Traffic was detoured Wednesday afternoon near Bainbridge Avenue as firefighters dealt with a small fire in one of CP Rail’s open-top sulphur cars running along the Winston Avenue corridor.
The Burnaby Fire Department was called out to the 6800 block of Winston Avenue around 1:15 p.m. on July 2 when one of CP’s open-top rail cars carrying sulphur began smoking, assistant fire Chief Rick Weir told the NOW.
“The sulphur was on fire. No visible flame just smoke,” he said.
The department’s Hazmat team from the Edmonds fire station was dispatched to the scene. The fire itself was contained to one car only and took minutes to extinguish, Weir added.
“We went through our protocol – had the Hazmat team respond, contacted CANUTEC (Canadian Transport Emergency Centre), and we contacted CN hazardous materials team,” he said. “They (CN) sent out a representative and it was just a simple matter of putting spray over top of the cart.”
The area, however, was closed for several hours while firefighters and CN staff set up a perimeter to ensure the surrounding wildlife and waterways wouldn’t be damaged, Weir said.
“It took a couple of hours to set up and just to confirm with all the different agencies that there was going to be no run-off or run-off problems into Still Creek or Burnaby Lake. Once that was taken care of, we knocked it (the fire) down with water,” he said.
Weir added that the cause of the fire is unknown and the local department won’t likely investigate it further.
Once the fire was put out, CP staff and Burnaby firefighters checked the rest of the train before it was allowed to continue on its way.
