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| MP demands review after train derails |
March
30th 2010 | Source: Toronto Star - Theresa Boyle - Jim Wilkes |
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Six
freight train derailments in six years has politicians worried
the next one could be deadly
Durham politicians are demanding answers
after the sixth freight train derailment in the region in as
many years.
“We’re pretty steamed. This is getting a
little out of
hand,” Liberal MP Dan McTeague
(Pickering-Scarborough East)
said Tuesday evening, hours after another
train jumped the tracks in the region.
“The chain of command here goes straight to the minister of
transportation (John Baird) and I plan to raise this with him,”
he added.
At about 3 p.m. Tuesday, three CN locomotives and nine freight
cars left the tracks near the Pickering GO Transit station.
No one was hurt, but McTeague said it could have been a
different story had the accident happened an hour later when GO
train traffic is heavy and the station is full of commuters.
“The fact is we got lucky today,” McTeague said. “Obviously
there has to be a greater measure of due diligence to create an
environment that’s a lot safer.”
If Transport Canada and the railway companies cannot do more to
protect the public then the federal government should look at
imposing tougher regulations on the industry, he said.
Train derailments have been a concern in the Greater Toronto
Area since the 1979 Mississauga derailment that saw 200,000
people evacuated after a CP train carrying explosive and
poisonous chemicals left the tracks. With freight trains still
travelling through the GTA’s heavily populated urban centres
fears remain.
The CN train, heading from Vaughan to Montreal Tuesday, derailed
near Liverpool Rd. The freight cars jack knifed at the western
edge of the Pickering Go station passenger platform coming to
rest very close to cars in the parking lot.
CN spokesman Mark Hallman said the nine cars were “scrunched up
like an accordion.”
Emergency officials put out a fire in one car and cleaned up
some diesel fuel that had leaked. Another car spilled a load of
lumber onto the tracks and the parking lot nearby. A light
standard was knocked over, damaging a vehicle in the station’s
parking lot and the accident snarled rush-hour GO and VIA train
service for several hours
But while the impact was relatively minor it joins a growing
list of derailments in Durham region.
Yesterday’s was the sixth freight derailment in the area since
2004 and the second in the last five weeks after four freight
cars jumped the tracks Feb. 19 near Oshawa’s GM plant.
The other four accidents involved:
- Two CP locomotives and 27 cars going off the rails in Oshawa last June.
- Six CN cars leaving the tracks in Oshawa last May.
- A CN freight train jumping the tracks in Pickering in March 2007.
- Fourteen CP cargo containers derailing in Whitby January 2004. One of the cars fell from the bridge onto the car below, killing two women.
“It’s very, very disturbing,” said Pickering Mayor
David Ryan, adding that the municipality sent letters to Transport
Canada and CN after the 2007 derailment in the town. He said he got
letters back but they were unsatisfactory.
Durham Region Chair Roger Anderson said residents have a right to
know what CN is doing to maintain its tracks and trains.
“Obviously CN needs to do some work on the east end of their
tracks,” he said.
Sheila Pitcher, whose home backs on the Bayly St., just across from
the GO station, said she heard the train and then “a big bang.”
“I didn’t think much about it, because it went quiet again and I
thought the train had carried on,” she said.
Pitcher said she realized that there had been an accident when
police and fire sirens broke the silence of an otherwise another
quiet afternoon.
With files from Jesse McLean and Tamara Baluja