Oil train disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Québec 07-06-2013

BandA wrote:I still don't understand why MMA's US assets are necessarily at stake. MMA in Canada is a "seperate corporation". Except the engine that caught fire is probably owned by the US company.

Both MMA companies lease their engines so, they don't figure in to any settlement. And I too wonder why MMAA assets would be at stake for the reason you stated.

The US part of MM+A is about useless without the canadian part of MM+A,it's a matter of time till the FRA pulls
their operating authorty on the US side after all the facts are known from the wreck and the TSB report.

Gilbert B Norman wrote: I'd like to say that gross negligence by any party outside of Montreal Maine and Atlantic Canada is not evident, but I can think of one who could be so held accountable. That party is the insurance broker and/or underwriter who determined that their insured, MM&AC, was adequately insured to carry HAZMAT in the volume being handled.

It is interesting to watch this mad effort to "point fingers" sans any "real information" on exactly what happened............and "why".

But it is pretty obvious that the "ambulance chasing lawyers" are interested in finding who has the "deepest pockets" as well as all who may have relatively "deep pockets", and to also note the governments attempt to accept NONE of the responsibility for any lack of "regulatory oversight, which may be a contributing factor also. Read this bit of history, as we have been here before:

3/10/89. An "Air Ontario" Fokker F28 Fellowship, twin turbine aircraft, with 69 passengers and crew onboard, took off from the field at Dryden, Ontarion, Canada, and crashed 15 seconds later, in a ball of fire, killing 21 and badly injuring many others. Short article on crash: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Ontario_Flight_1363" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; The main cause of the crash was attempting to takeoff without deicing the aircraft, with several other contributing factors, many directly related to failure of Transport Canada to adequately regulate the airline and it's operations. This all came out later in the investigation into the disaster.

Further info is from a book on airline disasters by Macarthur Job, who has exhaustively studied this subject for many years. An investigation ensued by the Canadian Aviation Safety Board. ........"19 days after the crash, responsibility for the investigation was taken FROM the hands of the safety board, and the Privy Council of Canada appointed a "special investigation" led by commissioner Peter Moshansky, with an impressive team of legal and technical advisors. This was done specifically because: The tragic nature of this accident, the anomalies coming to light in the airline and even its 'operational surveillance' by Transport Canada!"........

Commissioner Moshansky was given the power to conduct ......"an inquiry that would be as wide ranging as he saw fit"..... surely an honest effort to find the "truth", wherever that might lie!

And that investigation revealed some startling things. ........"Transport Canada did NOT"........ 1) have a comprehensive policy for training air carrier inspectors. 2) adequately monitor Air Ontario, Inc , after its recent merger, and after starting jet operations. 3) Have clear definitions as to what constituted essential airworthiness items (this left crews not knowing for sure whether to dispatch aircraft or not). 4) Did not provide clear guidance regarding the need for deicing (sounds just like their handbrake rules on trains, in effect at Lac Megantic!). 5) Require adequate training for airline dispatchers.

The result of all of this was a totally "honest" investigation of the disaster, with the chips falling where they might. Basically, at Dryden, on 3/10/89, the safety net, that should have been provided, through statutory safety regulations......was lacking!

For those who wish to read some of that report: http://lessonslearned.faa.gov/Fokker/000347.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The citizens of Lac Megantic, and especially the families of the dead, along with all those who work for, and operate railroads, along with all of us with significant interest in rail operations, as well as all citizens of both Canada and the USA, deserve to know what really happened at Lac Megantic. It goes beyond finding someone to "pay for it all" that we are seeing desperately fought out in the media....on almost a daily basis.......it seeks the truth about why this happened so maybe it won't happen again. Engineers are taught that much more is learned from "failure" than is ever learned from success. This was a massive "failure" and thus a remarkable opportunity to learn from it, in ways that make the future better, and safer. To fail to truthfully investigate "everything and anything", including the possibility of inadequate government regulations regarding safe rail operations, at Lac Megantic, will doom us to not learning all that was learned in the Dryden crash investigation that I have mentioned above.

That would be a shame......if it should happen.

SRM

Canadian Press reports that CP has rejected Quebec's demand to cover cleanup costs.

PBM

MM&A railway may continue to operate until Oct 1st providing it can prove it can afford the insurance premiums. CBC News Ottowa reported that the CTA changed its mind after receiving new information that suggests the Company is able to cover its insurance payments in the short term. MM&A has until Aug 23rd to prove it can afford the insurance premiums. If the CTA (Canadain Transportation Agency) is not satisfied by the 23rd the permit will be immediately suspended.

Is Oct 1 when the current policies expire? It's possible that the existing policy has a clause allowing its limits to be increased or restored upon payment of an additional premium.

Fishrrman wrote:
(BTW, first post here. I did 32 years' of engine service with Conrail, Metro-North, and Amtrak -- now retired)

Welcome Fishrrman.
Carroll

So finally, it is the use of the GE units that ended up biting the MM&A in the rear. If an EMD unit was in the lead, I am not sure they are as prone to fires and if the brake lever could have been removed.......

Fishrrman wrote:[[ ait, are we saying this employee left his HANDLES in an unlocked & improperly secured train ...]]

