FEBRUARY 25, 2015
COTTON, ST. LOUIS COUNTY, MINNESOTA
Crews are cleaning up after the derailment of a Canadian
National Railway train near the town of Cotton early Tuesday. The derailment occurred at 3:23 a.m.,
approximately 1 ½ miles south of Three Lakes Road in the vicinity of the
intersection of Three Lakes and Munger Shaw roads. It was headed from Winnipeg, Manitoba to
Superior, Wisconsin.
The St. Louis County Sheriff's Office says 13 cars went off
the tracks around 3:25 a.m., including three that contained hazardous
materials. Both the sheriff and Canadian
National insist there is no leakage from any of the haz mat cars and no danger
to the public. The other 10 cars involved in the derailment were either carrying
plastic pellets or were empty.
County emergency services manager Scott Camps says the
southbound train had a total of 107 cars, including nine cars containing
potentially hazardous or dangerous materials. He says the hazardous material is naphthalene.
That's best known as a main ingredient in mothballs. It was headed from Winnipeg,
Manitoba to Superior, Wisconsin.
"CN has crews, including hazardous materials
specialists, mobilized," CN spokesperson Patrick Waldron told the Duluth
News Tribune. "We'll conduct a cleanup and full investigation into the
cause of this morning's accident. We'll bring in heavy equipment that will
allow them to clean up and move the rail cars."
Cotton is about 20 miles south of Virginia, MN. The Grand
Lake, Northland, Cotton and Fredenberg fire departments responded to the scene.
No cause of the derailment has been determined, the
sheriff's office said.
Of all the railway networks in the world, Canada's is the
third largest and transports the fourth largest volume of goods. Every year,
Canadian railways move 70% of the country's surface goods (including 40% of its
exports) and carry 70 million people, meeting motorists and pedestrians at
thousands of public and private crossings.
In 2011, 1023 rail accidents were reported to the TSB, down
5% from 1076 in 2010 and down 15% from an average of 1198 in the period
2006–2010. Freight trains accounted for 71% of all trains in accidents in 2011,
followed by single cars/cuts of cars with 9%; 6% of the accidents involved
passenger trains.
In 2011, 17% of rail accidents involved vehicles or
pedestrians at rail crossings, nearly unchanged from 18% over the previous 5
years. The safe interaction between railway operations and the public has been
the subject of numerous TSB investigations and continues to present
opportunities for safety improvements through the identification and
elimination of risks.
Investigations in the rail mode touch on a wide variety of
subjects, such as operational decision making, risk management, component
failure, supervision, metallurgy and track train dynamics.