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.
Which is why they need to have less regulation and more money on the table. Companies need to pay a fixed price per barrel spilled and leave a large deposit with the government. No limited liability. That will take care of the pipeline problem.
Yeah, there is that, but how many businesses burned, homes were lost, deaths occurred? No one can argue with any success that rail is safer than pipelines and since oil will remain our main energy source for another century at least, not using pipelines seems to me to be completely irresponsible. It is by far the lesser of evils to transport a product that is not going away any damn time soon.
Oil that spills from pipelines and even wells themselves CAN be cleaned up. Even the Gulf of Mexico has not died due to the big spill. Rail disasters like Lac Mégantic can't be cleaned up, other than the physical mess. The dead are still dead. The memories never fade. Why is that point so lost on educated people who oppose pipelines? It is by far the safest way to move crude and once again there is no damn way we will not be using petroleum for another century at least. Any realist knows, but fails to acknowledge that in arguing against pipelines. Do they think the wind is going to push supply ships around the world, or semis along highways or even get you to work on city streets? Or power the equipment required to raise mankind's food? It is unbelievable that smart people can't seem to grasp that reality.
Don, the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010 continues to be the cause of dead zones, mass die-offs of ocean life, continued contamination of coastal areas. Here are some recent studies:
In 2012, tar balls continued to wash up along the Gulf coast[216][217][218][219] and in 2013, tar balls could still be found in on the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts, along with oil sheens in marshes and signs of severe erosion of coastal islands, brought about the death of trees and marsh grass from exposure to the oil.[220] In 2013, former NASA physicist Bonny Schumaker noted a "dearth of marine life" in a radius 30 to 50 miles (48 to 80 km) around the well, after flying over the area numerous times since May 2010.[221][222]
In 2013, researchers found that oil on the bottom of the seafloor did not seem to be degrading, and observed a phenomenon called a "dirty blizzard": oil in the water column began clumping around suspended sediments, and falling to the ocean floor in an "underwater rain of oily particles." The result could have long-term effects because oil could remain in the food chain for generations.
A 2014 bluefin tuna study in Science found that oil already broken down by wave action and chemical dispersants was more toxic than fresh oil. A 2015 study of the relative toxicity of oil and dispersants to coral also found that the dispersants were more toxic than the oil.
A 2015 study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, published in PLOS ONE, links the sharp increase in dolphin deaths to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. (Wikipedia)
Rail disasters like Lac Mégantic can't be cleaned up, other than the physical mess. The dead are still dead. The memories never fade. Why is that point so lost on educated people who oppose pipelines? It is by far the safest way to move crude...
Note that I am not ideologically opposed to pipelines. I'm opposed to lax government regulation, low safety standards, and companies with proven histories of lying to / misleading the public regarding their construction, monitoring and response plans.
I don't really understand how CP could in any way be held responsible for this disaster.
They had handed off the train to MMA, they don't own MMA or any part of it, as far as I know the disaster was caused by:
a. The firemen turning off a loco to extinguish a small blaze thus reducing the air presure on the brakes to hold the train
b. Not enough mechanical brakes being applied to hold the train with the loco air pressure off
c. The MMA employee who was called when the loco fire was being extinguished not knowing that the loco had to be idling to maintain the pressure to hold the train.
CP is the only company still involved that have any money so lawyers are going after them - but that doesn't make it right.
The body that oversees Quebec's legal profession admits it could have done a better job protecting victims of the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster from a notorious ambulance chaser who descended on the Quebec town to sign up bereaved clients with American lawyers after the deadly derailment.
There were no red flags," says Claudia Prémont, who headed Quebec's bar association until recently. "No one — not the mayor, not the evacuees nor the relatives of those who were killed — picked up the phone to call us and say, 'We need your help.'"
However, the bar association didn't intervene after it was made aware of allegations of solicitation and "disturbing" tactics used by lawyers in the days after a runaway train exploded in Lac-Mégantic, incinerating the town centre and killing 47.
