When Melanie Loessl got a call from a friend on Feb. 6 that another oil train had crashed and burned near her community, she thought it was a joke.
Not two months earlier, she'd been forced to flee after a different Canadian Pacific Railway train carrying crude oil jumped the tracks and exploded near her home, just west of the hamlet of Guernsey, Sask.
Now, the entire community was facing evacuation.
"I was just like, 'Oh, my God. Not again,'" said Loessl, a local potash mine worker.
"Once it happens twice in a row, it's kind of scary."
A CBC News investigation has uncovered years' worth of Transport Canada inspection reports documenting hundreds of safety problems along the Saskatchewan rail line, none of which prompted orders for trains to stop rolling.
What's more, since the 2013 rail disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Que., that killed 47 people, there have been seven major derailments of crude oil trains in Canada. In each case, investigators blame broken track.
Experts who reviewed the CBC's findings say the documents suggest the government regulator, Transport Canada, is failing to properly oversee rail companies and ensure the safety of hundreds of communities along the country's vast rail networks.
'Neither derailment was a surprise'
CBC News obtained five Transport Canada inspection reports from 2016 to 2020 for the CP line that stretches 183 kilometres from Wynyard, Sask., through Guernsey to Saskatoon, the province's most populous city.
The reports detail hundreds of problems found by inspectors: 131 "non-compliances" and 215 "concerns," including missing or defective railway ties (the wooden planks anchoring the track) and broken joint bars (which connect two long pieces of rail).
Heavy loads on the rise
Jack Gibney, the reeve for the municipality that includes Guernsey, wonders whether CP shouldn't have foreseen the track issues, given the dramatic increase in oil shipments.
"The last couple years, it's probably three times the amount of traffic we're used to. Trains a mile long," he said. "You can't expect to put that much traffic over a rail line and not do the proper upkeep to keep it safe."
In fact, CP's loads of crude oil along the line southeast of Saskatoon have increased sevenfold since 2017, according to the Transportation Safety Board.
Rob Johnston, the head of the board's rail operations for Central Canada, points to two Canadian National Railway oil trains that derailed in early 2015. The crashes happened within 11 kilometres and three weeks of each other near Gogama in northern Ontario.
CN reconstructed large sections of the track to handle heavier loads and hasn't had a crash there since, Johnston said.
"That speaks volumes to what needs to be done here," he said of the Saskatchewan track.
In Guernsey, on the heels of this winter's explosions and spills, CP is now replacing a large
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