Fire chief working on emergency access plan

Welland Fire and Emergency Services is working closely with both Trillium Railway and St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corp. to ensure access to Dain City in the event of an emergency, says Chief Brian Kennedy.

“Our instructions to St. Catharines fire dispatch is to put out the tones for us and the second thing they’ve been instructed to do is call Trillium. They’ll call the operations manager and he’ll clear the tracks within a couple of minutes if there is a train there,” said Kennedy.

Trillium Railway uses a rail line that cuts across Canal Bank Street/Kingsway, potentially blocking the only access to Dain City if a train were going to Atlantic Biodiesel on St. Clair Drive.

Kennedy said response time to Dain City from the King Street fire hall is about 3½ minutes, about the time it would take to clear a train accessing the plant, which is on shutdown right now.

“That’s well within our response guidelines.”

As for an alternate access to the area, he said the fire service is working with the seaway corporation on getting access to its service road along the Welland Canal from Humberstone Road.

“We’ll have a gate installed at the end of Forks Road that we’ll have access to. It will be something we can use for emergencies,” he said, adding it would be used if Kingsway was shut down because of a major incident.

The chief said he’ll be in contact with Niagara Emergency Medical Services to talk about that road once details are finalized.

City of Welland will hold an open house after staff present a report on the status on the bridge to councillors. No date has been set for that open house.