Posted on 07/09/2013 7:43:28 AM PDT by mandaladon
CNN) -- The chairman of the company whose driverless train barreled into the small Quebec town of Lac-Megantic and unleashed a deadly inferno told a Montreal newspaper he believes it had been tampered with. "We have evidence of this," Ed Burkhardt said in an interview published by the Montreal Gazette. "But this is an item that needs further investigation. We need to talk to some people we believe to have knowledge of this." The company did not immediately return phone calls from CNN about the report. Burkhardt is the chief executive officer and president of Rail World, the parent company of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, the operator of the derailed train. Seventy-two tanker cars carrying crude oil jumped the track early Saturday, setting off a huge fireball. At least 13 people are dead and 37 are missing. Officials in the town 130 miles east of Montreal say some were likely vaporized by the sheer intensity of the blaze, which burned for 36 hours.
(Excerpt) Read more at us.cnn.com ...
I’ve read that the firefighters turned OFF the lead engine, which was providing power to the air brakes.
Whether that’s the “tampering” he’s referring to , I don’t know.
All four wouldn't come unlocked by themselves.
It is clearly in the interest of the railroad to not bear responsibility for this event. So rather than it being a case of something simple - like the engineer neglecting to properly secure his train - they need to find some other outside factor.
It’s already being reported that firemen responding to a fire in one of the locomotives earlier in the night shut down the engine on that locomotive. It was running to maintain brake pressure on the air brakes on the train and the pressure bled off over time. The train rolled into town after that. There’s another thread posted earlier with details.
Exactly. It may well be that the train was tampered with, but I’m sure as h*ll not going to believe it just because the chairman of the railroad says it is so.
It would appear his intention was to inform the people and the government so that precautions could be taken to prevent such an incident from occurring.
What the BRAIN DEAD STUPID JACK@SS didn't realize is that it was IMPOSSIBLE to solve this problem, and all he accomplished was to notify terrorists of a ripe easy target.
I said at the time of the broadcast "That fool needs to be fired, because he doesn't understand that he has just handed terrorists an effective weapon."
Again, any countermeasures would be so costly or ineffective as to be impossible, so in effect all Brian Ross had done is to endanger the public by spreading knowledge of a security weakness.
Would not surprise me.
I remember right after the Boston Marathon bombings terror incident, they was I think a threat against an Amtrack train.
Opponents of building the Keystone XL Pipeline often cite safety and environmental hazards of pipelines, but I think hauling oil by rail or truck would seem to be far more hazardous.
Plus the pipeline systems around now are much better built for safety.
I recall this ABC News story. I remember that the thing that concerned me was how easy it would be to access all the various chemical plants around the country. If this had been a train carrying tankers of chorine gas, it could have been a lot worse.
Or by ship(Exxon Valdez).
Please do look for the thread if you can. Thank-you.
An extremist group called 350 Maine set up a blockade 2 weeks ago - Maine is next door to Quebec.
Hmmm...
This makes no sense to me.
As I understand it, the air brakes require air pressure TO DISENGAGE THE BRAKE PADS, so that any leak or loss of pressure would always lock up the brakes by design, for safety reasons.
So I think sabotage is very likely, eh ?
Funny thing about air brakes is that without air pressure the brakes are fully applied.
that is not how it works. Air Brakes use air to open the brakes, without air they are closed. Standard design for a 150 years.
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