Emergency personnel responding to a massive explosion at the CP Rail yard in Port Coquitlam in January failed to communicate effectively with one another, according to internal city papers obtained last month by The Tri-City News.
The debriefing notes, released under a freedom of information request, show there was confusion among PoCo city staff, the fire department, Coquitlam RCMP, BC Ambulance paramedics and CP Rail officials as to what was going on around the incident.
And the agencies singled out the Mounties for not dispatching a senior member to the fire site that night, which they say would have helped direct activities.
The three-alarm call came in Jan. 22 at 6:36 p.m. when the driver of a tanker truck carrying ethanol struck a CP Rail car on the track just south of Gold’s Gym.
Two hours later, firefighters used foam — rushed in via police escort from Abbotsford — to douse the flames; the fire was deemed contained by 3 a.m.
The blaze, about which little information has been disclosed since the accident, came five years after the Lac-Mégantic, Que., rail disaster that killed 47 people.
The internal city documents show Pardeep Purewal, communications manager for the city of Port Coquitlam — which is home to one of the largest rail yards in western Canada — sent an email to Coquitlam RCMP Cpl. Michael McLaughlin, media relations manager, a week after the explosion to voice concern about the Mounties’ response that night: specifically, she noted the city and fire staff were unaware police had evacuated residents from the surrounding area.
“We also did not have the specific details of the road closure. This made it difficult to provide accurate information to the public and media as well as answering to the flood of inquiries we were getting,” Purewal wrote in her email.
(Residents living north of Lougheed, between Shaughnessy and Oxford streets, were allowed to return home three hours later, with the fire chief’s permission).
Two weeks later, Fire Chief Nick Delmonico and Deputy Chief Steve Wright met with the city’s emergency program officer, Tara Stroup, as well as CP Rail’s Greg Squires to review the incident. Poor communications between the agencies was also a major theme during that discussion. Among Stroup’s notes from that meeting:
• there was no unified command with senior RCMP missing;
• items were done independent of command and considered “out of the ordinary;”
• two separate incident command sites “caused confusion;”
• there was trouble getting live BC Hydro wires shut down;
• the 1,000-foot perimeter set up by paramedics around the hot zone caused “mass confusion” for CP Rail crews;
• media wasn’t able to access the site;
• lack of information created inefficiencies and poor reporting to media and residents;
• and there was a lack of information about missing people.
“At future incidents of any kind, it would be very helpful if someone was identified as ‘in charge’ at the site and easily identifiable,” Stroup wrote in her notes, while also recommending future emergency training and site tours of the rail yard.
At another debriefing session four days later — attended by representatives from the BC Ambulance Service, Coquitlam RCMP, CP Hazmat, CP Rail, fire chiefs and city officials — more concerns were expressed about how communication was handled Jan. 22.
“Communication with RCMP [was] a challenge,” according to the city notes.
Last week, a CP Rail spokesperson declined to comment further on the PoCo explosion.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada also noted it “has decided not to purse a full investigation at this time,” media spokesperson Chris Krepski told The Tri-City News. “This occurrence was an industrial accident that took place within the confines of a CP yard and the TSB is of the view that no additional safety lesson would be learned from conducting a full investigation.”
But Coquitlam RCMP Cpl. McLaughlin responded to the city’s criticism, saying police were on scene two minutes after the fire started and began to evacuate area residents a minute later, realizing the full extent of the fire at the rail yard.
“Not a single civilian or emergency responder was hurt,” McLaughlin told The Tri-City News last Thursday. “Having said that, we have studied the incident and have committed to doing some things better. Based largely on the rail yard fire, we have been training our front-line officers on standardized incident command. We are also working more closely with the fire department to clarify communications and ensure that our messages are as consistent and accurate as possible.”
CP Rail’s cost for use of the city firefighters during their extended stay on scene totalled $14,090 — about half of which was for the trucked-in foam retardant.
City council is expected discuss the rail yard explosion at its Sept. 18 meeting.
