(The following story by Kevin Woster appeared on the Rapid City Journal website on August 14.)
RAPID CITY — A Wasta rancher wants financial compensation for damage to his property caused by an Aug. 1 fire that apparently started in a railroad car on the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad track.
But DM&E President Kevin Schieffer said Tuesday that liability belongs to Evergreen Energy Inc., of Denver, Colo., which was shipping a processed coal product called K-Fuel that caught fire in the rail car that was owned or leased by the energy company. Schieffer also said preliminary results of a DM&E review had failed to determine exactly how the fire started, although a lightning strike was possible.
Schieffer said that he couldn’t rule out the possibility that the K-Fuel, a refined coal product that is more efficient and has fewer emissions, had ignited on its own — the cause given by firefighters at the scene that day.
“This is one of those things where you had a lot of different things going on, including a lightning storm, and you also had a coal product,” Schieffer said. “It’s one of those things where you’re never going to get an absolutely conclusive answer on. Whether it was lightning or what, it’s impossible to define.”
Rancher Terry Schell said the fire burned thousands of railroad ties that were stacked on his property near the DM&E railroad track between Wasta and Wall. Schell said he was planning to sell the ties, which the company agreed to give him as an adjoining property owner after they were removed during track repair.
“We were going to re-sell them. I’d like to get market value out of them,” Schell said. “I don’t know that they were all marketable. But certainly over 60 percent of them were.”
There might have been as many as 20,000 ties at the site, he said. Better quality ties could have a market value up to $8.50 apiece, Schell said.
Schieffer said any settlement would be between Evergreen Energy and Schell, since the car involved in the fire was either owned or leased by Evergreen. But DM&E will be involved in the compensation process, too, he said.
“I’m sure it will be taken care of. We usually have pretty good luck dealing with reasonable people coming to closure on this kind of thing,” Schieffer said. “It would be between shipper and that person, but we would certainly work as a go-between and try to make sure everybody is treated fairly.”
Evergreen officials did not return telephone calls by the Journal on Friday and Tuesday.
Local firefighters said at the time of the fire that they believed it had started in a coal car that was sitting with others on the track adjoining Schell’s property. Incident commander John Hess of the Wall Volunteer Fire Department said burning embers fell from a hole in the car, allowing the fire to spread from the track area and scorch about 10 acres of Schell’s property and the rail ties.
Hess said Tuesday that the fire clearly began in the rail car. He said lightning was a possibility, as an electrical storm had moved through the area that morning. But he and other firefighters concluded that the coal product had probably self-ignited in the car.
“What we’re going off of is that the DM&E guys on scene told us that’s what happened. We’re taking their word for it,” Hess said. “It sure could have been lightning, too.”
The ignition issue is more significant because it was one of the possible dangers raised by opponents of a planned expansion by DM&E. Critics of the project said some coal products carried in the expanded rail traffic from the project could ignite on their own, increasing fire hazards along the line.
Project supporters downplayed that possibility. And Schieffer said DM&E has never had problems with coal or coal product self-igniting.
Schieffer said the company might never know the exact start of the Aug. 1 fire.
“What we do know is that it got caught quickly,” he said. “That’s the good news.”