gokeefe wrote:I would disagree that the situation appears to indicate a mistake or omission by the engineer. There are too many other variables at this time and too many other people who touched that train after his shift to reliably conclude that.
I believe it still comes down to the engineer. Even if the fire department somehow released the engines hand break after shutting down the engine, that would still leave the car brakes to hold the train IF the engineer followed procedure. That's what the brake test was all about. Once the handbrakes on the cars were set the engineer released the engines hand brake and under limited power tested the train to see if it would move but, we don't know if he actually did the full test or not. His answer to the taxi driver about the smoking engine sounded more like a man fed up with management and divested himself of any blame if something did happen using the words he did. I can't see the MOW guys actually touching the train really. And the FD did report to MMA what they had done and no red flags came up from them.
In regards to the CEO I believe the notion of incompetence is implied. I agree he did not explicitly say he was incompetent nor has TSB Canada said such. That is very much my own conjecture based on a series of circumstances which to me indicate at a minimum a lack of good supervision or oversight of company operations by the Board Chair (Burkhardt).
I still can't equate that to the 2+- hrs at Nantes, especially, the successful 2 or 3 tie downs a week over the past +-year.
Burkhardt's statement didn't make any mention of bankruptcy either and was clearly a discussion of potential future operations. In making such a statement, as others have pointed out, there are possible implied violations of common carrier obligations. Quite simply describing a freight class as "isn't worth the trouble" strongly refutes the notion that this individual respects the obligation of his railroad to accept all freight for movement over his lines. In this case Burkhart is saying he either can't handle, or doesn't know how to handle this kind of cargo in a manner that is profitable or operationally feasible for his company. I further believe he was saying this without consideration to his own situation but making a general statement of conditions he expected post-cleanup.
In this case and in this context (as I took it) that to me seems to be a general declaration of a lack of capacity to take certain actions. Given that this is Burkhardt's assessment personally I would describe this is an implication of incompetence or a general inability to perform certain functions or the lack of certain faculties.
Quite true he didn't mention bankruptcy but, my question "For the situation MMA finds itself in, having another tank train derailment with loss of product, how would a company in bankruptcy protection pay for clean-up and remediation of the environment?" still stands and again it still stands for your interpretation of his statements like "isn't worth the trouble". To me, that statement was made by a man, possibly suffering form PST, who has the deaths of 49 people on his mind plus, keeping his railroad going for the people that work there and the small communities that depend on the MMA for a lot of their livelihood plus, who has and is being beat up by everyone he sees a way to avoid another beating, on the off chance there is another crude train incident, and that's not to haul crude. I guess we'll see if after some sober second thought he will change his mind or, the trustees will change it for him, but then, I don't know how much control he will have over deciding what the railroad will/won't haul, while under protection.
Hauling Crude oil is a proven money maker for them and L-M is basically an anomaly, in that, the incident didn't happen while the train was traversing the rails at the time or words to that effect.
