Another rail accident, brings more talk of emergency preparations

Grant could lead to evacuations
plans for surrounding areas

A derailment last week in Brownsville, Minn., might lead to more preparation for other rail accidents. That’s the hope, anyway, says La Crosse County emergency management coordinator Keith Butler.

“We need to learn from how that’s managed and what we can do to prevent that kind of thing from happening,” Butler said.

You can understand why there might be some anxiety over rail safety after a series of accidents in the last year.

It’s partly why rail-disaster planning continues in the county, like the grant-funded planning that Butler went through last year for neighborhoods in La Crosse and Onalaska.

“We have another grant waiting, pending from the state right now to do the planning for Rockland, Bangor, West Salem,” Butler said.

Not much, however, appears to have come from those areas in terms of planning coordinated with Butler.

“It concerns me that I’m not aware of their efforts,” Butler said. “I’m sure somebody’s doing something.

“Right now, they’re not heavily leaning on me like they were when we were doing evacuation planning.”