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Lac Mégantic Rail Disaster

21K views 179 replies 17 participants last post by  krs 
#1 ·
Surprised this hasn't come up as a thread... two days' old now...

Lac-Mégantic's tragedy is a most unnatural disaster



On a beautiful summer night, we are to believe, 73 driverless cars of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway somehow came broke loose on a siding near Nantes, 12 kilometres to the west of town, and began rolling quietly, unnoticed, down the hilly incline, gathering speed in their “inertia’’ — no power other than gravity — aiming right at the heart of an unsuspecting community at the bottom.

The brakes and safety system were apparently functional, nothing to worry about, when the engineer had departed just before midnight for a comfortable bed at a local hotel. A replacement was slated to come aboard later during the night.

If there were anti-derail safety devices on the track — designed to guide cars off the rails at selected spots, as protection against collisions — they clearly did not work. Heedless, that bulk of metal and — most ruinously, crude oil tankers — escalated towards Lac-Megantic, hurtling into the downtown district, its locomotive breaking free at some point before the crash, a mere 9 metres from the Musi-Café, a popular and Saturday-night crowded bar.

Those fortunate to escape the resulting inferno fled on foot, some even jumping into boats that roared off into the waters offshore, beyond the explosions and flames and eye-singing heat. The sky, said residents, turned from black to vivid orange and red — the colours of warning-label danger, still so hellfire hot late Sunday afternoon that firefighters who’d rushed to the scene from as far away as Sherbrooke and Maine, across the border, could approach no closer than 150 metres distant of two fuel cars that remained burning.

The guts of Lac-Megantic have been spilled, reduced to ashes. All those suburban commercial totems — the Dollarama store, the Metro supermarket — businesses and restaurants razed, on the scorched earth of a 5-square-kilometre central district. Worst of all, besides the five bodies that had been recovered by last night, upwards of 40 people still missing, perhaps “vaporized’’ in the fireball — many of them, it seems, Musi-Café patrons who never saw death coming.

If a loved one in Lac-Megantic hasn’t come home yet, they may never be coming home.

(Toronto Star)

Related: Devastated Lac-Mégantic waits for word of its missing - Montreal - CBC News



 
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#2 ·
Here is a recording of a heavily loaded (ore) train Brunswick Mines in New Brunswick circa 1987. The train had the engines on it and shunting loaded zinck and lead ore. The brakes (air brakes) were not hooked up there for there were effectively no brakes on the train.

The engines pulled too far ahead and the cars started to roll with inertia like the the cars in the Lac Mégantic Rail Disaster. The only person on the train was CN engineer Wesley MacDonald. The following is the conversations that followed.

The audio is as dramatic as a radio play

PART 1
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w1yp3qq21A]Runaway Train on the Nepisiguit Sub Part 1/5 - YouTube[/ame]



PART 2
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYy5llU03tk]Runaway Train on the Nepisiguit Sub Part 2/5 - YouTube[/ame]



PART 3
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpsjtgjSHEI]Runaway Train on the Nepisiguit Sub Part 3/5 - YouTube[/ame]



PART 4
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSbh4q40kGo]Runaway Train on the Nepisiguit Sub Part 4/5 - YouTube[/ame]



PART 5
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iim-iG4Yz0U]Runaway Train on the Nepisiguit Sub Part 5/5 - YouTube[/ame]
 
#4 ·
Lac-Mégantic Disaster Now a Criminal Investigation as Deaths Mount

Five people are dead and at least 40 are still missing a day after a runaway train derailed in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, igniting explosions and fires that destroyed a busy downtown district. Lac-Megantic, a lakeside town of 6,000 circled by forests of pine and birch, is in the predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec, about 160 miles east of Montreal and close to the border with Maine and Vermont. About 2,000 people, a third of the population, were evacuated. The flames were finally extinguished by firefighters on Sunday evening, more than 40 hours after the disaster struck.

(SNIP)

"Ed Burkhardt, chairman of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, said Sunday night that the train’s sole engineer shut down four of the five locomotive units on the train, as is standard procedure, in the neighbouring community of Nantes before heading to Lac Mégantic to sleep. Burkhardt said the next engineer was probably due to arrive at daybreak.

But someone managed to shut down the fifth locomotive unit, he said. That’s the one that maintained brake pressure to keep the train in place.

“If the operating locomotive is shut down, there’s nothing left to keep the brakes charged up, and the brake pressure will drop finally to the point where they can’t be held in place any longer,” Burkhardt said.

There are two ways to shut down the fifth unit: There’s an emergency lever on the outside of the locomotive that anyone wandering by could access. Or, there are a number of levers and buttons inside the unlocked cabin.

Both means were used, said Burkhardt."

(Crooks & Liars)
 
#5 ·
Holy crap.

