was Tom’s daughter and maybe she really did have a flu. But the fact is, none of the wives, girl friends, or the rest of the family got sick.

They were sprayed. They were not in direct contact with each other. It is incomprehensible that somebody would say they had flu.

Wayne Thorstrom: There is no valid test. It’s like Arlene says, It’s the fox guarding the chicken house. You can’t trust the lab tests. You can’t even trust their labs. The one that tested Garlon 4—IBT—has been falsifying test results.

Rod Cudney: They just want it to grow overnight so they can chop it the next day.

Arlene Rial: L-P buys a chemical it doesn’t know is safe. It sprays it in dosages it won’t reveal and then they spray it in an area where men are working. I think it’s a crime.

Mills Matheson said that the immune system will break down and to be really careful to record any kind of thing: headaches, mood changes, fingertips or toes going numb. It’s not like someone goes out there and hits you on the head with a board. You don’t feel a big lump on your head. You’re going to feel subtle things. Swollen glands, bright red sore throat. It’s going to come and go.

Beth Bosk: Have you decided yet what legal action you will take?

Wayne Thorstrom: They don’t know what their legal procedures are yet, all the way from the Water Quality Control Board down. No decision can be made yet.

Arlene Rial: They may own the timber, but they don’t own you. Your family now has a much bigger chance of getting cancer, of being sick. You got to fight for your rights. You have got to be very vocal, very visible about this.

And you don’t have to be afraid of them. They’re the ones afraid. They did a bad thing and they can be held responsible for that. They were your employees and they were responsible for creating a safe environment for you to work. Hastings and Okerstrom sent the crews back the next day and they knew the area had been sprayed.

Frank Fales: None of us likes the idea of getting sprayed. I don’t care if it’s RAID, I don’t want somebody sticking it in my face. I’m out there trying to make a living. There’s hundreds of people out of work. You see wood all over here, yet do you know how hard it is to go out and get a pick-up load of hardwood without getting all kinds of permits and permissions and keys to get through the gates.

In the wintertime, when people are out of work, it’s hard to find $27 to go out and get a wood permit to heat your home. Let these people go out there and take care of that hardwood. They don’t need to spray anyone.

These companies are going to have to understand that these claims are going to be one of the costs of their spraying. Hard as it is to win a suit against a manufacturer like Dow, it’s a completely different story with Workmens Comp. There the burden of proof is on the company—all the way down the line from Hastings through Okerstrom to L-P. They will have to prove that whatever it is they did didn’t cause the ailments.

In the long run, I think it’s going to be the insurance carriers putting pressure on the companies that get rid of the herbicides.

—Dr. Mills Matheson

Sunday, April 14^th a tired Arlene Rial rose to speak at the meeting of the Mendocino Greens. An authentic orator, when the need be, Rial’s is also the master of the quiet comment. “You know what my son looks forward to every day now—that maybe he won’t be sick tomorrow.”

A crocheted hat was passed and she left the gathering with the $414 beginnings of a Loggers Defense Fundmso-bidi-font-size:

At that meeting of the Greens, Sue Roberts announced Comptche Citizens for a Safe Environment have resolved to picket L-P corporate offices in Ukiah...starting 7 AM, April 23, 1985, and lasting until L-P agrees to a two-year moratorium on all aerial herbicide spraying in Mendocino County and as an alternative agrees to institute manual hardwood removal projects