(The following article by Ken Crites was posted on the Minot Daily News website on December 9.)
MINOT, N.D. — It’s not yet carved in stone, but the National Transportation Safety Board’s long-awaited report on the Jan. 18, 2002, train derailment near Minot might be released soon.
Minot Rural Fire Chief Bob Wetzler said Monday he had been in contact late last week with Ted Turpin, the lead NTSB investigator of the Minot accident.
Turpin said at that time investigators were shooting for the end of December or the middle of January for release of the document, the chief said.
Turpin, reached in his office in California on Monday, said “We’re working on it (the report) real hard. We’ve been having internal reviews of it and going over the report line-by-line and we’re moving ahead. We just need every word to be right and set right, too.”
Turpin had said earlier he was through making predictions on when the report might actually come out saying he had been wrong several times before.
There have been numerous announcements put out about the report’s impending release during the nearly two years since 31 cars of an eastbound 112-car train derailed just west of Minot.
Each time the hopes were dashed because of further studies needed by investigators.
Fifteen of the derailed cars carried anhydrous ammonia, an agricultural fertilizer. Eleven of the 15 cars ruptured, officials said. It was estimated that the spill involved as much as 300,000 gallons of anhydrous, believed to be the largest spill, ever.
The bulk of the chemical vaporized and spread a dense cloud of gas over the valley in Minot. The cloud lingered for considerable time and one man perished and many others were injured by the gas. Several people were hospitalized for a time after the derailment.
The report has been delayed by the need for more technical study and lab work by the NTSB, according to Turpin. A hearing was held in Washington last summer. Wetzler, in whose jurisdiction the derailment occurred, was invited to be a part of the hearing to ask questions. Discussions since the incident have centered on the rails at the site, why the cars ruptured so severely and other aspects of the derailment.
An initial cause of the derailment, put forth by Turpin a few days after the derailment was that a 25-foot section of rail that had been replaced by the railroad at the site might have been the culprit. Pieces of the rail were cut up and taken to a laboratory for close scrutiny.
The holdups in completing and releasing the report have delayed legal proceedings against CP Rail. A class action lawsuit is pending and several people are known to be waiting for the report’s release to pursue legal action.
The railroad has not commented on the derailment because federal law prohibits it from doing so until the NTSB report is available, according to a railroad spokesperson.
CP Rail was fined $925,000 by the State Health Department in a settlement announced in July. Of that total, $500,000 was designated for construction of a rural water system for the Tierrecita Vallejo subdivision, near where the derailment occurred. The water system has been completed.
The remaining $425,000 was turned over to the state’s general fund for the railroad’s violations of environmental regulations.