Flammable fluids pumped from railcars
Fast-moving water compromised pier, Canadian Pacific says
CALGARY — The head of Canadian Pacific Railway insists a bridge that started sagging Thursday while a train carrying flammable petroleum products passed over the Bow River was properly inspected in the wake of last week’s flood.
But the bridge’s near-collapse, which began early Thursday and led to crippling traffic jams for rush-hour commuters, triggered tough questions from the mayor about whether the company had exercised enough caution.
As crews worked to pump the fluids out of the rail cars that remain atop the Bonnybrook bridge, CPR chief executive Hunter Harrison told reporters the span had been inspected five times since the deluge, and that flooding was to blame for weakening the bridge’s pier.
Harrison added he didn’t anticipate “a problem like this occurring at all” and that it would have been “jeopardizing commerce” to hold the trains until divers could get in and inspect the bridge under the water.
“We would normally have probably put divers in to inspect, but the current was too fast. Somebody would have drowned if they had tried to go in there, plus the current was so fast and it’s so murky, you couldn’t do an appropriate inspection” Harrison said.
CPR engineers at the scene said the bridge was inspected 18 times since the flooding began.
The company wouldn’t do anything differently, added CPR spokesman Mark Seland.
“We inspect our bridges vigilantly, and in the past week, we’ve inspected more vigilantly than usual ... But you can’t put a diver in murky, fast-moving water.”
The 102-car mixed cargo train was heading from Edmonton to St. Paul, Minn., when the span suddenly started to sag about 3:30 a.m. as the train passed through.
Six cars ended up derailed atop the bridge. Five were carrying a petroleum distillate, a product used for solvents, metal polishes, paint thinner and household paint. The sixth was empty with some residue of a non-regulated product.
The drooping bridge led to a tense rescue operation in which a stabilization train loaded with rocks and grain cars, and resting on an opposite track, was coupled to the six damaged rail cars to prevent them from toppling.
About a kilometre around the site was evacuated. A section of Deerfoot Trail was closed in both directions for hours.
Later, 100 crew workers showed up to pump out the fluids, with plans for the damaged cars to be removed from the bridge early Friday.
None of the petroleum contents leaked, though booms were deployed down the river in case of any spills. No one was injured and crews managed to stabilize the bridge.
But Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi questioned whether the company had done enough to prevent the bridge from failing.
“Certainly, Mr. Harrison in his perception feels that this could not have been predicted, that the only way to have known whether the bridge was going to buckle was to put weight on it, and to put a train on it, and I’ll let him speak to that,” Nenshi said.
“The opinion of the engineers at the city was, given the construction of that bridge, the possibility of something going wrong was actually very high and they probably would have taken more of an abundance of caution, would be my guess.”
The mayor said Harrison had issued an apology to Calgarians for what happened. He said the city and CPR would work together to “get this thing cleaned up.”
But earlier in the day, after receiving news of the bridge situation, Nenshi came out swinging, saying he would be asking tough questions of the rail giant.
He wondered whether layoffs in the past year had decreased the number of inspectors. More than 3,400 jobs were cut.
“I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this. We’ve seen a lot of people lose their jobs over the last year. How many bridge inspectors have they fired?” Nenshi said.
As railways are under federal jurisdiction, municipalities are powerless to regulate them, yet “it’s my guys down there risking their lives to fix it,” the mayor noted.
In addition, Nenshi said the bridge in question was old, built in 1912, and was not built into the bedrock — “something I didn’t know until today” on the train for possible video footage that could answer some questions.
The board will also ask for CPR inspections records and determine whether they were conducted properly.
Transport Minister Denis Lebel issued a statement indicating a full investigation would take place, and a department ministerial observer would report back on the investigation’s progress.
Edmonton-Strathcona NDP MP Linda Duncan, whose portfolio includes oversight of the Privy Council Office — including the Transportation Safety Board of Canada — questioned why the federal government continues to allow rail companies to conduct their own inspections.
“Our economy needs this, but not at the risk of human life and polluting rivers already struggling to self-clean,” she said.
Alberta Transportation Minister Ric McIver, who stopped by to speak to reporters at the scene, said the public should have confidence in railway bridges and noted there would be an investigation into the incident. — unlike the city’s bridges.
The mayor said all the municipal bridges had been inspected three times since the flood and were solid.
CPR engineers at the scene told reporters the number of inspectors and guidelines have not changed despite the company’s layoffs.
“We have the same number of bridge inspectors today that we had five years ago,” Seland said.
The company indicated it had suspended operations during the height of the flooding. Trains are being rerouted as repairs are made.
Authorities had expressed concerns about the environmental impact of fuel-filled train cars falling into the still-swift Bow, but also that the rail cars could erupt in flames or damage other bridges downstream.
“Each car could have about 80,000 pounds of product in that car and they’re all flammable liquids, so if something does go wrong, we could have a very big pile of burning material,” acting fire chief Ken Uzeloc said.
Transportation Safety Board senior investigator James Carmichael said his department will look for records, similar to black boxes on planes, and see if cameras were installed