Rail worker wasn't told of urgency of fatal 2018 derailment before responding, inquest hears

An employee of the rail company involved in a fatal 2018 derailment in northern Manitoba told an inquest Friday he had no idea how serious the situation was until he arrived at the scene and had to help first responders get to two men trapped inside the train.

Roadmaster Allan Chapman said he was working on a different section of tracks when he was called to help because the Hudson Bay Railway employee assigned to regularly inspect the section where the derailment happened was out of town the weekend of the incident. 

Kevin Anderson, who was 38, died after the freight train he was conducting went over a washed-out section of rail in a remote area of northern Manitoba and derailed on Sept. 15, 2018, pinning him and engineer Chris Rushton in the wreckage.

The rails and ties were in place, but were hanging over an empty space 15 metres long and almost five metres deep, a Transportation Safety Board report said. It collapsed under the weight of the train.

"After we loaded Mr. Rushton onto the helicopter, I seen [first responders] getting ready to leave, putting their stuff away," Chapman told the inquest. "I said, 'What about the other person?' And they said, 'He's gone.'"

Chapman, who has worked on railways for decades, said derailments can vary widely and many aren't as serious. However, no one told him this one involved two people pinned inside the train until he arrived at the scene.

"Had you known that, would it have changed your response in any way?" asked Abram Silver, counsel for Anderson's family. "Could you have done something different?"

"Probably, yeah," said Chapman, who testified he was told to stop for a rail saw to bring to the remote location, and had to make sure the seldom-used tool was working, fuel his vehicle and stop for food before heading out.

"I probably would have tried to get some other crews, crew members, to be ready to head to the site … as early as I could."

The inquest into Anderson's death heard Chapman ended up having to drive first responders to the derailment scene after the tires blew out on the ATVs they tried to use to get there.

Both men in the train were seriously injured but had no way of communicating with the outside world, because their radios weren't working. They were discovered by chance about two hours after the derailment when a civilian helicopter happened to fly overhead, the province previously said in a news release.

While RCMP got to the scene around 7 p.m., access to the site was barred until it could be assessed by trained and equipped personnel due to concerns about fuel leaking from the wreckage. Emergency personnel didn't get to the scene until much later.

An autopsy report said Anderson bled to death after suffering "serious but survivable injuries." However, the medical opinion on whether he could have survived later changed to his death being inevitable given the circumstances, a lawyer in the inquest previously said. 

Both Chapman and Gerald Krahn, who was a transport supervisor with the railway at the time of the incident, told the inquest on Friday they did not believe there was anything in the company's emergency response plan about derailments at the time.