CN dangerous goods officers give Jasper demonstration

CN dangerous goods officer for Alberta Karl Tirschmann was in Jasper last week to give presentations about CN’s training car and responding to emergencies.

He presented the morning of Aug. 12 to council and senior town officials and in the evening to the volunteer fire brigade. Though the presentations were geared toward each audience, both groups were given tours of CN’s “911” training car in the rail yard.

Fire Chief Greg Van Tighem said two factors prompted the meeting. The first was CN’s hiring of a new dangerous goods coordinator who has begun to increase the number of district dangerous goods officers. “Obviously when you do that there’s more people to go around in a large area,” Van Tighem said. “So they’re able to spend more time in different communities.”

The other trigger was two derailments in August 2005, one which leaked oil into Lake Wabamun, the other which spilled sodium hydroxide into the Cheakamus River north of Squamish devastating the sensitive river environment.

“In both those incidents came formal reviews and from those reviews came recommendations and orders,” Van Tighem said. “I know that CN was taken to task on a number of issues directly from a result of those incidents. They incorporate more involvement in various things and one of them is at the local level improving resources and communication.”

During the evening presentation to the firefighters, Tirschmann discussed some of the changes going on at CN in terms of emergency response. “They basically said ‘we suck’ and now we’re trying to do whatever we can, we’re trying to change the culture at CN,” he said.

He said CN dispatches contractors in an emergency. “As nice as the idea is you could respond to every incident, you can’t,” he said. “It wouldn’t be possible without the help of contractors, we rely an awful lot on emergency response contractors and industry partners.”

A dangerous goods officer from CN would also respond to an emergency, and do everything possible to control the situation. “If there was a major incident, there is no expense spared to get the equipment to where it needs to be,” Tirschmann said.

Van Tighem interjected that as firemen, their priority is public safety. “We’re not necessarily responding to a leak, we don’t have the training, equipment,” he said. “But we will do everything we can to keep everybody else safe.”

Municipal manager George Krefting said the day session was welcome and very much appreciated. “We talked about the fact we welcome CN’s involvement and we got their assurances that they could be involved in the future,” he said. “So that was excellent.”

“We’re all aware that there’s a tremendous amount of commodities going through our town every day,” Krefting said. “Although you’re still concerned about the fact there’s these things going through your town, there is comfort knowing there are improvements occurring on a continual basis to mitigate risk.”

The presentations were organized by the fire chief on behalf of the municipality, Krefting said. “A few years ago we had expressed some concerns to CN about the fact they hadn’t participated,” he said. “They responded and said ‘You can count on us’.”

Van Tighem said it was a great opportunity to make contacts. “Probably one of the best things that came out of the meeting in the morning was the fact that it’s the beginning of a relationship with the right people at CN,” he said.

“Now we have made direct contact, we’ve made some commitments and CN’s committed to provide some training locally and also to sitting at the table on a regular basis with the community emergency plan. I think that was a huge step.”