"Brakes blamed in Quebec rail crash; Investigators say train not properly secured" Associated Press, July 20, 2013
LAC-MEGANTIC, Quebec — Insufficient brake force was applied before an oil train came barreling out of nowhere in the middle of the night and slammed into a small town in Quebec, killing 47 people, officials said Friday.
Donald Ross, chief investigator for the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, said the insufficient brake force could have been due to mechanical problems with the handbrakes, or a problem with the way someone applied them.
‘‘The train got out of control because it wasn’t fully immobilized,’’ said Transportation Safety Board manager Ed Belkaloul.
An unattended Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway train was parked overnight on a rail line before it came loose, hurtling down a seven-mile incline.
The train derailed and ignited in Lac-Megantic, near the Maine border. All but one of its 73 cars was carrying crude oil and at least five exploded, setting off massive explosions that devastated the small lakeside town of 6,000 people.
A spokesman for the agency said it has had a closer look at 25 tanker cars since gaining access to the blast site two days ago and has taken pictures and samples.
The investigators said they are also analyzing the contents of the tanker cars that did not explode in the crash, looking for clues on why the crude oil in the other cars did so violently.
The agency says the investigation has already resulted in two safety advisories urging a revision of the Canadian Rail Operating rule governing the securing of parked trains.
It says the rule is not specific enough because it does not spell out how many handbrakes to apply for various weights and types of cargo. It also said the standard, so-called ‘‘push-pull test’’ does not always accurately show whether the brakes have been adequately applied.
The board has also advised Transport Canada that dangerous goods should not be left unattended on a main track and that rail equipment needs to be properly secured.
The transportation watchdog’s advisory comes a week after Edward Burkhardt, president and CEO of the railway’s US-based parent company, Rail World Inc., blamed the train’s engineer for the accident. Burkhardt questioned whether he had properly set enough handbrakes and said he had been suspended without pay.
The board said that while the investigation is expected to take quite some time, it will not wait to send safety warnings.
--more--"
One thing a pile of s*** does is help obfuscate things.
Let's go car by car and see what we got:
"Derailment kills 1, sparks explosions
LAC-MEGANTIC — Fires continued burning late Saturday nearly 24 hours after a train carrying crude oil derailed in eastern Quebec, sparking explosions and a blaze that destroyed the center of a town and killed one person. Police said they expected the death toll to increase. Between 1,500 and 2,000 people were forced from their homes in the town about 10 miles from the Maine border. The cause of the accident was believed to be a runaway train, the railway’s operator said. The president and CEO of Rail World Inc., the parent company of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, said the train had been parked uphill of Lac-Megantic (AP)."
"Derailment devastates Quebec town near Maine; 5 dead, dozens missing" Associated Press, July 08, 2013
LAC-MEGANTIC, Quebec — As firefighters doused still-burning railway cars filled with oil, more bodies were recovered Sunday in this devastated town about 10 miles from the Maine border, raising the death toll to five after a runaway train derailed, igniting explosions and fires that destroyed the downtown district....
Of course, it could never happen to your town.
All but one of the 73 cars were filled with oil, which was being transported from North Dakota’s Bakken oil region to a refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick.
Expect a lot more of this with fracking becoming a method of big energy production, Keystone pipeline or not. WTF is North Dakota oil doing going through Canada to to be refined in New Brunswick anyway?
The eruptions early Saturday morning sent residents of Lac-Megantic scrambling through the streets under the intense heat of towering fireballs and a red glow that illuminated the night sky.
Local Fire Chief Denis Lauzon likened the charred scene to ‘‘a war zone.’’
--more--"
"Death toll rises to 13 in Canada train derailment; Investigators able to get closer to wreckage" by Benjamin Shingler | Associated Press, July 09, 2013
LAC-MEGANTIC, Quebec — The death toll in the horrific oil train derailment in Quebec reached 13 on Monday, while about 40 people remained missing, officials said after investigators finally got near where the runaway train exploded....
All but one of the train’s 73 tanker cars were carrying oil when they came loose early Saturday, sped downhill nearly 7 miles into the town of Lac-Megantic, near the Maine border, and derailed. At least five of the cars exploded.
The blasts destroyed about 30 buildings, including a public library and a bar that was filled with revelers....
The area remained part of a criminal investigation and that all options were being explored by investigators, including the possibility that someone intentionally tampered with the train, said Quebec provincial police Sergeant Benoit Richard.
What?
Queen Elizabeth II earlier expressed deep sadness over the disaster Monday, saying in a message through the federal government that the loss of life ‘‘has shocked us all.’’ Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper toured the town Sunday and compared it to a war zone.
