RAIL SAFETY GETS BOOST
RULES WON ’THEL PIN EMERGENCY: NENSHI
CALGARY AND OTTAWA — Emergency planning should improve with new rules forcing railways to regularly share what dangerous goods roll through communities, but Mayor Naheed Nenshi said Wednesday the rules will do little to soothe concerns that emergency responders are unable to quickly determine what goods are in derailed train cars.
Civic leaders across the country applauded Transportation Minister Lisa Raitt’s order Wednesday for quarterly information sharing from major railways, announced months after this summer’s deadly disaster in Lac-Megantic, Que. Officials from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities flanked Raitt during the announcement, and Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre replied: “Excellent news.”
Nenshi was more circumspect, having repeatedly criticized Canadian Pacific after June’s derailment nearly sent train cars into the Bow River, and in September after part of Inglewood had to be evacuated when cars carrying diluent tipped.
Nenshi said it’s a “tentative first step” in the wake of the Lac-Megantic disaster, and the two derailments this summer in southeast Calgary.
“Our first responders, if they can look at trends, if they say a lot more of X chemical is going through our city, we should make sure that we’ve got the equipment on hand to look for X chemical,” Nenshi said.
“So it’s helping for planning ... but it’s certainly not helpful for emergency response.”
Raitt acknowledged that the information won’t prevent another tragedy like the one July 6, when oil-laden tanker cars derailed and exploded into flames, killing dozens of people and decimating the picturesque core of Lac-Megantic.
“This part isn’t about prevention,” Raitt told a news conference in Ottawa. “This part is about response and ensuring that communities have the information that they identify that they want to have.”
It may also have something to do with a report from the auditor general due Tuesday that’s expected to linger on the issue of whether Transport Canada is effectively managing the risks of rail transport.
Wednesday’s order is effective immediately, and will require that Canadian Class 1 railway companies that transport dangerous goods provide municipalities with detailed dangerous goods information every three months.
Any other company or person that transports dangerous goods will also have to inform municipalities what was transported through the community, but on an annual basis.
None of the information has to be provided in advance,
Nenshi has decried how hard it is for civic emergency crews to find out what derailed cars are carrying, and insufficient federal oversight.
“Municipalities need to have a say as these materials go through these communities every single day,” he said.
City officials and CP have been in talks about data sharing since this summer’s derailments, including a meeting with fire battalion chiefs last month, CP spokesman Ed Greenberg said. Trains carrying dangerous goods are to have coded placards revealing their contents, and CP readily has more info, he said.
Sometimes, the railway will have to get detailed information from the shipper or from “a number of avenues,” Greenberg added.
The Railway Industry Association of Canada, an industry lobby group, said it supported the new measures, while noting that part of the problem in the past was related to confusion within cities and their fire departments or emergency services. “I think in some cases, elected officials didn’t have the information and didn’t realize that their fire chief had the information,” said Michael Bourque, president and CEO of the industry association. “Maybe in some cases, they just hadn’t thought of it before.” But he said the industry has had regular and proactive outreach with municipalities.