Runaway crude oil train crashes into Quebec town, killing 50

On July 5th, an engineer failed to apply adequate braking to a 73-car train carrying crude oil. He checked into a hotel to sleep, leaving the train unmanned. The train then rolled downhill, and in the town of Lac-Megantic, 6 miles away, derailed on a sharp curve in the city's downtown core while travelling more than 60 miles per hour (the speed limit being about 10).

The resulting explosion and fire destroyed roughly half of the downtown area. A bar in the immediate vicinity of the explosion was completely destroyed, incinerating dozens of people inside. Some of the bodies were so badly burned that not even complete skeletons remained.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_derailment

Jesus H. Christ. That engineer has it coming. Lethal injection or mauled by a mob?

All this caused by his fatigue and needing to sleep.

Reminds me a lot of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alfaques_disaster

Fuel in my area raised 20 cents overnight.

Damn, that is horrible.

AndrewB said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_derailment

"The engineer, who was the lone crew member under the MMA's work rules with permission from Transport Canada"

I've heard that this was the real issue, that huge cutbacks have resulted in a train having 2-3 engineers to just one. Plus a lot of people are forgetting that the train was left unattended a second time by other MMA employees after the first fire was put out, and that's when it started going downhill. Hopefully the first engineer doesn't get lynch mobbed by dummies like MRB_Doom.

Scet said:

Hopefully the first engineer doesn't get lynch mobbed by dummies like MRB_Doom.

dummies like mrb? afaik even the engineer's employers are trying to put almost all the blame on him (and the rest on the fire department), so mrb just stated there's an obvious scapegoat in this case. and it's not the big business.

dew said:

the engineer's employers are trying to put almost all the blame on him (and the rest on the fire department)

of course they aren't going to take the blame, they don't want to pay out.

dew said:

obvious scapegoat

is it really that obvious? Seems there's a lot of other people involved.

Scet said:

is it really that obvious? Seems there's a lot of other people involved.

It's a complicated mess. There is a whole chain of fuck ups.

Technician said:

It's a complicated mess. There is a whole train of fuck ups.

FTFY.

Too soon?..