I was sitting in Calgary, waiting to be picked up to go for a photo shoot, when I had a hell of a shock while looking at my Facebook newsfeed. There was a photo of the Louis Dreyfus canola crushing plant, 300 yards from my parent's house and acreage. Smoke was billowing. A large building had blown up, and the shockwave was felt across the city.
In a panic, I tried to reach my parents. No answer. They must have been evacuated, I thought. Finally I got a hold of my stepdad. The explosion was the day before, he said. They were shopping.
Oh, thank God, I thought. Thanks for telling me, too, by the way.
What surprised me was that no one showed up to evacuate them. Their house is 300 metres from the closest edge of the canola plant. A second canola crushing plant, owned by JRI, is approximately 1,600 metres (one mile) to the northwest. Their yard is by far the closest neighbour to Louis Dreyfus, and the second closest to the JRI canola crushing facility.
The Monday morning following the explosion, I was making calls, first to Bob Maloney, mayor of Yorkton, then to Greg Ottenbreit, MLA and recently appointed minister of rural and remote health. The mayor said he would have fire officials get back to me, and the minister said provincial disaster officials would be contacting me as well.
"I don't care if it's a firefighter, police officer or the city dog catcher who shows up, if something happens at either of those plants, I want them evacuated right now," I demanded.
We did not oppose the construction of either of those plants. If we had wanted to invoke some sort of not-in-my-back-yard (NIMBY) response, we could have held them up for years. Combined, these two plants were worth approximately a quarter-billion dollars in investment and dozens of jobs. Similarly, we did not hold up the truck bypass that took four of the 27 acres on the property. That bypass was meant, in part, to service the plants. Landowner disputes near Estevan held up construction on that city's bypass until last year. It had been announced the same day as Yorkton's was in April 2008. That's a five-year delay, folks, because the landowners weren't happy.
No, we went along nicely and without complaint.
So now if something does happen, at either of those plants, I would expect they would be taken care of immediately. The neighbours across the highway should also be evacuated.
I told the mayor I wanted the emergency measures organization response plan updated TODAY, because who knows what could happen tomorrow. And I expect formal response by the end of the week.
One person asked me if I was familiar with grain dust explosions. I am. But this is an industrial plant. Who knows what else could have been at risk? What is toxic? What pressure vessels are there on site?
As someone who writes about industrial plants every day, perhaps I have been a little blasé about concerns about what could go wrong. Recent crude-by-rail explosions have been a wakeup call, however. (Did I mention a major rail line runs right past the house, too?) But we can't have progress, we can't have jobs if we don't have industry. So I accept that. I do feel it is beholden to emergency responders to have plans that will sufficiently protect the public if there is a disaster.
In this case, that means getting everyone out of the way who could be in harm's way. I imagine the plant staff all gathered at a muster point to be accounted for. Shouldn't the next door neighbours have been accounted for, too?
It took a 15-minute conversation with the fire chief, but he will be talking to Louis Dreyfus about including evacuation of the neighbours in their emergency response plan. That should have been done in their plan in the first place, in my opinion.
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected]
