Ed Burkhardt is chairman of the Montreal Maine & Atlantic Railway (MMA). He has achieved success with his extreme cost-cutting measures, and his railroad is one of only two in Canada certified to operate with just a one-man crew. In a horrendous and under-reported disaster, an MMA train carrying dozens of cars of crude oil broke loose and derailed in the town of Lac-Mégantic, destroying the center of the town and leaving a death toll somewhere between 50 and 74 people. Since this tragedy, Ed Burkhardt has taken the following measures: - Sent a letter of apology to the town. The letter was written in English and translated to French using Google translate. Needless to say, the letter had numerous errors. - Essentially blamed the accident on volunteer firefighters who extinguished a small fire on one of the locomotives about an hour before the train broke loose. He claimed they had shut down the engine without letting the railroad know, thus causing the air brakes to eventually release. However, the fire chief said that shutting the engine down was standard procedure in the event of a fire and there were railroad personnel on site at the time. It’s also standard procedure to set the handbrakes on enough of the cars to prevent the train from rolling away if the air brakes fail. - Two days later, subsequently blamed the engineer of the train for apparently not setting enough handbrakes. - Prior to a visit to the town, four days after the disaster, joked that he hoped no one would shoot him in the back. - During his visit to the town, backed out of a meeting with the mayor, citing “scheduling” problems. He also did not ask to meet with any of the families of the missing or those left homeless. - After his visit with the town, complained that the anger that residents displayed towards him “doesn’t accomplish anything.” Meanwhile, in Lac-Mégantic, the search for the missing continues.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 13:53:21 +0000
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