Lethbridge building hit by train for 2nd time

A Lethbridge community centre sustained damage and was forced to cancel its bookings on Tuesday after a train crashed into the building the night before.

As a train went off the tracks on Highway 3 outside the Sik-Ooh-Kotoki Friendship Society on Monday night, Travis Plaited Hair, the centre’s executive director, was inside.

“Rail workers came to my front door and asked me if anybody was in the back area and I said, ‘I don’t think so, not supposed to be anybody there.'”

Plaited Hair said the workers didn’t say why they were asking, so he followed them to the area in question.

“I saw the light coming through and I was shocked,” he said. “A train actually hit the building. That doesn’t happen every day.”

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The train derailed and slammed into the back wall of the centre’s gymnasium, leaving two holes in the building.

Meanwhile, traffic was at a standstill on Highway 3 for about one hour. Tristan Tuckett was stranded with his wife, who is eight-and-a-half months pregnant.

“After 10 minutes, she was starting to get a little antsy so we looked around and once the word came out that it was a train derailment… she started getting a little panicked… ‘What if I go into labour? And what if I have to go to the bathroom? What are we going to do?'”

Nobody was injured in the incident, but Plaited Hair says it was lucky the crash happened when it did — at around 5:30 p.m.

“It would have been a different story had it been after 6 p.m. because there would have been kids running around and they’re all over the place.”

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This isn’t the first time the building has been hit.

In March 1994, a train and dump truck collided at the same crossing. The driver of the dump truck was killed and another person was injured, while one of the train cars heavily damaged the building of what was then a gym.

“The truck struck the rail car and sent it into the northwest corner of an adjacent building. The building’s concrete block wall collapsed onto the leading end of the car, trapping the yard foreman,” reads a Transportation Safety Board of Canada document from the incident.

Plaited Hair said this latest incident is cause for concern.

“It’s happened twice so the likelihood of it possibly happening again is there,” he said.

For now, Plaited Hair hopes to have the damages repaired soon so he can reopen the space for his bookings.

CP Rail said the cause of Monday’s derailment is under investigation and would not comment any further.