Assuming the engineman left the auto brake valve somewhere between a 20lb reduction and "full service", the auto brake valve handle would still be on the brake valve, in a position which would leave it "sticking out" a bit and pointing towards the back of the engineman's seat. Which is to say, it would then be in a position which made it vulnerable to being "bumped" by personnel moving around in the cab. Whether that occurred or not, we don't yet know.

Just after this all started it was reported that the brakes were set at 20% of full brake power. Now I don't remember if that was from a question about setting brakes or if it was a quote from MMA saying that is what Mr Harding told them. I briefly tried to find it but there is just to many stories out there now to search through.

I believe that the "key" to the Lac Megantic disaster is going to be revealed by studying the event recorders' (should be the same on all engines in the consist) monitoring of automatic brake pipe pressure.
- What pressure was it drawn down to after the train first stopped?
- Did that pressure change afterwards?
- How did it change?

Again, early on, it was reported that the engineer had shutdown the other 4 engines but, it didn't say when it was done - before or after the break test. So, if it was before then they would only have the lead engines black box to depend on for answers or, are all the black boxes somehow linked together electronically ?

I agree entirely with Sandyriverman's post re the Dryden accident and the Moshansky report. The report is an extremely detailed and actually quite readable account of all of the pieces that led to the accident. I really believe if it had been led to the regulatory bodies the report would have just blamed the pilot for not de-icing the plane, mumbled a bit about the lack of a ground power unit at Dryden and left it at that. Except as the report showed, there was a lot of background, contributing factors at play.

I firmly believe there is a parallel with the Lac-Megantic disaster and a similar treatment is needed to the Dryden report. We will no doubt learn of the proximate causes of the accident, but there is a lot more to it than the actions of the unfortunate engineer and the Nantes FD.

gpp111 wrote:So finally, it is the use of the GE units that ended up biting the MM&A in the rear. If an EMD unit was in the lead, I am not sure they are as prone to fires and if the brake lever could have been removed.......

I respectfully disagree. Yes, the lead GE locomotive suffered a fire, but an "all EMD" consist could have had a similar end result if the lead unit suffered some kind of mechanical failure and either shut itself down or required railway/fire department personnel to shut it down. Modern locomotives in particular, including modern EMDs, will often shut themselves down when the computer senses a problem that might cause damage to the locomotive.

Also, remember that there were four other locomotives in the consist (including two EMDs). Any one of those could have been started up to keep the brake pipe charged after the lead unit was shut down. The cause of the situation was not the fire in the GE locomotive; the cause was a combination of too few hand brakes on the tank cars and that it didn't occur to anyone on the scene that they should start up one of the other locomotives to do the job that the lead locomotive was temporarily unable to do.

Carroll wrote: Just after this all started it was reported that the brakes were set at 20% of full brake power.

I don't recall ever hearing this. Can you cite your source please? A 20lb reduction is much more than 20% of full braking power.

Hopefully the Canadian rail safety agency will address these what ifs with whys:

What if MM&AC had adequate supervision on the ground qualified on train handling (reportedly, only a Track Foreman was at Nantes at the time of the fire).

What if there was less of a cost cutting culture in place so that someone, realizing a Track Department employee is not qualified on train handling, could have made the decision to roust the Engineer and get him to the scene of the locomotive fire. His rest would have been broken, but it was an emergency and 'all bets are off' regarding Hours of Service under such conditions. Of course the prescribed rest clock would be reset after he was released from the emergency, and the train would have been delayed. Delays cost $$$ and Mr. Burkhardt's phone would have rung with someone from St John cussing him out.

What if Canadian Rules were more explicit regarding tie down procedures. It has been earlier noted at this discussion that certain Books used by US roads are so. If so, and realizing that a crew cannot tie down a train (reported here) outside HOS, revised practices - likely just keep the train moving with a rested Engineer available at Megantic - that would have violated a cost cutting culture.

What if MM&AC was properly insured. I honestly don't know on this one, but is there any regulatory agency, up there or down here, that sets the level of insurance coverage a road must have, as well as how much self indemnity they may hold. What if the insurer or their broker simply said this is the level you must have, in view of the volume of HAZMAT you are now handling, or we will not be party to writing you.

And finally, a what if not likely to be addressed by the safety agency. What if any road approached by the Ridley and Tony Scott production company for assistance with filming the movie 'Unstoppable' had said get lost. The plot appeared so absurd, that I doubt if too many believed such could actually happen in real life - but yet it did at Megantic.

carroll; contractor/subcontractor cp & mm&a. third party and fob origin is the web that will draw cp into the clean-up and deaths. cp was responsible for mm&a actions. there's a few items to be checked but i'm guessing irving paid the third party who, in turn paid for the oil and cp.cp paid mm&a thereby establishing a liability link. this is why i opined that cp should quickly effect the clean-up. miminize the lost business exposure. sadly, this could have been avoided by opening an angle cock. ken patrick

KEN PATRICK wrote:sadly, this could have been avoided by opening an angle cock.

How? Please don't say by dumping the brakes. That is clearly not a way to prevent what happened here.