There’s no one-size-fits-all evacuation plan if a major railroad disaster were to happen in Whitefish. 

There are too many variables, which is why Whitefish Assistant Fire Chief Joe Page is hesitant to answer questions about evacuation orders with any sort of specifics.

But with trainloads of crude oil passing through Whitefish daily, it’s a scenario Page is being asked about more often. The question came up again at a public forum June 10 hosted by the city of Whitefish and BNSF Railway.

Page said that while the fire department has crafted evacuation plans, “the real issue is that we don’t know ahead of time what the emergency is.”

“Is it windy, raining, snowing, and where on the railroad does it happen?”

“There are so many variables, I can’t tell the public that if there’s a problem at the railroad, ‘Do this.’”

Each evacuation should be calculated and tailored to the incident, he said.

“We don’t want to evacuate too many people and clog traffic,” he said. “We might tell some people to stay in place.”

If a hazardous incident were to happen on the tracks, Page said the fire department’s first priority would be to make contact with residents.

“If we had one of those big fires, we’d be tied up with life safety,” he said. “We probably wouldn’t be doing any firefighting. Our top priority is life safety, doing an evacuation based on the danger of the fire, and doing everything we could to protect the environment.”

The idea of using a siren to alert of an evacuation has been suggested, but Page says there are better mechanisms.

“We work with the incident management team and have systems to get messages out on the radio and TV,” Page said. “We would be going door-to-door and using P.A. systems. A siren could be evacuating people who don’t need to evacuate.”

If the viaduct were to be damaged in a rail incident, Page said residents on the north side of the tracks likely would leave town via the railroad crossing at East Second Street or go all the way out to Columbia Falls via Edgewood Drive. If those exit points are blocked, Page said there are evacuation routes through private property that can by used.

“We are aware of these situations,” he said. “We also have Big Mountain Fire Department on that side of the tracks to help out.”

Shelters would be set up at some of the larger buildings in town and the Red Cross would coordinate with the efforts.

The fire department is planning a small-scale evacuation drill this fall to judge how long it takes to go door-to-door.

Six Whitefish firefighters will travel this summer to a BNSF training facility to learn more about dealing with hazardous-material incidents. The company pays for more than 700 people nationwide to attend the training.

Whitefish Mayor John Muhlfeld, said the city will hold a work session this summer to discuss Whitefish’s preparedness in the event of a train disaster.

Baldwin is the editor of the Whitefish Pilot.