Massive Derailment in Canada Results from Series of Mishaps
July 9, 2013
On July 6, a run-away train with more than 70 crude-oil tanker cars derailed in the Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, triggering an enormous explosion. At least 15 people are known dead and 60 others are missing, feared dead. As many as 30 buildings were destroyed in the blast, including the town grocery and library. The tankers, en route from the Bakken oil field in North Dakota to a refinery in New Brunswick, carried pressurized crude oil. Fires from the massive explosion forced the evacuation of about 2,000 of the town’s 6,000 residents.
Yesterday, officials learned that the train—parked outside Nantes, a town 8 miles (12 kilometers) west of Lac-Megantic, during an overnight driver shift-change—started rolling downhill on empty tracks just minutes after firemen had extinguished a blaze in one of its locomotives. “About five minutes after the firemen left, I felt the vibration of a train moving down the track,” eyewitness Andre Gendron told Reuters news service yesterday. “I then saw the train move by without its lights on.” Reuters also reported that Nantes Fire Chief Patrick Lambert confirmed that his crew had switched off the locomotive late on July 5 while putting out a “good-sized” blaze in the motor. “Our protocol calls for us to shut down an engine because it is the only way to stop the fuel from circulating into the fire,” he noted.
In a diesel-electric locomotive, an air compressor runs off the diesel engine and keeps the locomotive’s brakes charged and working. When a locomotive is shut down, its brakes will eventually cease to function. (Electro-Motive Division of General Motors Corporation-World Book diagram)
According to the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic (MM&A) Railway, the engineer parked the train in Nantes on July 5, but left one locomotive running to ensure the air brakes worked properly. “If the operating locomotive is shut down, there’s nothing left to keep the brakes charged up, and the brake pressure will drop finally to the point where they can’t be held in place any longer,” MM&A railroad chairman Ed Burkhardt told the Toronto Star newspaper.
