CALGARY- The mayor has some stern words for Canadian Pacific Railway, one day after a train derailment near downtown.
During the commute home on Wednesday evening, eight cars in the Alyth Yard jumped the track—causing six to flip over. Emergency crews rushed to shut down nearby roads while they worked to determine if the contents in the cars were dangerous.
It took CP an hour and a half to verify that the cars were carrying a diluting agent used in oil pipelines.
“We had an enormous amount of trouble getting a straight answer from CP on what was in those cars,” Mayor Naheed Nenshi complains. “In fact, one of my colleagues got a phone call from CP where they said ‘You throw a match in there and it won’t catch fire.’
“I don’t understand why the railroad has so much trouble understanding what it is they’re shipping,” he continues. “It was city staff who have no regulatory authority on this risking their lives to solve the problem, and we can’t solve the problem if we’re not given correct accurate information from the beginning.”
A natural gas line in the area also caused concern, so 12 nearby businesses and 142 homes were evacuated as a precaution. The road closures also caused gridlock for hours.
Nenshi is calling for restrictions, about when trains can travel through the city.
Transportation safety officials are now investigating what led the cars to derail.
“We’re going to look into everything. We look at how the train was handled, how the cars were reacting mechanically and also what kind of shape the track was in,” explains James Carmichael from the TSB. “Once the cars start getting moved out of the way, we’re going to be looking at the wheels and the car components as well.”
The mayor plans to call the president of CP, to personally express his concerns.
As of Thursday afternoon the fire department had removed 240,000 litres of product from two cars, into empty cars on an adjacent track.
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