听have often thought of the rail disaster that happened at Lac Megantic, Que. some years ago. The town was decimated and 47 residents lost their lives. I cannot think of a more painful way to die, especially if one didn鈥檛 die right away. Blame seemed to be spread around, but what was the real problem that started this chain of events?
In the last month or so, our province had two derailments, which involved tanker trains near Guernsey. Between 1.2 and 1.5 million litres of petroleum product spilled, and mostly burned. Talk about air pollution. The black smoke ascended for days as the fires burned themselves out. We also ask volunteer firefighters to tackle such fires. Are they adequately trained for such danger? Weren鈥檛 these tankers the new ones with reinforced tanks to lessen the danger of spills?
It would seem that the feds are going to keep developing oil reserves in the long run, to finance cleaner energy initiatives. This is going to take years, not months. Therefore the danger of more tanker spills seems possible, if not probable.
About two weeks ago, I was driving east on Railway Avenue and was across from McDonalds restaurant. There was an east-bound freight train to my right and appeared to be accelerating. When I realized that I was only about a hundred feet or so from the track, and that it was a train of oil tankers, I had a sort of mini-panic. These cars, if heading east, were no doubt full of petroleum. What if one derailed here and now, and they had just finished going through the city. What if one derailed closer to downtown? Spectres of Lac Megantic rushed through my mind. Are these trains, full, and heading east, a near daily occurrence?
Later that week, I also saw a west-bound tanker train, probably empty, but not exactly. Think of an empty gas tank on your vehicle. No one is going to mess with the petroleum vapour that is in there. So are the west-bound tankers as dangerous as the east-bound ones?
As oil shipments are going to be with us for some years, is there a better solution as to how we move it around? Apparently Quebec needs another hundred tankers of propane due to rail blockades. Would a hundred cars of propane be more dangerous than the tankers that caught fire around Guernsey and Lac Megantic? I really don鈥檛 want any of us to find out, especially in this province.
It seems to me that it鈥檚 way easier to clean up an oil spill, heaven forbid. After all, oil is naturally found in the ground in both northern Alberta and Saskatchewan. Remediation of soil takes place in the oil sands. So if I had my druthers, 鈥淚 druther鈥� see oil moved underground in a pipe than on rail cars, because oil is going to move one way or the other, whether we like it or not!
Tony Murdoch
Battleford
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