VANCOUVER — It meant holding up six freight trains for nearly an hour on one of the province’s most important railway corridors, but at the end of it, Carmel, the golden labrador, was safe, the Vancouver Sun reported.
And to locomotive engineer Scott Grimmer, who stopped his fully loaded, 2,200-metre-long Canadian Pacific coal train on the main Fraser River line between Boston Bar and Roberts Bank to rescue Carmel, that’s all that matters.
“It was a bit of an inconvenience,” the 41-year-old Abbotsford resident admitted Wednesday. “It was a lot of freight being held up, and time is money. But a life is more important than any of that.”
It all started at 6 p.m. last Saturday, when four-year-old Carmel and her buddy, Rosie, a five-year-old boxer, were let out of their Abbotsford home for some exercise.
The trouble was, they never came back. The dogs’ owner, Don Martin, an Abbotsford auxiliary firefighter, searched until midnight for them, but in vain.
That’s because at some point between the time Carmel and Rosie were let out, and 11 a.m. Sunday morning when Grimmer helped rescue them, Carmel was hit by a train and knocked into a mud pit, where she almost drowned.
When Grimmer saw her in a heavily wooded area about 1.6 km east of the Bradner railway crossing, after being alerted to the dog’s problem by the crew of another train, all he could make out was her two brown eyes.
“Her front paws were straight down in the mud. Her pelvis was broken and she was in mud and water up to her neck, and she couldn’t move.”
Grimmer wasn’t the first engineer to spot Carmel. A Canadian National engineer driving a train ahead of Grimmer’s had tried to save her earlier. Grimmer doesn’t know the engineer’s name, but he knows the rescue attempt was unsuccessful. Carmel was scared and biting, so the CN crew couldn’t get close enough to her to grab her.
When they radioed Grimmer to alert him to Carmel’s plight, they told him to be sure to have something on hand to muzzle the dog.
By then, however, it wasn’t necessary. Carmel was too exhausted to bite anyone. Grimmer and his conductor, Gordie Campbell, wrapped Grimmer’s sweater around her to keep her warm, then used straps from the stretcher they keep on the train, to fashion a leash and collar for her.
They managed to haul her out of the mud, but they couldn’t get her on to the train. That would have involved them lifting her on a stretcher two metres onto the locomotive from steep and rocky terrain. They couldn’t manage it.
So, leaving Campbell to look after Carmel, Grimmer detached his locomotive from the 124 cars behind it, and drove it to the Bradner crossing where he phoned SPCA animal-control assistant Lani Sanders.
“It was incredible, the effort that he made,” Sanders said. “He picked me up in his engine — the actual engine of his train.”
Then with Sanders aboard, he reversed the locomotive back to Campbell and Carmel.
In the meantime, an unidentified conductor from a nearby CN train — one of five stalled by the rescue — joined the scene as well, and together he, Grimmer, Campbell and Sanders hoisted Carmel onto the locomotive and safety.
And Rosie?
“She never left Carmel’s side,” said Sanders. “She watched everything we did. She was really wary, but she wanted to know what we were doing with her buddy.”
At Bakerview Veterinary Hospital in Abbotsford, Carmel was diagnosed as having a broken pelvis and several abrasions, injuries consistent with being hit by a train. Rosie was fine.
Martin, who had continued his search the next morning, phoned the SPCA shortly before his dogs were delivered to hospital, and was told where to meet them.
“I had to shake my head in disbelief,” Martin said when he heard the story. “I couldn’t believe it. You know, the circumstances surrounding it, getting hit by the train and getting stuck in the mud.
“Then the manpower, the people involved, it’s just amazing.”
Canadian Pacific spokesman Len Cocolicchil didn’t know about the incident until he was told about it by The Vancouver Sun.
But after checking the circumstances, he said: “Based on what we know of the incident, there are no plans to discipline the locomotive engineer. It wasn’t a major delay.”
Carmel is going to be fine. It may be six to eight weeks before she can walk on all four legs again, and she’s having great difficult passing her waste — “the washer and dryer are going constantly,” Martin says — but she is expected to make a full recovery.
Grimmer is matter-of-fact about the incident: “I’m an animal lover. I have a dog too. I knew the dog would be in pain, and I couldn’t live with myself if I walked by.
“[The engineers on the other trains] asked if it was going to take much longer, and if it was, maybe we could move on and let someone else try. But I said no, we weren’t going to leave until we saved this dog.”
Martin doesn’t know how to say thank you. “Exactly. How does somebody say thank you for something like this?” he says. “It’s just a heartfelt thank you to everyone involved, and it’s completely unbelievable.”
Editor’s Note: Grimmer is a member of BLE Division 320
(Vancouver).