My cottage isn’t far from some railway tracks. I’ve walked about five kilometres of the tracks, and there are numerous burn areas along them. Last spring, I called in a fire that was caused by a train, and this spring there was another one. Obviously, we need trains, but what is causing them to start so many fires?—Brad Armstrong, via email
“As trains pass by on the tracks, they can generate sparks, which then ignite dry grass, creating a fire,” says Jennifer Kamau of the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. (This can happen during downhill or emergency braking, or because of wear-and-tear on the brake components.) But it’s not just sparks from the tracks. According to the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB), there are lots of potential causes of train-related fires. Malfunctions with the exhaust stack of the train can cause embers to shoot up and out; the traction motors that power the wheels can overheat; flammable cargo, such as sulphur, can ignite spontaneously inside the train (wait, what?), and so on. None of this stuff is supposed to happen. Obviously. But things go wrong.
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The TSB is paying attention. In a report investigating a July 2021 B.C. wildfire—caused by a mechanical failure on a CP freight train—the board determined that there have been at least 21 additional on-board locomotive fires in the two years since that terrible incident; this is a big number given that, in the previous decade, there were only 34 on-board fires in total. The TSB proposed recommendations, including “ensuring that no locomotive is operated through areas where the fire danger is rated as extreme” and “enhanced vegetation control measures” along the tracks. It’s a step in the right direction.
Of course, not every fire inside a train leads to a fire outside a train. And not every fire leads to a wildfire. Unfortunately, there isn’t much current Canadian data on how many wildfires trains cause, says Ed Struzik, a wildfire researcher and a fellow at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy at Queen’s University. Back when Canada’s Commission on Conservation used to report on these numbers each season, “there were about 1,000 fires every year,” he says—but the commission was disbanded in 1921.
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In the summer, lightning is the main cause of forest fires. But in the spring, human influences—including discarded cigarettes, campfires, powerline failure, agricultural activity, fireworks, and arson—play a larger role. So how many fires do trains ignite in comparison to all other human causes?
“It’s a good question that I’m still trying to answer,” says Struzik. “But no luck so far.”
You obviously can’t personally stop trains from causing fires. But you can at least reduce the fire risk around your cottage property, by, for example, regularly clearing leaves and branches from your eavestroughs and roof, and keeping combustibles—firewood piles, construction materials, even patio furniture—10 metres, at minimum, away from the cottage. Hey, it all helps. For more tips, visit firesmartcanada.ca.
This article was originally published in the March/April 2024 issue of Cottage Life.
Got a question for Cottage Q&A? Send it to answers@cottagelife.com.
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