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Village evacuated after Quebec train derailment

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[quote user="greyhounds"] OK, can we please just bury Mr. Burkhardt? I believe he didn't handle this well.  I don't know if anyone could have handled this well.  He's gone.  Destroyed.  The MM&A is also gone and destroyed.  And my personal belief is that negligence was involved all the way up from the engineer who allegedly didn't set the handbrakes properly to Mr. Burkhardt who knew, or should have known, that the train consisted of out of date tank cars handling something that could kill.  Normal procedures were not enough. Do a safety audit.  Identify the weak points.  Reinforce them. It doesn't seem that that happened. I'll guess that Burkhardt first went in to denial.  He's human.  I think that this will eventually kill him.  Maybe not soon, but it will haunt him forever and he'll eventually seek solace in his own death. He's not a bad guy, but he shoulders the ultimate responsibility for this terrible event.  He was in charge when this happened.  Just my opinion. You can delegate authority, but you cannot delegate responsibility.    I think Burkhardt understands that.  And, in time, this will kill him.  Again, just my opinion. So let's just quit beating a walking corpse.   [/quote] Well, I am not so sure what will become of Mr. Burkhardt.  We really do not know what caused this catastrophe yet.  So far, there is no plausible explanation of how the air brakes got released in a way that the release completed after everyone had left the scene.  We certainly don’t know whether the engineer set hand brakes or not.  It is only Mr. Burkhardt who has accused the engineer of failing to set hand brakes, and he has clearly demonstrated his willingness to falsely accuse others of causing this disaster when he blamed the fire department.  And just this morning, Burkhardt called the engineer a hero for making a last ditch effort and preventing some of the tank cars from running away.  There is a real possibility that this was a criminal act of sabotage by one or more people who have not been apprehended.  It sounds like the police are definitely leaving that door open.  If that turns out to be what happened, Mr. Burkhardt and the engineer will be completely vindicated because they will have had nothing to do with causing the wreck.  Their railroading careers will go on.  So I am not ready to jump to any conclusions about the fate of Mr. Burkhardt.
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