Quebec town rocked by explosions, fire after derailment

[mykalberta]

Anyone heard of a website set up for donations that will go directly to the town and victims?

[OffsideSpecialist]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

Anyone heard of a website set up for donations that will go directly to the town and victims?

So far I have found that you can donate through Red Cross, or it appears Cycling Canada has also set up a relief fund

[OffsideSpecialist]

Railway Chairman says that railway was tampered with:

LAC-MÉGANTIC - The chairman of the company whose train exploded in downtown Lac-Mégantic says he is certain it was tampered with.

“We have evidence of this,” said Ed Burkhardt, of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway. “But this is an item that needs further investigation. We need to talk to some people we believe to have knowledge of this.”

On Sunday, however, the company isssued a statement saying their officials had been so far unable to conduct their own investigation.

A probe by the Transportation Safety Board is currently underway to determine what caused a parked, unattended locomotive to roll towards the town of 6,000 and derail in the city centre. TSB investigators have inspected several of the locomotives involved, as well as obtained two black boxes that contain data about the train’s brakes, throttle position and speed at the time of the incident.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/M%...439/story.html

[Cowperson]

That was one amazing press conference by the railroad chairman in the burnt town just now.

Cowperson

[BlackArcher101]

Originally Posted by Cowperson

That was one amazing press conference by the railroad chairman in the burnt town just now.

Cowperson

Go on.....

[Cowperson]

Originally Posted by BlackArcher101

Go on.....

No handlers, no PR flaks, no lawyers and no bodyguards by the look of it . . . . . he just walks out of the hotel and starts talking to reporters.

And as he's talking he's probably saying stuff his lawyer watching on television is shrieking about and rending his hair over . . . . . like we've suspended our train engineer without pay, we think he was probably lying to us when he said he set 11 hand brakes (it probably wasn't that many), and he probably won't be coming back to work for us.

Meanwhile the Pres is also advancing the theory that local firefighters might have tampered with the engine, resulting in the train rolling away five minutes after they left the earlier fire. His company inspectors had only five minutes with the train and that was their conclusion. Not sure if that conflicts with the paragraph above though . . . .

Then he's agreeing that while the industry standard is to have only one engineer on duty, saying they find it focusses attention better than having two, the company will never do that again, that they'll have two going forward.

In the background, there's some angry yahoo across the street shrieking obscenities while he's doing this impromptu gathering. Some of the reporters are going ape on looking for revenge on behalf of the townfolk . . . . which really isn't their job frankly.

The President was actually very, very candid, far more so than you'd expect. Alarmingly honest and genuine.

Finally, the RCMP come in and forcibly bust the whole thing up, hustling the Pres away . . . . . . no doubt to interview him about his answers in the interview!!!

Kind of an astonishing session if you can find the full version. I enjoyed it!!!

Cowperson

[Acey]

One should never take comments on CNN, ESPN, or YouTube seriously, but this one might have some merit...

I'm a Locomotive Engineer and this story makes no sense. If a crew leaves a train unattended, we "tie it down" meaning we apply the loco handbrakes as well as enough handbrakes on the cars to secure the train. If someone came along and shut the loco down it would not have any effect on the brakes as the handbrake would be holding it once the air brakes leaked off. Newer locos have a spring that actuates the hand brake as the air leaks off. Either the crew did not tie the train down properly or someone came along and deliberately released the brakes. Killing a loco does not release the brakes.

[Nyah]

"It's hard to explain why someone didn't do something. We think he applied some hand brakes but the question is: did he apply enough of them?"
"He said he applied 11 hand brakes. We think that's not true. Initially we believed him but now we don't."

Mr Burkhardt suggested on Tuesday evening that firefighters shared some blame.
"We don't have total responsibility, but we have partial responsibility," he told reporters in Montreal.

Sounds like he's doing everything he can to throw different parties under the bus and save face. Just curious: what blame would the fire dept. have in this? Did I miss part of the story, was there an initial fire that they didnt put out right away?

Edit: nm. Just re-read that they thought the fire was out & left.

[CaptainCrunch]

Don't locomotives have their own version of a black box?

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Don't locomotives have their own version of a black box?

No, but they should have, and it's been recommended numerous times that they should.

The American's are annoyed by it too.

This article from march 2012:

It seems the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) aren't the only ones nagging the federal government to get with the rail safety program. The NDP have a few things to say as well. They want concrete measures to be implemented to improve rail safety in Canada and say the Harper government's unwillingness to comply with TSB recommendations continues to put Canadian travellers and railway employees at risk.

Olivia Chow (MP Trinity-Spadina) is the Transport Critic for the Official Opposition. "(The) statement from the TSB shows that the Conservatives are on the wrong track," says Chow. "The independent agency's calls for automatic safety measures have been ignored since 2001. First by the Liberals and now the Conservatives."

