(The following story by Bruce Constantineau appeared on the Vancouver Sun website on February 9.)
VANCOUVER — A massive avalanche that shut down a Canadian Pacific Railway line near Revelstoke last week has caused a backlog in the shipment of commodities to the Port of Vancouver.
The development is noteworthy because the rail shipment difficulties were mentioned in two separate company financial reports this week.
Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan said “an avalanche in the Rocky Mountains delayed potash shipments to Vancouver” while Fording Canadian Coal Trust said coal inventories at ports are low due to rail shipment problems.
“If these current difficulties with rail shipments continue, we can expect sales volumes for the first quarter to be below normal levels and we will likely incur considerable demurrage charges for vessel waiting times,” Fording said in its report.
CP Rail executive vice-president Fred Green said the largest of four snow slides on the railway line occurred Jan. 30 near Illecillewaet, about 40 kilometres east of Revelstoke. The slide, 160 metres long and eight metres high at its peak, closed the rail line for two days and wiped out high voltage power lines in the area.
“We ended up breaking several of our plows and several other pieces of machinery before we could clear the line,” Green said.
He said rail traffic still hasn’t returned to normal levels and expects it will take a considerable period of time to clear up a backlog of westbound trains carrying commodities like coal, grain, potash and sulphur.
“It’s already a pretty busy railway and when you have a backlog of three or four days, it’s going to take weeks [to completely eliminate the backlog],” Green said.
He said avalanche controls have made slides of this size a rarity in recent years. “We had two terrible cold snaps recently and then the slide so it feels a little bit like the perfect storm, to be honest with you.”
Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan senior vice-president Betty Ann Heggie said the slides have delayed delivery of about 250,000 tonnes of potash, which represents about five shiploads of product. She said freight rates are already high and delays can hike costs even more and cut into profits, especially if demurrage charges are imposed for vessel waiting times. Fording Canadian Coal Trust representative Mark Gow said the amount of demurrage charges levied during delays like this will vary, depending on the contract, but it’s a “significant” cost.
“It’s not unusual to have slides and and all that stuff this time of year but we were starting to get things working well and then the slides came,” he said. “It’s causing us some grief.”