I acknowledge that I'm speaking from the traditional territory of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation.
Similar to Gerry, I'm going to tell you about our recent experiences in my small town, in the same regional district, actually. Smithers is a railway town. It was surveyed during construction of the railway, what's now CN railway. It's a divisional town where trains stop for several hours to take on fuel and new crews. They spend time in town. It's an important employer and important to our local economy and regional economy.
We became aware of upcoming changes from a newspaper article, in 2019, announcing the opening of a propane export terminal at the port in Prince Rupert. The terminal requires delivery of 50 to 60 propane tank cars per day by rail, and soon we were seeing strings of black tank cars rolling through town. We then learned that three other export terminals were in the works. The largest, Vopak, would export 240 cars per day: 60 of propane; 50 for fuels like diesel and gasoline; and 90 of methanol, methyl alcohol.
If all four terminals are approved, we will have approximately four 100-car trains per day passing through town and stopping in town, carrying what are regulatory hazardous, flammable products. Liquids like diesel and gasoline also have a hazard if they are spilled in our river, as it could cause serious harm to salmon stocks.
The terminals were being reviewed with no consideration of the rail portion of the project. Residents began to feel like deer in the headlights seeing our rail line becoming a hazardous products corridor, and we were receiving no information and having no opportunity to input any decisions.
The fact is that train can derail, and collisions happen inside towns. Propane compressed into a 30,000-gallon tank—that's over 113,00 litres—has a huge explosive potential.
I'm going to try to show you a map of the rail corridor through Smithers. The yellow and red are the evacuation corridors for propane, the yellow is for fire. This side of that zone is the steep slope of the mountain, the other side is another slope onto the river, and the town is completely under the evacuation zone. This includes the municipal office, ambulance, fire station, police station and the hospital.
We started talking to local governments, telling them our worries. In Smithers, the fire chief is on staff, but the rest of the firefighters are volunteers. When the chief was asked if his department was prepared to handle a large propane accident in town, his answer was definitely not.
Smithers council invited CN and learned that the nearest emergency response team was in Prince George, over 370 kilometres away, and it would take 12 to 24 hours for them to get to town. This is tough for a small community, because the town council is responsible for making its decision to evacuate the town.
Local governments began writing the Minister of Transport asking for an independent, public, risk assessment of hazardous traffic on the northern B.C. rail line, and they also asked that local governments be included in the process. To my knowledge, the transport minister or ministry hasn't replied to any of these letters, so we have no more information than we did.
I'd like to thank MP Taylor Bachrach and your committee for studying this issue and perhaps getting some answers for us, and perhaps getting some attention to the hazardous situation we feel we've been put in.
Thank you.