Has this dullard ever heard about Westinghouse brakes?

When air pressure is lost the breaks come ON.

There is a pressure tank on every car that does this job.

I doubt the pressure was lost at all, which makes you ask "why not".

Pressure supplied by the locomotive should drop when it's switch-off"?
 
#6 ·
The crew were shunting cars at the mine site. The air brake cocks on the locomotive were cut out (off position) to the hopper cars.

The only brakes were the brakes on the locomotive. The brakes on the locomotive were not sufficient to stop the mass of the ore hopper cars pushing the engine down the grade. The brakes on the locomotive were applied initially then overcome by the forces of gravity, mass and inertia.

The grade of the hill (gravity,) the mass of the train and inertia forced the locomotive engine up to speeds up to 70 Mph. What stopped the train was friction, when the train derailed of the tracks onto its side into the ground. Inertia was overcome by the force of friction.
 
#8 ·
Thanks for that explanation. :cool:

Another question then.

Are the cocks cut off out of necessity, or expediency, to eliminate any delay in getting the air lines back up to operating pressure?
 
#7 ·
8 more bodies found in Lac-Mégantic, raising death toll to 13

Eight more bodies have been found in Lac-Mégantic, bringing the official body count up to 13 people after a runaway train carrying crude oil set off a series of explosions and flattened the town's busy downtown.

Some 50 people are said to be missing, including the 13 bodies that have been recovered since the train derailed at about 1 a.m. ET Saturday.

Police are asking family members to provide DNA samples, from things like toothbrushes and combs, from their missing relatives in order to help investigators identify bodies.

About 2,000 residents were forced to leave their homes on Saturday, but 1,500 of those evacuees may be able to return home as soon as Tuesday.​

(CBC)
 
#10 ·
In summation, it normally works, but Human error intervened.

Could some sort of stress gauge could be put on the coupling from the locomotive to the first car, to give some warning that the load was reaching the fail-safe point?
 
#11 ·
The short answer is no.

Maybe having sections of the train's air brakes "pumped up" and tested before adding additional sections. Might prove less time consuming. That would provide more breaking power vs. mass (weight) than just relying on the brakes of the locomotives as a safety measure.
 
#12 ·
Just heard on the news that there had been an engine fire in the lead locomotive a couple of hours before the runaway. Engine was shut down, fire out and Railway personnel on the scene before the firefighters left.

May turn into a criminal investigation.
 
#14 ·
Incredible video... these folks are 'way too close to the remaining rail cars... things really start popping at about 3:30 into the video... Quite a lot of expletives... in English and French...

+ YouTube Video
ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you don't have Flash installed.
 
#17 ·
Depending on how many brakes it could be 10 to 30 seconds per brake and a little walking. The derail if available would be a minute(s) to apply plus the walk.

The securing of the train would minimal cost. Even if the cost were slightly more substantial the cost of paying for this accident could run into how many dollars?
 
#19 ·
#20 ·
Yeah...almost like he pushed the train down the hill himself. Jeezuz...

The decision to approve single engineers was made by Transport Canada, not PMSH's Office.

As usual, you never let facts get in the way of a good rant, do you? Here, GHG thread or anywhere else, for that matter.
 
#27 ·
Well, well! Seems to me the decision to approve "single crew" on trains might fall to these cats at the Canadian Transportation Agency. All of whom were appointed (if you'll note) by OGL one Stephen Harper since becoming Prime Minister in 2006.

CTA said:
What we do

The Canadian Transportation Agency is an independent, quasi-judicial tribunal and economic regulator. It makes decisions and determinations on a wide range of matters involving air, rail and marine modes of transportation under the authority of Parliament, as set out in the Canada Transportation Act and other legislation.

Our mandate includes:

Economic regulation, to provide approvals, issue licences, permits and certificates of fitness, and make decisions on a wide range of matters involving federal air, rail and marine transportation.
CTA | What we do

CTA said:
Members
Geoffrey C. Hare, Chair and CEO
Sam Barone, Vice-Chair and Member
Raymon J. Kaduck, Member
J. Mark MacKeigan, Member
Jean-Denis Pelletier, Member
CTA | Members

CTA said:
Geoffrey C. Hare became Chair and CEO of the Canadian Transportation Agency on February 12, 2007.
https://www.otc-cta.gc.ca/eng/geoffrey-c-hare-chair-and-ceo

CTA said:
Mr. Sam Barone became a Member and Vice-Chair of the Canadian Transportation Agency on March 18, 2013.
https://www.otc-cta.gc.ca/eng/sam-barone-vice-chair-and-member

CTA said:
Mr. Raymon J. Kaduck became a Member of the Canadian Transportation Agency on January 8, 2007.
https://www.otc-cta.gc.ca/eng/raymon-j-kaduck-member

CTA said:
Mr. J. Mark MacKeigan became a Member of the Canadian Transportation Agency on June 18, 2007.
https://www.otc-cta.gc.ca/eng/j-mark-mackeigan-member

CTA said:
Jean Denis Pelletier, engineer, became a Member of the Canadian Transportation Agency on November 3, 2008.
https://www.otc-cta.gc.ca/eng/jean-denis-pelletier-p-eng-member

Now are these people a bunch of party hacks, being rewarded or are they truly independent decision makers, I don't know.