The train’s owners said they believed brake failure was to blame....
Officials were also looking at a fire on the locomotive of the same train a few hours before the derailment.
Meanwhile, crews were working to contain 27,000 gallons of light crude that spilled from the tankers and seeped into nearby waterways. There were fears it could flow into the St. Lawrence River all the way to Quebec City....
Don't worry; as we saw with the Exxon spill in Arkansas and all the other spills across the world, the corporate AmeriKan pre$$ will minimize it.
The heart of the town of about 6,000 was leveled — including a popular bar where several dozen revelers were believed to have been at the time of the explosions. About a third of the community was forced out of their homes.
Sophie L’Heureux, a manager at the bar, was woken up at home by the explosion. She said she believed there were about 50 people in the bar, including many close friends.
‘‘I’m in survival mode right now. My priority is to try to sleep if I can, eat if I can,’’ she said. ‘‘For the rest, it’s one minute, one day at a time.’’
Raymond Lafontaine, who believed he lost three members of his family, including his son, said he was angry with what appeared to be lack of safety regulations.
‘‘We always wait until there’s a big accident to change things,’’ he said. ‘‘Well, today we’ve had a big accident, it’s one of the biggest ever in Canada.’’
Fire chief Denis Lauzon said firefighters in a nearby community were called to the locomotive blaze a few hours before the derailment. Lauzon said he could not provide additional details about that fire since it was in another jurisdiction....
There was no reason to suspect any criminal or terror-related activity, said Joe McGonigle, Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway’s vice president of marketing.
Related: Canadian "CIA-Duh" Overflows
No reason to even suspect, huh?
Lafontaine said the government needs to take a hard look at the risks of transporting oil by train — especially through communities....
Agreed, and you can imagine how I feel about there being nuclear waste being transported by rail.
The growing number of trains transporting crude oil in Canada and the United States had raised concerns of a major disaster, and this derailment was sure to bolster arguments that a proposed oil pipeline would be safer.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm!!
The train’s oil was being transported from North Dakota’s Bakken region to a refinery in New Brunswick on Canada’s East Coast.
--more--"
I'll bet that's a Keystone in their argument for a pipeline.
Related:
"A fire on the train a few hours before the disaster set off a deadly chain of events that has raised questions about the safety of transporting oil in North America by rail instead of pipeline. The derailment also raised questions about the safety of Canada’s growing practice of transporting oil by train, and is sure to support the case for a proposed oil pipeline running from Canada across the U.S. — a project that Canadian officials badly want. Efforts continued Tuesday to stop waves of crude oil spilled in the disaster from reaching the St. Lawrence River, the backbone of the province’s water supply."
"Quebec tragedy unlikely to slow oil shipments via rail; With shipments
of crude rising, some say an accident as happened in Quebec was
inevitable, but others say trains are the only — and safest — way to
move the fuel" by Jay Fitzgerald | Globe Correspondent, July 10, 2013
The weekend’s tragedy in Quebec, where at least 15 people were killed after an oil tanker train derailed and exploded in a small town near the Maine border, probably will not slow the tremendous growth in rail shipments of oil across New England and North America, local and national industry officials say.
Two Massachusetts companies, Global Partners LLC of Waltham and Pan Am Railways of Billerica, are part of this rail boom and should continue to benefit from it, analysts said. With production surging in North Dakota and western Canada, and no major pipelines connecting the oil fields to coastal refineries, there are few alternatives to rail to help meet the demand for gasoline, diesel, and other petroleum products.
“It’s something that’s really increased in the past year and a half,” Cynthia Scarano, executive vice president of Pan Am Railways, said of train shipments of crude oil from western North America through New England in particular.
“The trends are definitely pointing in the direction of increased shipments.”
You will just have to "live" with it -- or not.
With about 2,000 miles of rail lines in New England, Pan Am Railway regularly ships an undisclosed amount of crude oil from the Bakken shale fields in North Dakota through Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, and Maine for eventual delivery to an Irving Oil refinery in St. John, New Brunswick.
Global Partners, meanwhile, has snapped up rail centers in the Northeast, including a facility in Albany, N.Y., and across the country in recent years to transport oil products. In the first quarter of this year, its sales soared by 40 percent to $5.6 billion, driven largely by Global Partners’ quickly growing “crude-by-rail” business, the company recently reported.
Global Partners officials did not respond Tuesday to several requests for interviews.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Global Partners P.R. Firm
Doing damage control today.
