Around 12:01 a.m. the train cars derailed during switching operations.
If you drive along Wayside just south of the loop, you will want to take a different route.
Wayside is currently closed in both directions.
Between 12 and 15 cars left the tracks near Irvine, Alta., on Friday afternoon, police said, and some may contain flammable cargo.
The derailment involves "chemical exposure" according to Alberta Emergency Alert, which told residents within a seven-kilometre radius to evacuate the area immediately.
The train derailed on the west side of Irvine — a community of about 300 people, some 35 kilometres southeast from Medicine Hat — along the north side of Highway 1 in Cypress County, officials said in an alert sent at 4:52 p.m. MT.
"Cypress County has declared a state of local emergency and is working with stakeholders and partners to assist in the evacuation," the county said in a release Friday evening.
RCMP and fire officials are assisting.
Canadian Pacific Railway says the derailment happened at about 3:20 p.m. MT and they have "dispatched teams to the site."
Train, grass on fire
"One of the train cars was on fire and then the grass lit on fire, so they closed the highway," Lethbridge resident Trehia May Stevenson, who drives that stretch of road often, told CBC News.
She says she was there shortly after the accident — "before the first responders."
"I was about five minutes behind the derailing. There were about 12 cars that derailed, maybe more, and none of them were tankers. It was close to the back end of the train and the rest of [the] train was still on the track."
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