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Village evacuated after Quebec train derailment

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Ed, I appreciate your comments about the likely scenario details of the brake release and engineer’s subsequent response.  However, I do not think it is fair for you to say that the “forum membership” is blaming the engineer.  If there were such an issue with people blaming the engineer in a way that you think is unjustified, the person or persons doing that should be signaled out directly and taken to task for it.  The “forum membership” never speaks with a single voice on anything.  In fact, that is our only unifying characteristic. As to the point you make about criticizing the engineer, I would have to go back and check, but I don’t recall anybody criticizing the engineer.  That post on the previous page by forum member, Schuylkill and Susquehanna  was just extracted from news accounts detailing the entire record of the engineer.  Other such accounts detail the entire record of the MM&A Ry regarding derailments and accidents.  The does seem like pertinent information to pick up in the coverage of this derailment. Even in the news coverage, I do not find acrimony directed toward the engineer.  Apparently he lives in Lac-Megantic, and is popular and well liked.  They are quick to recognize and commend him for his heroism in pulling some cars out of the flaming wreck to prevent them from exploding. The one and only person who seems to have plunged a knife into the engineer’s back and is twisting it is MM&A president, Ed Burkhardt.  For my own part in this discussion, I have been defending the engineer against the charges by Mr. Burkhardt on the basis that Mr. Burkhardt has only offered as evidence that he feels the engineer did not set enough brakes.  Mr. Burkhardt says that his feeling has to be true because the train would not have run away if the engineer had set enough brakes.  Yet earlier, Mr. Burkhardt defended the engineer, saying, “The engineer was not the last person to touch that train.”  Earlier, Mr. Burkhardt blamed the whole thing on the fire department.  He also said that he has “evidence of tampering with the train.”  Whatever he meant by that, a failure to set hand brakes cannot be considered to be “tampering.” I do not know what role the engineer or the fire department played in the cause of this catastrophe, but I have nothing but contempt for Mr. Burkhardt.  I think he has acted like a spoiled child who is desperate to avoid blame that he shoots from the hip to place blame wherever the greatest opportunity lies at the moment.
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