Host of errors blamed in Vancouver Island train derailment
VICTORIA — Faulty equipment and a long list of mechanical errors caused the 2017 logging train derailment in Woss on Vancouver Island that killed three people and injured two, WorkSafeBC has found.
A WorkSafeBC report obtained by the Times Colonist through a freedom of information request concluded that Western Forest Products, the company working on the now-defunct Englewood Railway, failed to ensure the health and safety of all workers on the rail line.
On April 20, 2017, a faulty coupler, the mechanism that connects rail cars, caused 11 cars loaded with logs to detach and roll freely toward the community of Woss, directly into a maintenance crew working downhill on the track.
The rail cars rolled 500 metres from the reload yard and collided with a railway maintenance car, called a speeder, and a rubber-tired backhoe where five men were working.
Four men were on the speeder, and one was on the backhoe.
The man operating the speeder tried to apply the brakes but to no avail. The railcars, the speeder and the backhoe ran out of control down the line for another 1.5 kilometres until they all derailed.
The men were buried by logs.
Roland Gaudet, Jacob Galeazzi and Clement Reti died, and two others were seriously injured.
Gaudet’s stepdaughter, Vanessa Kaspar, has read the report and is distressed by the findings.
“I want to know who was in charge of inspecting those things,” she said. “It’s frustrating to read that there was a lot of neglect that happened.”
The train would have derailed well before it reached the maintenance crew, but a derail mechanism wasn’t working properly. The device should have sent the wheels to the right, which would have derailed the logging cars without putting anyone in harm’s way.
However, the derail device was attached to old rail ties that had rotted away due to wet conditions. The derail device, instead of diverting the cars, came free when it was hit by the first set of wheels, making it useless. As a result, the rest of the wheels stayed on the tracks and the rail cars barrelled toward the maintenance crew.
The front wheels that temporarily derailed jumped back on the tracks when they hit a switch where two tracks converge.
The reload operator radioed the rail traffic controller to warn that the cars were rolling down the line, a warning which the controller broadcast repeatedly to anyone on that section of track.
No one responded to those warnings, and the WorkSafeBC report does not explain why.
“It’s like a series of three freak things happening,” Kaspar said. “Ultimately I don’t have a stepfather, my daughter doesn’t have a grandfather. She loved him so much.”
Gaudet, 59, had worked for Western Forest Products for 27 years and was one year from retirement.