Radio-Canada's investigative program Enquête has obtained a copy of the 2014 letter, sent to the bar association by a witness to the events, which describes locals "in tears" and "at wit's end" after being "harassed" by lawyers.
Those lawyers promised the families of the dead payouts of millions of dollars if they signed on to file lawsuits in U.S. courts.
The bar association could not explain why it did not follow up on the 2014 letter.
Enquête reported in March that one questionable Texas law firm may have pocketed between $10 and $15 million in fees without having done any significant legal work in the aftermath of the tragedy.
Willie Garcia, the man behind the Garcia Law Group, is widely seen as one of the biggest ambulance chasers — also known as a case runner — in the U.S.
Irving Oil has been ordered to pay $4 million after pleading guilty to 34 counts stemming from the 2013 rail disaster in Lac Megantic, Que.
The offences were committed over eight months, from November 2012 to July 2013 involving transportation of approximately 14,000 rail cars of crude oil for Irving Oil.
On July 6, 2013, a train carrying 7.7 million litres of crude oil sped toward the small Quebec town at 104 km/h before derailing, killing 47 people in the resulting fire and explosions.
The federal Public Prosecution Service said Thursday that a provincial court judge in Saint John, N.B., ordered Irving Oil to pay fines totalling $400,320.
It will also pay a contribution of nearly $3.6 million for the implementation of research programs in the field of safety standards under the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act and its regulations.
Following the train derailment in Lac Megantic, an investigation by Transport Canada and the RCMP revealed that Irving Oil had not complied with all applicable safety requirements by not classifying the crude oil being carried by train as a dangerous good.
In addition, the shipping documents on board the trains were incorrect.
The statement also says Irving Oil did not adequately train its employees in the transportation of dangerous goods, thereby committing an offence under the Act.
What triggered this whole disaster was the local firemen shutting off one of the locomotives because of a small fire (which was standard procedure) but then the railway sent some employee who was a track worker I believe - the point is that he didn't know that the idling engine (that was shut off) was required to maintain brake pressure.
So after a while, after everyone had left the parked train, the pressure in the brake lines dropped enough to allow the train to start to roll down the hill towards the town.
I never read the conclusion about how many mechanical brakes were set on the cars and if that should have been enough to hold the train.
One key element that caused the disaster was that nobody woke the train engineer when the fire occurred or had someone qualified from the railroad to secure the train after the loco was turned off.
I was actually surprised that there was no requirement by Transport Canada to place a brake block on the rails - that would have been a two minute exercise and woyuld have prevented this disaster. I don't think one should ever depend on an idling loco to keep a train like that parked over night.
Residents in Lac-Mégantic say they support the decision of the jury to acquit three former Montreal, Maine and Atlantic (MMA) railway employees charged with criminal negligence causing death in the 2013 rail disaster.
Many in the town say they believe it's not the three accused who deserved to be on trial for their part in the tragedy that killed 47 people, instead pointing the blame at those much higher up the corporate ladder.
A Quebec man whose kid sister was one of 47 people killed in the Lac-Megantic tragedy says the three men acquitted Friday should have never been put on trial.
“I think, very sincerely, that since the day of the accident, these people have been living in purgatory and it must have been extremely difficult,” Bernard Boulet told The Canadian Press. “I’m happy these three people are free.”
A jury found Tom Harding, Richard Labrie and Jean Demaitre not guilty of criminal negligence causing the death of 47 people in connection with the July 2013 train derailment and subsequent explosion.
Boulet says he agrees with the verdicts.
“It was an unfortunate accident,” said Boulet, himself a former railway traffic controller. “It was caused by nonchalance and an accumulation of events — by the nonchalance of the (rail company) owner, Edward Burkhardt.”
Before and during the trial, defence lawyers and Lac-Megantic residents often brought up Burkhardt’s name.
They insinuated it was he who was primarily responsible for the tragedy in his role as chairman of the now-defunct, Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway, which owned the train and the tracks on which it derailed.
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