Drone footage captures extent of oil spill at St. Lazare derailment
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/02/2019 (1862 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
OTTAWA — A man who captured dramatic drone footage of Saturday’s oil-train derailment says he’s not trying to ignite a social-media firestorm over pipelines.
“I think it’s important for people to see it, in order to form real opinions about it,” said Amon Rudolph, who piloted a drone around the site near St. Lazare, where a CN Rail train derailed around 3:30 a.m. on Saturday.
Rudolph launched his drone roughly nine hours later, and was shocked by the live images he saw on his tablet screen.
The videos show a shock of black crude against white snow, and the pile of 37 derailed tanks cars sitting perpendicular to the track.
“It definitely strikes your mind and leaves a burning image,” said Rudolph. “We were pretty surprised.”
The Winnipeg-bound train of 110 cars containing crude oil was rolling at around 79 km/h at the time of the derailment.
Posted by Amon Rudolph on Monday, February 18, 2019
On Thursday, CN spokesman Jonathan Abecassis wrote that the firm is still tallying how much oil spilled. Part of that involves using wood chips to absorb the oil, while "earthen berms were constructed" to contain the spill from the Assiniboine River, wrote Abecassis.
CN clean-up crews will take a top layer of contaminated soil away, and when the snow melts, they’ll inspect the ground and place clean soil, he wrote.
Rudolph got to the scene Saturday after a perimeter had kept the public back by at least a mile, with most people on a hill with limited visibility. He took the drone videos with his friend Curtis McLeod, and posted them onto his public Facebook page, because he felt it would better inform the public.
The video has been shared widely, with many using it to bolster the case for pipelines, while others condemned oil extraction more widely and some criticized the rail industry.
Posted by Amon Rudolph on Monday, February 18, 2019
"Instead of antagonizing both side, we’ve been really trying to make people see a little bit of both sides, and get rid of the jabs at the other side,” said Rudolph.
Though he believes pipelines are safer than rail, Rudolph doesn’t want to be the poster child for any mode of transporting oil. “Everything’s going to spill once in a while. We’re humans and there’s no such thing as a 100 per cent leak-free system,” he said, praising CN’s clean-up effort.
The area’s MP, Robert Sopuck, said he’s been “in constant touch" with senior CN executives, and he’s satisfied they’ve been handling the clean-up well.
“I was kept apprised the whole time,” said Sopuck, a Conservative.
He said it was "classy" of CN to be in touch with Jayme Corr, the landowner where the spill occurred. Corr told the media he’s urged the company for years to step up its maintenance of the tracks.
The Transportation Safety Board is continuing its probe of what happened; the arm’s-length agency does not ascribe blame but investigates incidents for safety shortfalls.
While the TSB has not speculated on any cause, it has requested parts of track, which could suggest an issue along the rail line.
Transport Canada told the Free Press it’s looking into whether CN Rail complied with all regulations, including specific rules on dangerous goods. There were no injuries in the occurrence, so the department is not probing health and safety issues among the railway staff.
The department deployed two dangerous-goods specialists, as well as equipment specialists. They also sent a minister’s observer to keep abreast of the TSB probe; that’s done in case any safety issues emerge that require immediate action.
The derailment occurred along CN’s Rivers subdivision, one of Canada’s busiest rail routes.
Previously, the Free Press reported on years of issues at the bunkhouse the company uses for its workers to rest during multi-day trips on that subdivision. As recently as this past summer, workers have reported sleeping on floors and couches.
Last month, two oncoming trains collided near Portage la Prairie, 238 kilometres east of Saturday’s incident, near a bridge where two lines of track merge.
A historic amount of crude oil is moving by rail across Canada, due to backlogs in pipeline construction. According to American data, more than two million barrels of Canadian crude is being exported by rail each month into Midwest states through lines in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and northwestern Ontario.
That’s a doubling from the amount of oil sent along that line from August back until 2012, when authorities started publishing that data.
dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
History
Updated on Thursday, February 21, 2019 6:50 PM CST: Corrects spelling of St. Lazare