(The following story by Heather Polischuk and Karen Brownlee appeared on the Leader-Post website on April 9.)
RALPH and REGINA — Canadian Pacific Railway is saying there is likely to be no environmental impact due to a Monday morning derailment in southeastern Saskatchewan that involved three trains.
CPR’s assistant vice-president of operations, Scott MacDonald, was out at the accident site between Ralph and Halbrite on Tuesday as crews busily worked to reopen the stretch of track on which the derailment occurred. While he said some cars contained so-called “regulated commodities,” CPR had environmental experts on the scene who determined the air quality of the area had not been affected.
“The black smoke you did see was the plastic pellets that were burning,” he said about the large plume of smoke that was visible for kilometres following the accident. “There were two cars of glycol (anti-freeze). They were in the fire. However, at no time was there a danger to the environment or the community with those cars.”
He said soil testing has yet to be done, but MacDonald did not anticipate that would turn up any environmental hazards either. He would not go into detail as to what other regulated materials were on the trains.
“I can tell you, there are no environmental issues at this time,” he said, adding that CPR cleans up the site after any incident and works with environmental experts during the process.
CPR officials are now trying to determine exactly what led to the collision. While Weyburn’s fire chief had said earlier that operator error is believed to be the cause, MacDonald said it is too early to speculate on cause as CPR and the Transportation Safety Board are still conducting an investigation.
What is known is that at about 8:15 a.m. Monday, one train stopped to allow an oncoming train to pass on the siding. While both were stationary, a third train came up behind at the stop point and hit the back of the first train. Two-man crews on each train were uninjured but shaken up.
The impact caused 10 cars to derail, and two are believed to have caught fire, with a grass fire starting after that.
Six families were evacuated within a two-kilometre radius and traffic on Highway 39 was rerouted around the accident site.
Fire crews, who had previously remained back due to the risk of explosion or exposure to possible hazardous materials, were able to move in to fight the fire at about 1 a.m. Tuesday. The fire had been extinguished by 3 a.m.
At 9 a.m., the evacuation order for the area around the derailment site was lifted and families were allowed to return home. Highway 39 was reopened for traffic at about the same time, MacDonald said.
The siding area of the track was reopened at about 3:30 p.m., allowing backed-up trains to begin moving. It was unknown how long it would take to clear the entire stretch of track involved.
While there has been some impact on CPR — about 13 to 16 trains pass through the area each day — the impact is expected to be “minimal” due to the ability to reroute some of those trains, MacDonald said.
He said CPR, along with fire crews and police, were able to implement emergency response protocol quickly after the incident occurred, in part because of mock emergency scenarios that are routinely practised. The Weyburn Fire Department had taken part in such a mock-up with CPR about two years ago, MacDonald said.
“For us in the RMs, it’s all about building relationships and trust,” he said. “You never want to have these types of situations, but when they do happen, you want to be prepared and be able to execute your plans … When we came on site here, we knew a lot of the people that we were dealing with, so you just very quickly put your plans in action.”
The federal and provincial environment departments referred comment to CPR.