(The Associated Press distributed the following article by Blake Nicholson on September 2.)
BISMARCK, N.D. — Residents of Minot affected by a train derailment and chemical spill and the attorneys who represent them say they are frustrated with the pace of a federal investigation.
Ted Turpin, lead investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, said a report that will include a probable cause of the wreck will not be finished before fall.
“I’m pushing very hard before the major holidays,” he said. “I hope it happens before Thanksgiving.”
Tom Lundeen, one of the property owners in a subdivision on the west edge of Minot who were forced from their homes for months after the Jan. 18, 2002 crash, wonders whether the cause will be known by the end of the year.
“It’ll be going on two years in January,” he said. “It’s frustrating. We can’t progress any further with any of the issues we have. We’re all sitting back on our thumbs, waiting for the NTSB.”
Fargo attorney Mike Miller, who represents about 900 Minot residents in their legal claims against Canadian Pacific Railway, said he also is frustrated.
“As long as the NTSB investigation is ongoing, we are prohibited by federal law to talk to people who have direct knowledge about the accident,” he said. “Certainly we have our theories on what happened and why it happened. Until we have the opportunity to talk to CP folks and take depositions, we can’t really move forward.”
John Huber, Midwest director of government affairs for Canadian Pacific, said the railroad is not in a position to judge whether the NTSB is going too fast or too slow.
“We’ll see what transpires as we go through each step of the process,” he said.
The early morning derailment sent 31 cars loaded with hazardous anhydrous ammonia off the tracks on the west edge of Minot. An estimated 290,000 gallons of the farm fertilizer spilled, sending a cloud over the city that killed one man and injured hundreds more people.
Last January, Turpin said he expected the final report on the wreck to be ready by early summer. The NTSB is just now wrapping up work on a technical report. Investigators will add an analysis – determining what caused the crash and what caused the tank cars to break apart – and make recommendations to prevent a similar incident.
Turpin said a lot of the analysis work, which included lab work on pieces of rail and tanker cars, has been done.
“There’s quite a bit of internal review to get things right,” he said.
During a two-day hearing in Washington, D.C., last summer, investigators said they were focusing on a part of the track that had been patched in a temporary repair job 18 months before the derailment.