(The Canadian Press circulated the following story by Terri Theodore on April 29.)
VANCOUVER — Rail Safety Week saw Canada’s two main railways clean up after derailments including a crash that claimed the life of an engineer who stayed with his runaway train.
That accident and others have led to a call to beef up the country’s Railway Safety Act to protect rail workers, the public and communities that are most vulnerable to rail accidents.
CP Rail engineer Lonnie Plasko has been called a hero for trying to control a speeding train barrelling into the B.C. Interior community of Trail on Monday. Two of his co-workers jumped to safety. A day later, Mr. Plasko’s body was dug out from the train’s wreckage.
On the same day, CN Rail was cleaning up a derailment in central Alberta near the community of Alix. Eight cars left the track and three locomotives tipped onto their sides, forcing the crew members, all of them slightly injured, to climb out a window.
The most recent completed Transportation Safety Board statistics show a 10 per cent increase in total rail accidents in Canada from 2004 to 2005.
And compared to 2000-2004, the number of accidents went up by 18 per cent in 2005.
Dan Shewchuck, president of Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, believes that some of the accidents can be blamed on longer, heavier trains.
Mr. Shewchuck, who represents CN Rail engineers and engineers, conductors and yardmen for CP Rail, said the workers believe the ponderous trains have set off derailments in the past.
“[There are] serious concerns from our members in regards to how they’re able to handle that train at high speeds . . . It makes the job a lot more difficult.”
He said in the past few years trains have grown in length from 1,800 metres to about 5,100 metres — or about five kilometres — and move up to 100 kilometres an hour.
“We seem to be having the situations develop over and over again. And something has to be done.”
Liberal MP Don Bell agrees.
He’s the vice-chairman of the transport committee that has been holding hearings on the safety of the rail industry in Canada.
“We need to have accountability, they need to have the incentive . . . of fairly severe penalties because you’re dealing with people’s lives, you’re dealing with workers’ lives, you’re dealing with potentially the safety of the public,” Mr. Bell said in a telephone interview from Ottawa.
He believes the Railway Safety Act needs more teeth to force rail companies to comply, noting that the Aeronautics Act gives safety regulators a lot more power to act.
In February, the federal government announced its first review into the Railway Safety Act since 1994 and the report is expected this year.