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Any of yous heard about it ?
Im trying to find a link in English (not easy with Iphone )

Honestly, didn't know before this they had driveless freight trains for crude oil


Here you go.


http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/09/world/ame ... way-train/

http://www.torontosun.com/2013/07/09/residents-allowed-back-home-in-lac-megantic

What an incredible disaster this is! In true Conservative style, shipments of oil have increased exponentially over the past few years and they have responded by cutting the budget of Transport Canada and allowing trains with 59 tanker cars to be run by one person. Fucking geniuses!

And the people who are profiting from this tremendous show of intellectual capacity are people like the Irvings to whom the oil was being delivered and who have an estimated net worth somewhere north of $8 billion and who desperately need to have cheap shipping costs on their oil. What's a few dead Quebecers compared to a higher margin at the pumps!? For those who will argue that they are just following competitive practices and getting the cheapest service available, don't kid yourself, these are the people who really call the shots these days and no doubt lobbied to remove "red tape" so they could pump more oil through their refinery and more cash into their wallets. In their case, lobbying consists of pointing out that they run the economy of an entire region of the country and will leave if they don't get their way.

Blue Train wrote:Honestly, didn't know before this they had driveless freight trains for crude oil


Here you go.


http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/09/world/ame ... way-train/

Nobody knew either. American company. The driver was sleeping in a hotel in another village, where the train was waiting. There had been a fire in the engine. Firefighters have been called, they stopped the fire and left. Then later, the train rolled away nobody knows how, and went off the rail in the next small town. Everything burnt in minutes. They only announce deaths when they did dna ( thats why the count is low) but there are 40 missing and presumed dead.
2 young guys they hired come from there.

This is close to Maine border

It's late friday night, summer finally made it, people from the small town are gathered and sing in a bar with the 2 singers (one is from Quebec city ), then at 1h30 they take a brak. One goes for a beer, and the other goes outside for a cigarette. 'Smoking saved my life'. He ran to and in the lake for his life.

What a seemingly needless tragedy. All best wishes to those in and around Lac Mégantic Québec.

I've been traveling and went through Quebec the day of the disaster. Though not following closely there seems to be conflicting reports between the fire responders and the company owners.

I'm afraid the missing in this kind of conflagration will not be found.

A. Kingstone wrote:I've been traveling and went through Quebec the day of the disaster. Though not following closely there seems to be conflicting reports between the fire responders and the company owners.

I'm afraid the missing in this kind of conflagration will not be found.

1. The company is claiming the firefighters turned off the engine that powers the brakes.

2. If they were "lucky"...they were vaporized. Like the Waco explosion, I don't think they're going to find much DNA....if anything of those still missing the closer to the explosion.

A good friend of mine comes from here. Her mom (92 years old) was luckily evacuated to the hospital, where she is fine, but I haven't spoken with Lolly in a couple of days as to what the status of the family home is.

Apparently the train was parked on a downward incline, which seems like not the best idea... I wonder why they would leave a train with a dangerous load like that untended for the night -- brakes or no brakes.