Investigation and cleanup work continued Tuesday in Goderich, Ont., a day after a runaway freight train derailed near the lakeside town’s harbour and left a path of destruction that, incredibly, saw no injuries reported.
Both Transport Canada and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) said Tuesday that they had deployed officials to the scene of the derailment, which occurred around 1:33 p.m. near the Parrish and Heimbecker Ltd. Goderich Grain Terminal along Harbour Street.
Transport Canada said it had deployed an operations inspector to gather information and to conduct an inspection for compliance with the Railway Safety Act, while the TSB said it had deployed an investigator to the site.
Details remain limited, but police say approximately 10 cars, including two locomotives, left the tracks during the incident, which also saw a tractor trailer destroyed and overturned and a pickup truck wedged between a locomotive and a fence.
It’s believed the train had been moving uphill from the grain terminal at the time when, for reasons not yet clear, it began rolling back down. Photos posted at the scene show the train overshot the end of the track by at least 100 metres, stopping only after it crashed into a wooden fish shanty located along the south pier.
In a statement, a Transport Canada spokesperson said an “uncontrolled movement” of the train took place “when Goderich and Exeter Railway Company Limited (GEXR) was conducing switching activities in Goderich, Ontario.”
Huron OPP Cst. James Stanley said Tuesday that it was very fortunate no one was physically hurt in the incident.
“The transport truck was unoccupied at the time — very fortunate there. The driver had left the truck for a short period of time. There were two occupants in the pickup truck that the train did strike… they were uninjured,” he said.
Police said the occupants of the pickup were initially trapped inside, but were assisted out of the vehicle with the help of fire crews.
As for the locomotive, Stanley says operators were on the train at an earlier point in time, but noted he was uncertain when they jumped off.
“They weren’t on the train at the point of impact with the transport truck. That would have been the first object that was struck,” he said.
The train was carrying grain at the time of the derailment, as was the transport truck that was destroyed.
The province’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks was contacted after a small amount of diesel fuel spilled from the truck, Stanley said.
Stratford-based GEXR is a short line freight railway that operates between Goderich and Stratford and from Clinton to just south of Exeter, according to the Canadian Railway Association’s Canadian Rail Atlas.
In a statement, a spokesperson for GEXR’s parent company, Genesee & Wyoming Inc., said a thorough investigation was underway “to determine what took place and help prevent it from ever happening again.”
Provincial police are assisting investigators with the TSB, Stanley said, adding that, “at this given point in time, there’s no indication to suggest” any criminality was involved.
A cost estimate of the damage is not yet available, and work is underway to clean up the scene, a process that’s expected to take several days if not weeks.
“Certainly we want to be able to get the grain elevators… back up and operational. We don’t want to impact any sort of business as much as we need to,” Stanley said.
Police said Harbour Street remained closed as of Tuesday afternoon at the top of the beach hill for necessary cleanup work. Residents were advised to stay away for their own safety.
“It’s really, very fortunate. Had it been a busy summer day, it certainly, probably would have been much different,” Stanley said.
Police say anyone who has information about the derailment or who may have caught the incident on video is being asked to contact investigators at 1-800-310-1122.