Trains put the community at risk

I personally visited the grain train wreck in Cheney Friday morning, Jan. 16, and agree with John Taves, Cheney City Councilman, that the blockage of Cheney-Spokane Road would delay emergency vehicles, and shows the risks facing the public from train accidents, quoted from “Train derailment blocks Cheney-Spokane Road near State Route 904,” Spokesman Review, Jan. 16. 

Washington state shouldn’t gamble with train safety, this isn’t a hand we can afford to lose. Thursday morning’s incident is a sobering realization that train derailments happen, whether minor like this one or catastrophic like the oil train accident in 2013 in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, Canada that killed 47 people, forever devastating a community and spoiling their waterways.

Current oil and coal trains as well as grain trains put our communities at risk, and it is terrifying to think what could happen if more proposed terminals are built on the coast, doubling our total rail traffic that is already the highest in the region. Spokane is considered one of the major “choke points” of the coal and oil movement from the Great Plains to the Pacific Coast, most of Cheney being in the oil blast zone.

With increased rail traffic, more derailments, fires and intersection obstructions are likely. Our state could turn into a dirty and dangerous fossil fuel conveyor belt!

This Cheney grain train was moving slowly, and did not even tip over. However, in 1991, a train jumped the tracks over Interstate 90 in Spokane and crashed onto the freeway. If there isn’t concerted preventive action, it is only a matter of time before we see a major disaster. This derailment is a wake-up call for Cheney-ites to be aware of and concerned about trains, and possibly more trains running through our city.

Nancy Street

Cheney