Prince George City Council has taken a close look at the  debriefing of the August 4th  CN  crash, derailment and  fire.

( at left, the aftermath  the day after the  crash and fire  photo opinion250 archive)

In the report to Council,  Rob Whitwham  says  the Prince George Fire Rescue Service has contacted all of the involved agencies following the incident, and has debriefed with CN regarding the response.  

The report goes on to say, Prince George Fire Rescue has not received any information to date from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) with respect to this incident. Prince George Fire Rescue understands that the TSB is in the process of investigating the incident.

What went well:

• Quick conformation by CN of the products involved.

• Use of the RCMP Media Relations Officer to disseminate information to the media, thereby freeing the Incident Commander to concentrate on the emergency response.

• Inter-agency communication through the presence of the agencies at the command post.

Opportunities for improvement:

• The length of time to pull the trains apart. If the trains could have been pulled apart sooner, fire crews may have been able to access the site sooner. Earlier access may have provided the opportunity to keep the fire from escalating to the level it did.

• Incident Command Structure education – some CN employees were not familiar with operating within an Incident Command structure.

• The presence of non-residents in the Paddlewheel Park area. CN officials and some residents of the Paddle Wheel Park area have expressed concern about the number of nonresidents that were drawn to the area by the incident. There are two scenarios under which the RCMP has legal authority to remove or keep people from an area. The first is when the area is subject to an evacuation order. The other is when people are interfering with emergency response operations. In this incident an evacuation order was not issued and the people in the area were not interfering with the operation of the command post. Use of the media to request non-residents to stay away had limited success.  Prince George Fire Rescue will be following up on these issues.

Fire Chief Jeff Rowland says they used all  the staff that were on duty that day, and called in off duty staff to handle  any  other calls that might have come in while the rest of the crew were  battling the  train blaze.