The BC Wildfire Service fined CN Rail for sparking three small wildfires in the Prince George area in April 2020, according to a ruling published online.
In a Dec. 28, 2022 ruling, BC Wildfire Service manager of provincial equipment depots Robert Keddie ordered CN Rail to pay $6937.93 under the Wildfire Act for “causing or contributing to” wildfires designated G10128, G10131, G10132, G10135 (2020).
“On April 22nd, 2020, beginning at approximately 15:43 hours, the BCWS recorded the first of four phone calls from members of the public and Fire Department representatives reporting a series of wildfires between Hansard Lake (approximately fifty kilometers northeast of Prince George, BC) and Shelley (approximately ten kilometers northeast of Prince George),” Keddie wrote in his ruling. “The callers reported seeing smoke and open flame adjacent to the railway tracks and that the fires were spreading slowly. The BCWS identified nine separate wildfires in total related to these reports, and each of the wildfires was on the north or west side of the railway tracks (to the right of a train travelling from McBride to Prince George.”
Between April 22 and April 23, 2020, BC Wildfire Service crews and volunteer firefighters from the Willow River Fire Department extinguished the fires, which ranged in size from 0.1 to 0.2 hectares in size, Keddie wrote. On April 28, 2020, a pair of BC Wildfire Service officers investigated the scenes of the fires to determine a cause.
“The investigators went on to conclude that the most likely cause of all of the wildfires identified in this case was railway operations carried out by CNR. They reached this conclusion due to the similar proximity of all of the wildfires to the railway tracks, the similar time when the wildfires were reported to the BCWS and… based on a conversation with a CNR employee who described that the CNR train relevant to these wildfires had a ‘hot wheel’ causing sparks to be spread along the rail line between Hansard Lake and Shelley,” Keddie wrote.
CN Rail declined to comment on the case.