The tragedy in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, has focused attention on the rapidly increasing use of rail to transport oil....
It's not a crime?
Meanwhile, the number of serious train accidents in the United States has declined significantly, from 867 in 2008 to 552 last year. Holly Arthur, a spokeswoman for the American Association of Railroads, said 2012 was the safest year ever for the railway industry.
Hard to believe considering the age and disrepair of rail around the country, but okay.
But environmentalists, who have been mobilizing against the controversial drilling method known as “fracking” used in North Dakota and elsewhere, said the surge in oil moving by rail through communities made Lac-Megantic a tragedy waiting to happen.
Earlier this week, environmentalists protested at the headquarters of the owner of the derailed train, the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway in Hermon, Maine, calling attention to rail safety and the role of fossil fuels in climate change. Some of those protesters included people who were arrested last month after they tried to block a Pan Am Railway line in Maine that they believed would be used to transport crude oil through Maine to New Brunswick. The protesters were arrested for trespassing.
John Calandrelli, a program director at the Sierra Club of Connecticut, expects protests to escalate across New England over the issue of crude oil deliveries through the region.
“We’re trying to change a system that doesn’t want to change,” said Calandrelli of the oil and transport sectors.
“This is both a safety issue and an environmental issue.”
In Massachusetts, environmentalists beat back a proposal by a Global Partners subsidiary to transport ethanol through densely populated communities north of Boston to a facility in Revere. Global Partners withdrew the request for a rail license after the state Legislature approved an amendment that prohibited the storage of large quantities of ethanol near crowded neighborhoods.
“I heard about the devastating news in Quebec and thought, ‘That could have been us,’ ’’ said Roseann Bongiovanni, an environmental activist at Chelsea Collaborative, which helped fight the Global Partners rail plan.
B&M runs right through town I live in, too.
“The accident in Quebec shows that we need a lot more state regulation of these lines.”
But the federal government, not the states, regulates interstate rail. Industry officials say that is another reason why they expect crude oil deliveries to continue to grow.
“The bottom line is that there’s a demand for this oil,” said Richard C. Beall, a former railroad engineer and now a consultant for Railroad Litigation Experts, a railroad operations and safety consulting firm.
“We have a demand for more oil, and with that demand will be a demand for more trains. It’s not going away.”
--more--"
LAC-MEGANTIC, Quebec — Five days later, the downtown here is still a no man’s land, a charred, contaminated place where police and firefighters struggle to empty flooded basements and sift through piles of ash for body parts of 50 missing friends and family....
Questions of liability persist, and the board chairman of the corporation that owns the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, whose train derailed, was jeered Wednesday at a public appearance in Lac-Megantic.
Edward Burkhardt, board chairman of the railroad’s parent company, said the train’s engineer appears to have failed to set the hand brakes properly. “I think he did something wrong,” said Burkhardt, president of the Rail World Inc. board.
So they are going to scapegoat the engineer, huh?
The engineer, the only crew member on a train of five locomotives and 73 cars, left the train parked about seven miles outside Lac-Megantic while he spent the night in a hotel. That procedure is routine, railway officials said, while employees take required rest and wait for replacements.
Only one man on the train? Aside from anything unexpected, what if the guy had an accident or heart attack and died? No one else on the train? I think the cost-cutting in name of profit has gone a bit far. As for this "he failed to set the brake" cock-and-bull cover-up, c'mon!
But later, sometime after a small fire was extinguished on one of the locomotives by local firefighters, the train began rolling downhill.
Oh, so AFTER AUTHORITIES SHOWED up for a FIRE(????), that is when the train got loose?
This SO STINKS of SABOTAGE it isn't even funny. You WANT a PIPELINE now?
By the time the train approached the village, unattended, the oil-filled tankers were traveling at 50 miles per hour, police said.
The timing of the derailment, in the dead of night, could not have been worse for dozens of patrons crowded into Le Musi-Cafe, the most popular nightclub in town and where most of the missing are believed to have been.
The region’s two favorite bands had been playing, and Jean-Pierre Roy, 52, deflected a suggestion to leave, ordering another beer with the woman he’d taken on a first date.
Guy Ouellet’s girlfriend, Diane Bizier, likewise decided to stay late. Marie-France Boulet was snug in her apartment across the street, just behind her negligee shop.
The tanker cars derailed outside, between the nightclub and the negligee shop, and neither Roy, nor Bizier, nor Boulet — nor any of their remains — has been found as gasoline, oil-fouled water, and strength-sapping heat complicate the investigation and recovery.