This week the TSB released a report on a derailment in Quebec that looks frighteningly familiar. In February 2010, VIA train No. 15 entered a siding located in a subdivision of Saint-Charles-de-Bellechasse, Quebec, at approximately 64 mph. It derailed. Two locomotives and a half dozen passenger cars went flying off the tracks, resulting in the injury of two Via employees and five passengers. About 3,000 litres of diesel fuel leaked and a house and six cars were destroyed.

Fortunately, unlike the derailment outside Burlington just over a week ago, no one was killed.

The fatal Burlington crash has renewed calls for locomotive cab voice recorders and the implementation of something called Positive Train Control. PTC systems force trains to slow automatically when required, resulting in fewer derailments. Positive Train Control was made mandatory by the U.S. Congress in 2008, and many rail companies throughout the world have similar systems in place.

The TSB has been calling for voice recorders in cabs since 2003. The 2010 Quebec crash was determined to have resulted from snow blocking the signals and poor visibility due to weather conditions. In the case of the recent Burlington derailment, none of the crew in the cab survived, so we'll never know exactly what those men saw -- or didn't see -- and we'll never know what was communicated among them in the minutes and seconds leading up to the crash. A cab voice recorder would have, at least, provided the TSB with another tool for investigation, a tool that would help them prevent future crashes. Positive Train Control, says Chow, would have prevented the accident altogether.

Unfortunately, the Harper majority government is planning to cut $200 million from Via's budget, a move which many feel will hamper Via's ability to improve its safety systems. Despite rail being a highly profitable business, the companies who own the track -- CN and CPR -- have no incentive to part with the money to install a PTC system because there is no government legislation forcing them to do so.

...

Bill Brehl, President of TCRC-MWED -- the union that represents rail maintenance workers -- agrees. "Are the Conservatives doing enough? Not nearly enough. Did the Liberals do enough? They did even less than the Conservatives. The Liberals deregulated safety. They took all the track inspectors and put them in offices, poring over audits being supplied by the railways, and that doesn't work. You don't put the fox in charge of the henhouse."

The Rail Safety Act -- last reviewed in 2007 -- needs revision, according to Brehl. It also needs proper oversight. Minister of Transport Denis Lebel has "tasked the Advisory Council on Rail Safety, on an urgent basis, to look again into the matter of installing voice recorders in locomotive cabs." Too late for the three Via engineers, but hopefully enough change will be legislated and new technologies adopted to protect the lives of all rail workers, passengers and the general public.

"We lost three of our brothers," says Bill Brehl. "If you're a railroader it doesn't matter if your hands are on the throttle or on a spike maul, when we lose people it hurts. We're a tightly knit family."

Emphasis mine
http://rabble.ca/news/2012/03/canadi...l-safety-peril

[Redliner]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

No, but they should have, and it's been recommended numerous times that they should.

The American's are annoyed by it too.

This article from march 2012:


...


Emphasis mine
http://rabble.ca/news/2012/03/canadi...l-safety-peril

While it is true that locomotives do not have a true "black box" that works exactly the same way the ones on airplanes do, they do have a device called an Event Recorder that performs many of the same functions. Event recorders monitor and record throttle position, speed, locomotive bell and whistle use, and brake pipe pressure (which is an indication of whether or not the air brakes are applied and how strongly they are applied) Newer locomotives also have cameras on them that face out the front windows and record everything that happens on the tracks in front of the train, as well as microphones that capture an external audio recording to ensure that the locomotive bell and whistle are operating properly. The units used by the MMA are older models though, so although they would be legally required to have event recorders, I highly doubt they had cameras or mics.

Unfortunately, an event recorder will not be able to tell how many (if any) handbrakes were applied on the train. Handbrakes are mechanically (hand) operated brake mechanisms that are independently applied on each piece of equipment, and there is no way to monitor them electronically. I suspect that the management of MMA have good reason to believe that their employee did not properly apply the handbrakes, or I doubt they would be saying such things in the national media - to do so without basis would be openly courting all kinds of lawsuits from the employee, especially given the immense loss of life and property this incident has brought about.

I found the article about the union perspective to be interesting.

First and foremost, Bill Brehl is an unmitigated idiot. In 2007 he led his membership into a 5 week-long strike at CP, convincing many of them that he was going to "take the company to the mat" and using his Hells Angels connections to intimidate union members who weren't in agreement into voting for a strike. Many union members who were vocal about their opposition to striking weren't even sent ballots. In reality Mr. Brehl was simply trying to make a name for himself and his union members ended up losing out on 5 weeks' pay and ultimately settling for the exact same deal CP had proposed to them on day one. I would take anything that came out of Mr. Brehl's mouth with an entire shaker full of salt.

