Police officers, fire crews, CN officials, provincial hazmat officers and media descended upon Landis Sept. 25, after 16 or 17 cars from a CN freight train heading west derailed near the village.
CN reported 17 cars jumped the tracks at approximately 4:15 a.m. The RCMP were called to the derailment at 4:50 a.m. and reported a 16-car derailment happened mid-train. There were no other vehicles involved.
Also attending the scene early were Wilkie and Biggar fire departments as dry grass was ignited from sparks caused by the train derailing. No cars or cargo caught fire and the grass fire was put out without further incident. There were no injuries resulting from the fire or the derailment.
An RCMP press release reported, "The train was carrying grain cars, tanker cars with ethanol and other chemicals and other cargo cars." As to the derailed cars specifically, CN spokesman Warren Chandler said, "There was a mixture of cars involved with two cars carrying condensate, three cars of lube oil, one car of ethanol and the remainder carrying mixed freight."
One of the tanker cars involved in the derailment was leaking what CN described as "a relatively small amount of lubricating oil, commonly used in engine oil." The oil is not an explosive product but, with other railcars containing potentially flammable products, in particular ethanol, the decision was made to close Landis School for the day.
Sgt. Grant Rusk, detachment commander of the Unity, Wilkie and Macklin RCMP detachments, explained hazardous materials have defined safety parameters. Some of the chemical products on the train, in the case of a spill, had a safety parameter of approximately one kilometre. Because the distance between the school and the derailment was between 500 and 700 metres and thus within the one-kilometre zone, it was considered prudent to close the school for the day.
"While it wasn't directly jeopardized, had the weather have changed, the winds changed, and something happened so there was a spill of some of the other chemicals that were present, there's always potential for harm," said Rusk. The goal was to create a "safety corridor for transloading of the chemicals off of the breached cars."
The Saskatchewan Ministry of the Environment responded to the scene, deploying two hazmat or hazardous materials personnel to review the situation and monitor the cleanup.
Chandler reported, "CN crews immediately began a process using vacuum trucks to contain and reclaim the leaking product." Ralph Bock, manager of the hazmat and impacted sites division of the environmental protection branch of the Environment Ministry, confirmed the spill was "contained and confined appropriately relatively quickly."
Bock said the exact nature and extent of the environmental impact of the spill cannot be determined until after the damage and wreckage has been totally cleared from the scene. The department will monitor the cleanup although, as of late Wednesday afternoon last week, he could not say for certain if the hazmat crew would remain on site or whether the monitoring could or would happen remotely.
The RCMP had left the scene by 10 a.m. "CN police are actually the ones that'll be continuing on with the investigation. Their jurisdiction is anything that's their railway related. We were obviously first on scene because the railway goes through our territory, which we're responsible for policing. We were there as a first responder," said Rusk.
The cause of the incident was still undetermined and was under investigation.
