WATCH: Yesterday’s fire is raising a number of questions about how much hazardous material there is moving through the port – and the public’s right to know. John Daly reports.
Commodities labelled as dangerous accounted for just .25 per cent of all tonnage Port Metro Vancouver dealt with in 2014.
It may seem small, but that number translates into over 350,000 thousand tons. And when it’s shipped through Metro Vancouver communities on rail, local officials have no idea when it will happen – or what’s exactly inside the containers.
READ MORE: Chemical fire at Port Metro Vancouver extinguished
“We don’t find out 30 days until after it goes through,” says White Rock Wayne Baldwin.
New Westminster, which has four companies operating on its many rail lines, also wishes they had more information on what’s being carried through the quay area.
“They’re concerned about terrorism and becoming a target…but every car has to have a placard on it. Their products are targeted anyway.”
WATCH: Chuck Puchmayr and Wayne Baldwin discuss what they’re told – and not told – about dangerous goods that pass through their community on rail
It was a container of trichloroisocyanuric acid that burned in a container at Port Metro Vancouver on Wednesday, forcing the closure of the port and the evacuation of hundreds of people.
Port Metro Vancouver spokesperson Peter Xotta says approximately 500 containers of trichloroisocyanuric acid, which is used as a bleaching agent and industrial disinfectant, pass through the port every year.
Baldwin says he’s concerned what would happen if a container tipped over or caught on fire while passing through White Rock or South Surrey, where large swaths of the population would be trapped between the ocean and the rail line.
“There’s no evacuation, because there’s no way to cross the tracks,” he says. It’s one of the reasons he’s pushing for the federal government to move the railway all together.
“The only way to deal with this is move the tracks, move the train,” he said.
“This is not a good situation, it’s just not satisfactory.”
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