Saint Cloud Fire Department’s Hazmat Team Ready if Train Derailment Occurs

(KNSI) – Over sixty certified hazmat technicians and a specialized response team with the St. Cloud Fire Department are well equipped and stand at the ready to deal with a disaster such as a train derailment and fire like the one seen in Raymond on March 30th.

Twenty-two Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail cars derailed that morning and caught fire, causing the town of Raymond in Kandiyohi County to be evacuated.

Deputy Fire Chief Steve Wunderlich says they do generalized training about how to respond to a car on fire or an engine that needs to be shut off, but most of the planning surrounds the danger to the public posed by the cargo.

“Our main training is what to do if you have one and how you deal with chemicals. We are a Hazmat Emergency Response Team, one of four in the state, and we will respond to something like that but it would be mostly to deal with the fallout.”

Wunderlich says the specialized response team is posted at station two, which was chosen to be the base because it has extra space allocated for equipment. The Anderson Avenue site was rebuilt about 15 years ago, making it one of the newer facilities for the department.

Wunderlich says the agency would be the lead in coordinating a response to an incident, partnering with city, county, and federal agencies.

The Northern Lines Railway is a shortline railroad that operates 17 miles of track in and near St. Cloud. The depot handles over 10,000 cars per year and is an intermodal facility, meaning cars can be taken off a train and put on the back of a semi-tractor or other large commercial truck so they can be delivered by road.

Wunderlich says that transition creates the potential for a spill or other incident, but they know ahead of time if any train has something potentially dangerous on board.

“We do get a notice every week, what’s coming through. Oil trains, things like that. We are notified.”

St. Cloud’s east side near Lincoln Avenue is one of the busiest railroad stretches in Minnesota. The city as a whole sees 70 trains cross through it per day.

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