(The following Associated Press article was published in the January 19 online issue of the Grand Forks Herald.)
MINOT, N.D. — A final report from the National Transportation Safety Board on the cause of a train derailment on the outskirts of Minot a year ago likely will not be ready until early summer, the lead investigator says.
In the meantime, state officials are getting ready to levy fines against Canadian Pacific Railway.
Federal investigators are awaiting more laboratory test results before they issue a probable cause and make recommendations on how to prevent a similar disaster in the future, investigator Ted Turpin said.
“Most of the factual information has been gathered,” he said. “Now is the analysis.”
The early morning Canadian Pacific Railway derailment on Jan. 18, 2002, sent 31 cars loaded with hazardous anhydrous ammonia off the tracks. Seven cars ruptured, releasing an estimated 290,000 gallons of the farm fertilizer into the environment.
The cloud that drifted over the city killed John Grabinger, 38, and injured hundreds more people.
Federal officials are studying what caused the crash, and why the tank cars leaked.
At a two-day hearing in Washington, D.C., last July, investigators said they were focusing on a part of the track that had been patched in a temporary repair job 18 months before the wreck.
Officials also said six of the seven tank cars that broke apart in the crash were built before a 1989 rule that requires specially tempered steel.
Canadian Pacific Railway spokesman John Bergene declined to comment on specifics of the derailment until the NTSB report is done.
Dave Glatt, the state Health Department’s environmental chief, said the state is considering fines against the railroad for environmental infractions as a way to recoup state expenses related to the derailment and cleanup. He did not immediately have an estimate of those expenses.
“Within a month … we should have our notice of violation and be looking at some ballpark figures,” he said.
The railroad’s willingness to help with the cleanup will be factored into the amount of the fines, Glatt said.
“Everything we’ve done has been with the approval of the North Dakota Department of Health,” Bergene said.
In the late 1980s, the Health Department levied similar fines against companies responsible for chemical fires in Grand Forks and Minot.
Glatt said the state collected about $59,000 in fines in connection with a 1989 fire at the Sum Chemical Co. west of Grand Forks, and about $160,000 in fines in connection with a 1987 blaze at the WestChem Agricultural Chemicals facility in Minot.
Ward County Emergency Manager Thom Mellum said emergency officials in the past year have improved systems for alerting the public during disasters. They also have made arrangements for a backup emergency operations center and dispatch center should the police department be evacuated, as it almost was a year ago.