Local officials: Accident brings national rail safety concerns home

CN officials report that at about 12:35 a.m. Wednesday, the crew of a south bound CN train reported a fire on the trestle as they rounded a corner and approached the structure, located on the CN line approximately 10 miles south of International Falls.

Cars carrying potash on the nearly collapsed bridge remained intact. The bridge was destroyed by the fire, but the crew was not injured. Potash is a fertilizer.

“I think for many of us it underscores the liabilities we face here,” said Pavleck Thursday morning. “If two potash cars fell in and didn’t breach it could easily have been petroleum or oil. It’s a fact of the increased traffic.”

Pavleck said the bridge collapse shows the large role the Ericsburg and Ranier train trestles in northern Minnesota play in CN’s transportation route.

“It’s amazing that a 100-year-old bridge can stop the traffic of a company and all trade from the Pacific rim,” he said. “They will have to get by and have to reroute everything (until the bridge is repaired or replaced). It shows how vulnerable we are with some infrastructure.”

The bridge collapse blocks an increasingly busy Canadian National line that runs from Prince Rupert, British Columbia, to Chicago. The route has made Ranier the busiest rail crossing in North America, say local officials.

Ranier Mayor Dennis Wagner has been an advocate for change to CN’s practices for some time.

He said he and the Ranier City Council will send a letter to Gov. Mark Dayton asking him to demand that CN provide local officials with inspection reports that show the Ranier bridge is safe before train traffic uses it again.

“We understand they do their own inspections, with the Federal Rail Administration reviewing it,” he said. “It’s like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. A 100-year-old bridge should be inspected and reviewed and made sure they are safe.”

Wagner said local officials have sought those inspection reports for some time, but get the “runaround.”

He has sought help from federal officials in obtaining the reports, but said the only thing CN “hears is the cash register. Everything else falls on deaf ears.”

Pavleck said he’s been asked by local residents in the Ericsburg and Rat Root River area why CN is allowed to dump rock into the river when they are not. “I don’t have an answer to that,” he said.

A meeting Thursday of county officials was expected to address whether CN has the proper environmental permits in place for the required work.

“Seems like they’ve given themselves a blank check on environmental rules and regulations,” Pavleck said.

However, he was quick to point out that CN officials at a rail safety roundtable held in Ranier about two weeks ago said they would investigate some of the local concerns. In addition, he said CN has made recent improvements to alleviate some concerns by investing in the construction of rail sidings, with other changes in the plans.

“A good example of the need is that old wood bridge (in Ericsburg),” Pavleck said. “Not in the head of CN, but from my little world and my constituents feel they need to make more investment in infrastructure.”

Both Pavleck and Wagner said rail service is essential to getting goods to and from market, and CN adds to the local economy. And both men credited the quick response by CN to the accident.

Pavleck also credited local emergency officials, including the Koochiching County Sheriff’s Office and local firefighters.

“Our guys will always be first,” he said. “We will always be the local protection. Everyone did great.”

But, Wagner and Pavleck said CN needs to be more aware of the local concern about the potential for accidents and take action to alleviate the risk with fixes to aging infrastructure and facts about the safety of rail bridges and about what kind of material is being transported across them.

“We’re fortunate it wasn’t oil cars that burned,” Wagner said. “Imagine what would have happened then. This is so frustrating.”

The national concerns about rail safety “really come home with this one,” said Pavleck. “All the things we talked about when we said we’ve got to get something going (to alleviate risks), this is almost like an exclamation point on that.”

Pavleck said county officials have been so concerned about the risk of a hazardous material spill from a rail accident they are planning to construct roads to assist residents in the Rainy Lake and Van Lynn areas an alternate way out of their residences.

Wagner, too, said Wednesday’s incident brings the local concerns into the spotlight.

He said times have changed from when there were a few trains crossing through towns, that have for safety reasons been bypassed by highways.

“Now, (the rail line) is a super highway and they keep putting patches on it,” he said.

In 1908, the first train to cross the trestle at Ranier included just an engine and three cars. After that, passenger trains were the main traffic. Now, he said freight trains travel through the city at rate of about 20 trains each day.

“We need rail traffic as much as the highways,” he said. “But you don’t throw money after the problem. I don’t want to call and report disasters instead of improvements. It makes sense to throw money before a problem happens.”

Wagner said a community can only “dodge so many bullets. It would be a good thing to show us the reports and squelch concerns and let people go to bed without worry.”