Dear Editor:
Living in the West End of New Westminster and reading all the stories about train derailments taking place across Canada and around the world gets one thinking that obnoxious noises in the night are the least of our worries. Just imagine for a minute what New Westminster would look like if the kind of derailment that took place in Lac-Mégantic occurred here. New Westminster is already a traffic chokepoint. It can take 20 minutes to drive a few blocks on a good day; a fender-bender on Stewardson Way can create gridlock lasting for hours. Picture tens of thousands of panicky people - families with children, handicapped people in wheelchairs, seniors with limited mobility, hospital patients - trying to flee while a massive fire spews toxic chemicals into the atmosphere. Emergency services would soon be overwhelmed, that is if emergency workers themselves weren't fleeing for their own safety.
We need information. We need a plan.
The information the city has on its website about emergency preparedness is woefully inadequate; lots of bromides about how good the city's program is, but not much detail about what to do when the fires are roaring and the toxic clouds are roiling; a time when most people are less likely to be logging on to websites than getting in their cars and stepping on the gas. Obviously different situations would call for different responses, but an evacuation order issued in the heat of battle is going to lead to chaos. We need a plan, and we need public education about what to do when disaster strikes.
What we don't need are patronizing assurances from "officials" and "experts" that "everything" is being done to assure our safety and that it "can't happen here."
Tell that to the people of Lac-Mégantic, or the people of Gainford, Alta., where a CN Rail train carrying liquefied petroleum gas and crude oil derailed and exploded on Oct. 18, or the people of Sexsmith, Alta., where four cars carrying anhydrous ammonia derailed two days earlier. The list of derailments is long and growing. It happens all the time, and it happens in cities big and small.
As for those who like to argue that trains are traveling too slowly through New Westminster to derail, please consider the recent (Sept. 11) incident in Calgary where eight rail cars carrying flammable liquids came off the tracks as a slow-moving train was heading northbound out of the Canadian Pacific Railway's Alyth Yard in the city's Southeast. It can happen here, and it probably will based on the incidence rate for train derailments and the volume of rail traffic passing through the city, and we better be ready for it when it does.
Ian MacNeill, New Westminster