Downtown basements remain filled with up to seven feet of water, much of it contaminated with oil or sewage, police said. These toxic spaces will need to be drained in a slow, painstaking process that will prolong the search for remains. Some police and firefighters have become ill during the work.
Not a good sign.
Related: Massive tar mat dug up off Louisiana coast, 3 years after spill
Welcome to Louisiana!
Natural gas leak in Gulf of Mexico causes 'rainbow sheen' in water
Hmm. Nothing about that in my Globe.
“It’s something you don’t expect to see, and when you do, you hope it will be the last one,” said Lieutenant Michel Brunet of the provincial police.
I wouldn't count on it will $hale the new black gold.
The irony of the tragedy, Guy Boulet said, is that Lac-Megantic owes its development to the railroad, which has six crossings in town.
“The city was built around the railroad, more than 100 years ago,” Boulet said. “When you hear the whistle, you know that someone is working, and that it’s good for the economy.”
Recently, he said, he noticed a different cargo on the trains.
“When I saw the tankers, I was worried,” Boulet said. “I said, my God, it’s really dangerous.”
Assigning blame will take time, as police gather evidence to present to prosecutors for possible criminal charges.
In the meantime, as the village of Lac-Megantic adjusts to catastrophe in its midst, other concerns take soul-searing precedence.
“I am a little bit angry about this, yes,” said Ouelett, whose girlfriend most likely perished at Le Musi-café. “But mostly, now, it is about the grieving.”
Yeah, don't get angry. Ju$t accept the way of the world -- and who cares if your town gets blown up one night?
Betcha wanna a pipeline now.
--more--"
"Quebec premier rebukes head of US rail firm; First victim of derailment ID’d; death toll at 24" by Sean Farrell | Associated Press, July 12, 2013
LAC-MEGANTIC, Quebec — The first victim of a runaway oil train’s explosive derailment in a Quebec town was identified Thursday, more than five days since the disaster, as the intensity of the fire has slowed searches for the 50 people presumed dead.
Quebec Premier Pauline Marois toured the traumatized town and sharply criticized the US railway’s chief for not responding in person more quickly to Canada’s worst railway disaster in nearly 150 years....
Edward Burkhardt, president and chief executive of US-based Rail World Inc., which owns the runaway train, was also in town. He arrived Wednesday with a police escort and faced jeers from residents.
Marois had earlier faulted Burkhardt for what she said was a slow response, and called the company’s chief behavior ‘‘deplorable’’ and ‘‘unacceptable.’’ She renewed some of the criticism Thursday.
‘‘I already commented on his behavior and the behavior of his company yesterday. The leader of this company should have been there from the beginning,’’ Marois said at a news conference.
Burkhardt said he had delayed his visit in order to deal with the crisis from his office in Chicago, saying he was better able to communicate from there with insurers and officials in different places. He was planning to meet with residents and the mayor on Thursday.
‘‘I understand the extreme anger,’’ he said. ‘‘We owe an abject apology to the people in this town.’’
Burkhardt has blamed the engineer for failing to set the brakes properly before the unmanned train hurtled down a 7-mile incline, derailed, and ignited in the center of Lac-Megantic early Saturday. All but one of its 73 cars was carrying oil, and at least five exploded.
Burkhardt said the train’s engineer had been suspended without pay and was under ‘‘police control.’’
Until Wednesday, the railway company had defended its employees’ actions, but that changed abruptly as Burkhardt singled out the engineer.
‘‘We think he applied some hand brakes, but the question is, did he apply enough of them?’’ he said. ‘‘He said he applied 11 hand brakes. We think that’s not true. Initially we believed him, but now we don’t.’’
Burkhardt did not name the engineer, though the company had previously identified the employee as Tom Harding of Quebec. Harding has not spoken publicly since the crash.
‘‘He’s not in jail, but police have talked about prosecuting him,’’ Burkhardt said. ‘‘I understand exactly why the police are considering criminal charges. . . . If that’s the case, let the chips fall where they may.’’
Translation: they have found their scapegoat for this obvious episode of sabotage.
But why, you say?
Investigators are also looking at a fire on the same train just hours before the disaster. A fire official has said the train’s power was shut down as standard operating procedure, meaning the train’s air brakes would have been disabled. In that case, hand brakes on individual train cars would have been needed.
The crash has raised questions about the rapidly growing use of rail to transport oil in North America, especially in the booming North Dakota oil fields and Alberta oil sands far from the sea.
Yeah, you are going to want those pipelines now.
