Fire crews have plan for rail delays
Department acted quickly when blocked by train Wednesday: chief
Saskatoon’s fire chief says he is not concerned about level crossings in the city, even though a passing train delayed six fire trucks headed for a “serious” house fire and forced engines from another station to respond instead.
“We do have delays from time to time,” Chief Morgan Hackl told reporters Wednesday afternoon, a few hours after police and fire crews responded to the fire on Avenue L South, just off 22nd Street West.
“But with that (response) model we have set up, as our crews start to respond, as soon as they see the rail is blocked, the rail line through the city, we quickly dispatch a station from the other side of that.”
No one died in the fire, which began before 9:15 a.m., but five police officers were treated in hospital after inhaling smoke while rescuing a man trapped in the smokefilled basement before fire crews arrived.
As the officers raced toward the flaming house, six fire engines were dispatched from Fire Station No. 1, on Idylwyld Drive, but were held up by a Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. train that was crossing 20th Street West, according to the fire department.
Two fire engines from Fire Station No. 2, on Diefenbaker Drive, were then dispatched. Hackl said the initial call came in at 9:17 a.m., and firefighters reached the scene “just over” seven minutes later.
“Our standard that we try to achieve for a structure fire is six minutes and 20 seconds. Understand we try to achieve that standard 90 per cent of the time, and that of course we don’t achieve that standard 100 per cent of the time,” he said.
According to fire department statistics, its crews were delayed eight times by trains last year, 17 times in 2016 and 33 times in 2015. Only four of those happened at the 20th Street crossing.
Even if Hackl had reservations about level crossings, they are unlikely to disappear after a City of Saskatoon report indicated the cost of building nine overpasses and underpasses would outweigh any tangible economic benefit.
While city council voted in March to pursue rail relocation talks with Canadian Pacific, the report pegged the cost of moving its line through the heart of the city at $589.7 million.
Relocating the Canadian National Railway Co. line is estimated to cost another $374.4 million.
“They do not have a good business case and there’s no clear path financially on how to do it. I would suggest it’s a long-shot kind of discussion right now. We want to keep the dialogue open on the railways,” Mayor Charlie Clark said at the time.
Canadian Pacific spokesman Andy Cummings said the railway “works collaboratively with emergency service providers across its network to ensure timely responses,” and the train in question was “neither stopped nor switching back and forth. “
“Canadian railway operating rules state that if a train is stationary and emergency vehicles require passage, employees must co-operate to quickly clear the involved crossings,” Cummings said in the statement.
Speaking with reporters at a separate news conference, Saskatoon Police Chief Troy Cooper said three plainclothes detectives who happened to be in the area saw smoke and flames coming from the raised bungalow.
The detectives discovered that the people living upstairs were out of the house but that there could be people in the basement. At that time they were joined by two uniformed patrol officers, Cooper said.
“They could hear someone hollering in the basement and they tried to make contact with him, to try and get him to the windows or to a door, so they could get him to safety,” the newly appointed chief said.
“The basement was covered in smoke and flames. At first they maintained contact, and then contact stopped … So they managed to get the windows open and regain contact with the person that was in the basement.”
The officers — four men and one woman — managed to pull the man to safety but inhaled smoke in the process. The man was taken to hospital with what police described as “serious” injuries. Cooper said the officers are expected to recover fully.
“Some of them, of course, are suffering worse than others and having a little difficulty talking but we’re certainly grateful that it’s not worse than it was and we’re very proud of our officers today for saving the life of a Saskatoon resident.”