A defective portion of track initially suspected of causing a CN freight train to derail more than two years ago has been confirmed as the culprit that sent hundreds of thousands of litres of oil gushing into an Alberta lake, a Transportation Safety Board report released Thursday says.
The Globe's Dawn Walton and Katherine O'Neill report in today's paper in their article Faulty track blamed in crash : When 43 cars jumped the tracks near Wabamun, about 65 kilometres west of Edmonton, about 700,000 litres of bunker C or heavy fuel oil and another 88,000 litres of pole-treating oil spilled onto the ground and into the lake, forcing an evacuation and resulting in environmental and property damage.
While the accident had nothing to do with the dangerous goods or the operation of the train, which was headed to Vancouver from Edmonton on Aug. 3, 2005, the safety board said Canadian National Railway Co. and the province should have co-ordinated better to share information and to implement emergency response plans.
"The management of the spill would have been more efficient," the report concluded.
The board also called on Ottawa to re-examine its policies related to rail quality and strength, and equipment used for testing track and assessing defects.
Many of the recommendations have already been implemented or are being examined, according to industry and governments.
We are pleased that the chair of the TSB, Wendy A. Tadros, and two senior investigators were online earlier today to answer your questions.
Your questions and their answers appear at the bottom of this page.
Wendy A. Tadros was formally appointed chair of the TSB in August 2006 after serving in the same role in an acting capacity since December 2005. She is a lawyer with extensive experience in the transportation sector. She held a variety of management and legal positions with the National Transportation Agency (NTA) of Canada and its predecessor, the Canadian Transport Commission.
George Fowler is a track and infrastructure specialist who has been with the TSB since 2002. Prior to that, he held various senior engineering positions during a 30-year career with CN in Edmonton, Kamloops, Montreal and Toronto. Mr. Fowler has extensive knowledge and experience in railroad engineering and has been involved in the investigations of a number of serious railroad occurrences across Canada.
Art Nordholm joined the TSB in 1992 as the principal safety deficiency analyst for railway and pipelines. Since 1997, he has been performing the duties of senior investigator rail/pipe. Before joining the TSB Mr. Nordholm held managerial positions in the operations and the risk management departments for CN Rail for 24 years.
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Jim Sheppard, Executive Editor, globeandmail.com: Welcome, Ms. Tadros, Mr. Fowler and Mr. Nordholm. Thank you for taking the time today to take questions from our readers.
In your report released yesterday, you write: "The management of the spill would have been more efficient" if CN and the province had co-ordinated better to share information and to implement emergency response plans.
Could you elaborate on what steps were missed in this incident and whether steps have been taken to improve company and provincial response plans if a future incident occurs?
Wendy A. Tadros, chair of the TSB: Hello, Mr. Sheppard. It is a pleasure for us to be here this morning.
