Brian Klassen sat behind an uncluttered desk and talked about fish. Behind him the yellowing aspens were framed in the windows; fall had come to southern British Columbia. Klassen, a fisheries enhancement technician at the Tenderfoot hatchery outside of Squamish, British Columbia, was comfortably dressed in a worn blue sweatsuit. He smiled and slipped out sarcastic jokes in a Canadian accent. The hatchery was between seasons; the fish weren’t running, the eggs were in incubation and, in contrast to the pandemonium of recent events, the hatchery had the laidback feel of a firehouse between fires.
On Aug. 5, a Canadian National Railway train was traveling through British Columbia on its way to Prince George, towing 144 cars and more than 13,000 gallons of caustic soda. As the train passed just north of Squamish, nine cars derailed — spilling more than 10,500 gallons of the highly toxic chemical into the Cheakamus River.
This was CN’s eighth derailment in two months. The spill immediately killed thousands of fish.
"It’s actually better that (the spill) happened when it did," Klassen said. "If it had happened at any other time of the year, more fish would have been in the river and it would have been a disaster."
During the following four days, Klassen led one of the groups that surveyed the area after the spill. In all, the group collected 4,700 dead fish of different species from a 100-meter section of the river.
"We have a freezer full of dead fish," he said, pulling open the freezer door.
Inside, fish were piled on wooden palettes and covered in plastic tarps. Smaller specimens lay frozen in buckets on the floor or encased in Ziploc bags stuffed onto metal shelves. He pulled a frozen fish from the pile and held up the weathered-looking 3-foot-long chinook. In another circumstance this could have been an angler holding up a prize catch, but this fish died of a most unnatural cause and now exists only as legal evidence.
The caustic soda that killed the fish in the Cheakamus is an odorless white solid used to manufacture everything from soaps and industrial cleaners to paper, cotton and petroleum products. Caustic soda, formally known as sodium hydroxide, can cause serious chemical burns, scarring, respiratory damage and blindness. When the soda entered the river it deprived the water of oxygen and caused an exothermic reaction — heating the river to burning temperatures.
"When you put your hand in the river after the spill, you could feel it burning your skin," Klassen said. "(The caustic soda) basically just swept through the system and killed everything in its way; it was like a cloud of death."
Most of the fish died because their gills were burned so badly that they couldn’t get enough oxygen to breathe, Klassen said.
Near the hatchery, the Cheakamus River moves swiftly, flowing into the Squamish River before entering Howe Sound. The river is a major run for spawning steelhead, coho, chinook and pink salmon and a home to many other fish species and aquatic insects.
More than 90 percent of all fish in the river at the time of the Aug. 5 spill were killed, Klassen said, but a majority of the adult salmon and steelhead already had finished running upriver. Outmigrating smolt and steelhead suffered most of the damage.
"The main river channel was hit hardest," Klassen said. "There are still a lot of smolt coming out of the side channels so it wasn’t a total loss, but we won’t see the real damage until the returning runs start coming back."
Those runs will return in a couple of years. However, steelhead stocks were already in poor shape because of habitat problems including flooding, silting and decreased water flow. Most of these factors are the results of logging, hydro development, urbanization and flood control.
CN, founded in 1919, is one of the largest rail companies in Canada. The American-run railway specializes in shipping raw resources such as forest products, coal, metal and minerals, fertilizers, petroleum, chemicals and grain throughout Canada.
CN has a five-year average of 64 derailments per year. This number has begun to climb in the past few years, with 72 detrailments reported this year so far. Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, a union representing more than 3,500 CN maintenance workers, is urging the Canadian government to investigate the increased number of derailments.
Two days before the Cheakamus spill, a CN train derailed, dumping 43 cars and more than 300,000 gallons of bunker fuel oil onto the shores of Alberta’s Wabamun Lake, a major recreation sight and home to more than 500 permanent residents.
Graham Dallas, a spokesman for CN, said the reasons for these two derailments are unknown.
"August was a bad month," Dallas said. "Fortunately, we don’t see any common link between the accidents. Sometimes these things just happen."
In response to the recent derailments, the Canadian government’s Transportation Safety Board has an ongoing investigation focusing on the operation of the train and its interaction with the track. The investigation is slated to take six months to a year.
After the derailment, the Tenderfoot hatchery received $80,000 to cover the immediate costs. Klassen said hatchery officials are putting together estimates and hope to receive more from CN in the future. CN has agreed to work with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to continue to restore salmon stocks the Cheakamus.
CN has claimed full responsibility for the spills and plans to remain an active member in the remediations. The CN chief executive, E. Hunter Harrison, has issued a blanket apology for any environmental damage and community disruptions CN might have caused and vows to cooperate as investigations continue.
Aside from being angry about the situation, many locals are just confused.
Squamish resident Harry Lemke has been fishing the Cheakamus for the past 15 years. When fishing reopened on Oct. 1, Lemke was back on the river, but he said it hasn’t been the same.
"All the fish are dead. All the dollies. All the rainbows. All the fish and all the food the fish were eating are dead," Lemke said as he cast his fishing line again and again into an empty river pool. "I normally would have caught a few dollies by now, but there’s nothing here."