(Bloomberg circulated the following story on March 9.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A U.S. safety agency blamed the fatal 2002 derailment of a Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. train in North Dakota on defective track and recommended that regulators tighten rail-inspection and equipment standards.
The accident spilled 146,700 gallons of ammonia and killed a 38-year-old Minot, North Dakota, man who was overcome by gas fumes. The National Transportation Safety Board called for restricting the use of older, more brittle tank rail cars and urged more frequent and thorough track examinations.
“We have raised a tank-car safety issue that needs to be addressed,” NTSB Chairwoman Ellen Engleman Conners said in an interview. Tank cars built before 1989 “pose a non-quantifiable, but real risk to the public. There are trains carrying those cars in every city.”
Canadian Pacific disputed NTSB’s conclusion that inadequate maintenance and inspections caused the accident.
Sixty percent of rail cars that carry ammonia were built before 1989, when heat treatment of steel was required to make them stronger, NTSB said. The railway replaced track at the site 18 months before the wreck, which caused an explosion that sent rail cars flying 1,700 feet.
“We don’t know what the track failure was,” Canadian Pacific Vice President Patrick Pender said in an interview. “There is not enough evidence to point to a broken joint bar,” the piece that NTSB said broke because of undetected cracks. The railway believes the wreck was caused by an unspecified failure of the track that wasn’t maintenance-related, he said.
The Federal Railroad Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, regulates railroads that operate in the U.S. It isn’t bound by findings by the NTSB, which can only make recommendations.
On Foot
Specifically, NTSB found that Calgary-based Canadian Pacific failed to do an on-the-ground inspection that could have found the crack. Pender said the tracks were inspected two days before the crash.
The NTSB said the railroad administration should perform tests to determine how steel could be made more resistant to cracking and evaluate whether to use older cars on trains that run more slowly. Four of the cars that fractured and exploded were owned by Chicago-based GATX Corp., said Frank Zakar, an NTSB investigator.
The railroad agency also should change rules that let inspectors examine track from their automobiles. Instead, they should be required to inspect on foot, NTSB said.
NTSB also said the railroad agency should be required to review track-maintenance reports. The agency never checked Canadian Pacific’s maintenance plan, which was submitted at least a year before the wreck, NTSB said.
“It would be premature to accept all the recommendations as a whole,” said Warren Flatau, spokesman for the railroad administration. “We have to do a further in-depth evaluation. We are going to address each individual recommendation.”
Robert Lyons, a spokesman for Chicago-based GATX, said the company cooperated with the investigation and that it’s reviewing the findings.
Shares of Canadian Pacific fell 75 Canadian cents to C$32 at 3:59 p.m. in Toronto Stock Exchange trading.