Up Freight Derails, Spills Load Crews Pick Up Lumber In Second Derailment In Week Near Border

Bob Graham, Boundary County’s emergency incident commander, took a day of rest Thursday after a week of near disasters.

Within the last week, Graham has responded to two train derailments and one fuel spill.

The most recent accident was late Tuesday when a Union Pacific Railroad train derailed about five miles south of Eastport border station. Six cars left the track, and five dumped their loads of lumber.

The county road along the Moyie River was closed all night and much of Wednesday as railroad crews cleaned up the mess.

The derailment happened before UP crews were finished taking care of a derailment that happened a week ago. In that incident, five cars filled with phosphoric acid derailed, along with an empty molten sulphur car and an empty hopper car.

The accident happened adjacent to Kriest Creek, which flows into the Moyie River.

“Fortunately, the train was approaching Eastport and it slowed down considerably,” Graham said. “The speed was maybe 25 mph, no more.”

A broken rail sent the cars off the track, but none of the acid-bearing cars leaked.

UP crews had planned transferring the acid from the derailed cars into empty cars Thursday, but Graham said he thought the latest derailment delayed those plans.

“The transfer is a little delicate, but the railroad usually handles that well,” Graham said.

Another close call came Monday morning in Canada. A dual tanker truck carrying 41,000 liters of jet fuel wrecked a couple miles north of the border on Highway 95, nearly dumping its load in the Moyie River.

The truck slid sideways, 300 feet down the roadway, but no one was seriously injured and only a trace of jet fuel made it into the river, Graham said. The accident closed the highway all day, and traffic was routed through Porthill.

Boundary County seems to have more than its share of neardisastrous transportation accidents, Graham said.

Two trains, one a Union Pacific and the other a Burlington Northern Santa Fe, derailed last spring. And in July 1999 a BNSF derailment along the Kootenai River released ammonia gas, forcing the evacuation of 200 rural residents.

Graham said he didn’t know whether two recent derailments were coincidences, “or what.”

UP spokesman Mike Furtney said he didn’t yet know the cause of Tuesday’s derailment, but “I don’t remember anything being red-flagged so to speak for that area.”

“Every derailment is unique,” he said. “It’s odd you’d have as many as you’ve had up there.”

The line to Eastport is UP’s only Canadian border crossing. Between five and eight trains travel the tracks daily. The tracks are inspected quarterly and more frequently at the discretion of local crews, Furtney said.

Across the United States, the railroad has several hundred derailments each year, but the vast majority are “very small, like one wheel or a set of wheels,” Furtney said.