(The Canadian Press circulated the following story on May 15.)
McBRIDE, B.C. — The first six cars of a lengthy freight train derailed while crossing over a trestle bridge and plunged into a ravine near here Wednesday. Two CN Rail crew members, the conductor and engineer, are missing and presumed dead.
The crash happened in a remote area 700 kilometres northwest of Vancouver near the Alberta border and sparked a fire which raged into the night hampering efforts by rescue crews to locate the crew. “It’s been going for several hours and officials are still trying to put out the fire and the crew remain unaccounted for,” CN Rail spokesman Jim Feeny said in an interview from Winnipeg late Wednesday.
“Unfortunately the weather is closing in, it is snowing, it is not very good, but our people will be there through the night.”
The two missing employees were the only crew members on the 86-car eastbound train when the accident occurred shortly after noon.
Feeny said the first six cars fell into the six- to eight-metre-deep ravine. Shortly after the accident, the families of the crew members were contacted and told that there loved ones were missing.
“Our officers have met with the families and we are with the families at this time as we all wait for more complete information,” Feeny said.
The locomotive crashed about 4.5 kilometres west of McBride in the Cariboo region close to the Alberta border and has temporarily shut down the CN freight line.
Doug Monroe, a McBride volunteer firefighter, arrived on the scene at about 3 p.m. after walking a mile down the tracks.
“There’s no roaded access. You either walk in or get at it by river, it’s about 150 metres from the Fraser River.”
He said no fire truck could get to the ravine, so a helicopter was called in. It didn’t arrive until 3:30, more than three hours after the train fell through the bridge and the fire broke out. In the meantime, desperate emergency crews used buckets and threw water from the river on the flames that raged in a half-hectare area.
“When we arrived, the two engines and four cars full of lumber were on fire and the fuel just continued to feed it,” Monroe said.
“It was quite an eye opener, a shock that this stuff happens so close to home.”
He said the helicopter pulled out at about 10 p.m. and he suspected the fire was likely close to put out.
CN Rail officers from Prince George had cleared the stranded 80 cars stuck from the track by late afternoon.
Feeny said the accident is on a rail line that runs out of Prince George and is not holding up traffic from Vancouver. The train stopped in Prince Rupert and was headed for Jasper, then Edmonton.
More CN Rail staff from Edmonton, Terrace and Vancouver were heading to McBride to aid in the search for the missing crew members and to launch an investigation into the accident.
“This doesn’t happen often and we’ve made progress on our accident rates, that’s what makes this hard,” Feeny said.