--more--"
LAC-MEGANTIC, Quebec — For the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, that practice was business as usual — but business as usual turned catastrophic when the unattended train rumbled downhill into the heart of Lac-Megantic, jumped the tracks, and unleashed billowing fireballs that left 24 confirmed dead and 26 missing.
Now, data provided by the Federal Railroad Administration in Washington show that the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic, a 10-year-old railroad with 510 miles of track in Maine, Vermont, and Quebec, has a higher rate of accidents and incidents, such as leaks, than the average for small US railroads....
The previous accidents did not result in fatalities for the Maine-based railroad. President Robert Grindrod dismissed many of the accidents as insignificant fender-benders in rail yards.
“In 10 years, this is the only significant derailment we’ve had,” Grindrod said.
Grindrod told the Globe that having only a single crew member was not an issue in the tragedy. However, the single engineer aboard the train apparently did not set the brakes properly, according to Edward Burkhardt, chairman of the railway’s parent company.
“Single staffing of freight trains is a controversial practice,” said Seth Kaplan, vice president of the Conservation Law Foundation in Boston, “and this incident illustrates why, for sound safety reasons, many railways avoid doing it.”
In the United States, single staffing is legal but rare, according to Kevin Thompson, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration....
Although railroad executives and trade groups say the industry has a stellar safety record, most US communities are in the dark about the cargo that trains carry through their neighborhoods.
Literally because that's when they roll through around here.
Sara Lavoie, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, said the federal government has sole oversight of the railroads, and that private freight operators such as the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic are responsible for their own maintenance and administration.
“As a transportation agency, there is nothing we can do to approve or deny the transport of cargo along our lines,” Lavoie said.“If there’s a derailment, we just take care of the issue presented to us. All we can do is respond.”
**************************
In Bangor, a city used by the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic, Assistant Fire Chief Anthony Riitano said he also lacks advance information about the cargo.
“I don’t want a dozen carloads of oil coming through town, but there’s not much we can do. Trains will come through with what they’re carrying whether we like it or not,” Riitano said.
Railroads and the government deliberately cloak the identity of hazardous rail cargo.
“As you can imagine, this information is considered by the Transportation Security Administration to be security-sensitive information and is carefully handled,” said Julia Wise, spokeswoman for the Association of American Railroads, an industry trade group.
Local emergency officials will be provided with cargo information only if an official written response is submitted, Wise said.
This spring, Global Petroleum proposed plans to transport ethanol via MBTA commuter-rail tracks in densely populated areas north and west of Boston — including Cambridge, Somerville, Chelsea, and Everett — to reach a company terminal at Revere.
At the request of Somerville officials, the state Department of Transportation conducted a risk assessment and recommended the trains travel at the slowest possible speeds, follow rigorous schedules to avoid conflicts with other trains, and ensure that fire suppression systems and track equipment be kept in good working conditions.
The company withdrew its plans July 2, Lavoie said, after fierce backlash from Chelsea residents who were concerned about the transport of flammable liquids through the city.
Such concerns are well-founded, according to critics, who argue the railroad industry is using risky, aging equipment at the same time that its oil business is surging in North America, a haul fed by an oil boom in the upper Midwest, including the Bakken fields in North Dakota where the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic cargo that later exploded originated.
It's a frack job, but don't worry about your water supply.
Much of that oil is hauled by tanker cars, called DOT-111s, that US transportation officials have warned are prone to rupture in a derailment. The oil that fueled the Lac-Megantic explosions was carried in such tankers, which Stewart said are thin-shelled and lack shields for valves and other vulnerable pieces of equipment....
But fill 'em up and board!!
Olivia Chow, an opposition member of Parliament from Toronto who specializes in transportation, and her party, the New Democrats, are calling for an end to the practice of using only one engineer aboard a train when dangerous goods are being transported.
The crew member responsible for the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic train that devastated Lac-Megantic was miles away, resting and waiting for a replacement, when his hazardous cargo hurtled toward town....
Nothing about the fire earlier that called authorities to the train, any mention of the engineer being held in police custody, nor the first-responders becoming ill as they try to "reconstruct how the train became a runaway." Interesting.
--more--"
Related: Shale is Fool's Gold
Maybe the train cars won't be coming through your town much longer after all.
Time to watch Gasland Part II.
NEXT DAY UPDATE: Quebec explosion shows need for safer hazmat shipping plan
That's the corporate pre$$ re$pon$e, and it is as I predicted in previous posts.
NEXT DAY UPDATE: Quebec explosion shows need for safer hazmat shipping plan
That's the corporate pre$$ re$pon$e, and it is as I predicted in previous posts.