Second, it always makes me laugh (and not in a good way) to hear union leaders crucifying railway management over their safety records. Sure it sounds great in the media, but when railways try to implement new safety policies like having their employees wear reflective vests and eye protection, the union fights them tooth and nail. When railways attempt to discipline or dismiss their employees for breaking safety rules, (for instance, not applying a sufficient number of handbrakes to unattended equipment) again the union rushes to the employee's defense and grieves the discipline, sometimes escalating it to a federally-appointed arbitrator. This process makes it extremely difficult for railways to weed out their workforces and get rid of unsafe employees, and ultimately contributes to more incidents occurring down the line. It's comical to hear these guys go on about things like Positive Train Control or in-cab voice recorders. They publicly castigate the railways for not having them, then turn around and fight the railways to prevent them from putting them in because they don't want management to be able to use the technology to "spy on" their members.

Ironically, despite the rash of incidents in the past few months, railways are safer now than they have ever been. For every handful of cars that derail (albeit sometimes with disastrous results) there are hundreds of thousands that are safely moved each month without any issues whatsoever. That said, the Lac-Megantic accident just illustrates that there is always room for improvement. Unfortunately, no matter how good your equipment and your technology are, there is simply no cure for human error.

[Peanut]

Originally Posted by Cowperson

Kind of an astonishing session if you can find the full version. I enjoyed it!!!

Cowperson

How the rail company has been handling/responding to this incident thus far is like a PR lesson in what not to do.

[Ducay]

Sounds like officials are nearing the point where they'll bump the toll up to 50. Horrific accident, lazy mistake by the engineer absolutely ruins tons of families and an entire town.

[GrrlGoalie33]

Originally Posted by Peanut

How the rail company has been handling/responding to this incident thus far is like a PR lesson in what not to do.

He is absolutely ridiculous, and I want to punch him in the face. I can't imagine how those people devastated by the tragedy feel about him.

[Northendzone]

seems like the CEO is giving a textbook course on how not to handle adversity.

[Cowperson]

Originally Posted by Northendzone

seems like the CEO is giving a textbook course on how not to handle adversity.

The Globe & Mail has a profile of him today. Interesting reading. Not his first major derailment either.

He doesn't seem to have any spin doctors working for him.

To be fair, however, there isn't anything he's going to say that is going to placate residents.

He has said he's personally sorry, he has said he's personally horrified by the accident, he has said he doesn't blame residents for being angry with the company, he has said its likely his company employee played a role in the accident, even though its correct to say he can't be fully sure of that quite yet . . . . . . and he said that while standing in the destroyed town.

Unfortunately, he did all of that about five days later than he might have done, which is where expert PR people might have been helpful.

Telling people you were covering off the insurance conversations from your Chicago office before taking care of the human element in a destroyed town hasn't flown too high so far.

He's alarmingly unguarded in his comments. The company lawyers must be going berserk in the background.

In the end, the company might have been following common industry practice and regulatory requirements, there might have been trains parking up the hill with no problems for decades before this accident, their internal training and policies might have been spot on relative to the norm and regulatory requirements . . . . . . and the accident still might have been the the simple result of an employee getting lazy.

Doesn't matter. The buck stops on his desk.

Cowperson

[FireFly]

Originally Posted by Cowperson

The Globe & Mail has a profile of him today. Interesting reading. Not his first major derailment either.

He doesn't seem to have any spin doctors working for him.

To be fair, however, there isn't anything he's going to say that is going to placate residents.

He has said he's personally sorry, he has said he's personally horrified by the accident, he has said he doesn't blame residents for being angry with the company, he has said its likely his company employee played a role in the accident, even though its correct to say he can't be fully sure of that quite yet . . . . . . and he said that while standing in the destroyed town.

Unfortunately, he did all of that about five days later than he might have done, which is where expert PR people might have been helpful.

Telling people you were covering off the insurance conversations from your Chicago office before taking care of the human element in a destroyed town hasn't flown too high so far.

He's alarmingly unguarded in his comments. The company lawyers must be going berserk in the background.

In the end, the company might have been following common industry practice and regulatory requirements, there might have been trains parking up the hill with no problems for decades before this accident, their internal training and policies might have been spot on relative to the norm and regulatory requirements . . . . . . and the accident still might have been the the simple result of an employee getting lazy.

Doesn't matter. The buck stops on his desk.

Cowperson

He said he feels horrible, but..... what can you do now? I'm pretty sure there's lots to do so that's actually a really awful thing to say. In addition, it looked like he was fighting a smile the whole time.

He really does not know how to handle tragedy.

[FlamesAddiction]

The investigation is continuing, but the TSB is saying as of now, it looks like not enough brakes were applied to properly hold the weight of the train.

It doesn't say whether it was human error or a deficiency of the procedures... either way, I can't imagine the last employee whose job it was to apply the brakes will be getting much sleep in the future.