Investigation underway into 2 separate train derailments in B.C.
Canada's Transportation Safety Board (TSB) said Saturday it's looking into two unrelated railway derailments in B.C.'s mountains, deploying investigators to one near Field, B.C., and gathering information on another near Revelstoke that sent two people to hospital.
The federal agency said both incidents involved trains operated by Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) railway.
One of CPKC's trains derailed near Field, a small community near the Alberta border, the TSB said, adding it had sent a "team of investigators" to the site, known as Ottertail station. In a statement Sunday morning, the TSB said the derailment happened on Saturday, but did not provide an exact time.
Meanwhile, another derailment nearly 13 kilometres east of Revelstoke happened after 10 p.m. Friday, after two trains collided east of the southern Interior city, sparking a fire, officials confirmed.
In the Revelstoke incident, CPKC says one of its trains hit another one, which was stopped nearly 13 kilometres east of the southern Interior city, roughly 150 kilometres northeast of Kelowna.
"The TSB is currently gathering information and monitoring the situation," TSB spokesperson Liam MacDonald told CBC News in an email Saturday.
It did not deploy investigators to the site of the Revelstoke incident, where CPKC said four of its train cars carrying grain on the parked train derailed.
Derailment near Revelstoke sends 2 to hospital
The railway says there was also a fire on one of the trains that has since been extinguished, and their crews remained on the site Saturday to investigate the cause of the crash and clean up the damage.
"Two crew members on the moving train were taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. One has been released," they said in a statement. "There were no other injuries."
Revelstoke's fire chief said they responded to reports of a train crash and someone being trapped inside the train just after 10:30 p.m. PT Friday.
"I had a conversation with the CPKC representative who told me there was, in fact, a fuel fire caused by the locomotive that was off the tracks," Steven DeRousie, head of Revelstoke Fire Rescue Services, told CBC News in a phone interview. "As far as I understand, the fire is now out."
DeRousie said that, while fire crews initially responded to the reports of someone being trapped on board the train, they were then told by ambulance crews that the person was out of the train and crews returned to the fire station.
The fire chief said they could not respond to the fire itself as the derailment happened outside city boundaries.
He added that an "acrid smell" hung over the town of around 7,500 people after the fire on the train, but there were no immediate concerns for the city's water supply.
"It smelled somewhat like maybe burning garbage — that plastic-y odour," he said Saturday afternoon. "It was an unpleasant odour. It seems to have dissipated now with the the fire being put out."
CBC News has asked the operator if there was any damage to the surrounding environment, including nearby streams.
CPKC responded with a short statement, reading that their environmental teams "are on site to access, contain and recover any spilled fuel from the locomotives." The statement did not clarify if any particular streams were affected.
In a statement to CBC News, Taylor Bachrach, the NDP transportation critic and MP for the riding of Skeena-Bulkley Valley, called the incidents "concerning."
He says one concern is the risk of fire, given the potential for a dry summer.
"The other concern is the fact that uncontrolled railcar movements remain an issue on the Transportation Safety Board watchlist, which suggests rail companies and Transport Canada haven't done enough to reduce the risk of these incidents," Bachrach said.