With a mandate such as:

"Economic regulation, to provide approvals, issue licences, permits and certificates of fitness, and make decisions on a wide range of matters involving federal air, rail and marine transportation.";
these fine gentlemen might be the go to guys to approve one person crew on trains, rather than Transport Canada whose mandate is more regulatory administration.

Just cause someone, throws a bone, to the faithful does not make it so.

Just pointing out in consideration of your all too familiar theme back at you:
"As usual, you never let facts get in the way of a good rant, do you? Here, GHG thread or anywhere else, for that matter."
 
#21 ·
The buck stops with the guy at the head of the government that okayed the dismantling of the regulation....not the first time with the Cons....likely not the last.
idiotic Ideology has consequences - 60 people dead likely is a pretty severe one.
 
#22 ·
The regulation is not being dismantled. A bureaucrat gave the company permission to run the railroad under those conditions. The decision has nothing to do with who happens to be PM at the time.
 
#25 ·
 
#48 ·
You are correct with regard to my point. We should wait for the facts.

As an aside there are those who seem have a build up of nastiness who can't wait to vent their spleens at every opportunity.
 
#56 ·
An interest view of the tragic incident with regard to the explosion and fire in Lac-Mégantic
TheGaurdian said:
In the explosion's aftermath, politicians and media pundits have wagged their finger about the indecency of "politicising" the event, of grappling with deeper explanations. We can mourn, but not scrutinise. In April, prime minister Stephen Harper even coined an awkward expression – "committing sociology" – to deride the search for root causes about horrifying events, in the wake of an unrelated, alleged bombing attempt.

But to simply call the Lac-Mégantic explosion a "tragedy" and to stop there, is to make it seem like an accident that occurred solely because of human error or technical oversight. It risks missing how we might assign broader culpability. And we owe it to the people who died to understand the reasons why such a disaster occurred, and how it might be prevented in the future.

So here's my bit of unwelcome sociology: the explosion in Lac-Mégantic is not merely a tragedy. It is a corporate crime scene.
TheGaurdian said:
The recklessness of these corporations is no accident. Under the reign of neoliberalism over the last 30 years, governments in Canada and elsewhere have freed them from environmental, labour and safety standards and oversight, while opening up increasingly more of the public sphere for private profit-seeking.

The railway in Canada has hardly been exempt. Up until the mid 1980s, the industry, publicly-run, was under serious regulation. By the time the Thatcherite Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney was finished with his reforms, it was deregulated, and companies had rewritten the safety rules. That launched an era of cost-cutting, massive lay-offs, and speed-ups on the job, and eventually, the full privatization of companies and rail-lines.

The Liberal government completed the job by turning over what regulation remained to rail companies themselves. A report issued in 2007 by a safety group spelled out the result: Canada's rail system was a disaster in the waiting.

It's little wonder, then, that today's oil and rail barons have cut corners with ease. They've been using old rail cars to ship oil, despite the fact that regulators warned the federal government they were unsafe, as far back as 20 years ago. A more recent report by a federal agency reminded the government that the cars could be "subject to damage and catastrophic loss of hazardous materials." All were ignored. To top it off, the federal government gave the go-ahead last year to Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway to operate with just one engineer aboard their trains.
Quebec's Lac-Mégantic oil train disaster not just tragedy, but corporate crime | Environment | guardian.co.uk
 
#57 ·
It's too bad we don't have the equivalent of a Grand Jury in Canada.

Their powers are perhaps excessive, but certainly feared, and one would be perfect in this situation.

Start handing out subpoenas, and watch the excrement hit the fan,
 
#58 ·
We do. They are called Royal Commissions. Usually the cost exceeds whatever they happen to be investigating. They drag on for years and any useful conclusions are suppressed. Any valid suggestions ignored. However PM buddies do make out like bandits financially.

Thankfully RCs seem to have fallen into disfavour but I am sure King Harpo has a few buds who would love the big financial windfall which would come their way should he appoint them to a Royal Commission to investigate this incident.
 
#61 ·
^^^Page was pretty much unreadable.^^^

Did hear the engineer claim he had set hand brakes on the 5 engines and first 11 cars. One statement said that for that length train the brakes should have been set on about 30 cars (41%).
 
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