Crude oil derailment, fire

[lock4244]

All I'm saying is the placard would have done nothing to prevent the accident from occurring and that the fact the first responders were dealing with a highly volatile substance was pretty apparent on arrival. In this instance the fact that the placards indicated a less volatile substance seems rather moot.

As for lawsuits, well, lawyers love to pounce on any and all mistakes in order to sue someone or something... I'd hate to be the guy that made this mistake.

It's interesting to note that accidents, disasters and other varied types of human errors continue to occur in spite of both Government regulation and substantial lawsuits. Seems somewhat obvious that these rules and deterrents do not really prevent anything...

[Scottl]

The way oil is combined from different sources and some of the dillutants being used make simple categorization of oil hazard challenging.

[Lenny53]

All I'm saying is the placard would have done nothing to prevent the accident from occurring and that the fact the first responders were dealing with a highly volatile substance was pretty apparent on arrival. In this instance the fact that the placards indicated a less volatile substance seems rather moot.

As for lawsuits, well, lawyers love to pounce on any and all mistakes in order to sue someone or something... I'd hate to be the guy that made this mistake.

It's interesting to note that accidents, disasters and other varied types of human errors continue to occur in spite of both Government regulation and substantial lawsuits. Seems somewhat obvious that these rules and deterrents do not really prevent anything...

It was the first responders who raised the issue that it was not ordinary crude they were dealing with.  It will be interesting to see this 'mislabeling' was a one time mistake or something that had been going on for a period of time.  Meanwhile, Transport Canada is not liking what their track inspections and been finding out
about the state of MMA's right of way

http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/transport-canada-closes-part-of-mma-railway-for-safety-1.1453122

[RockGp40]

I received my copy of FRA emergency order #28 this week. It is interesting reading. The place where the train stopped for the night was on a 1.2 percent grade. Why did these guys not skate the train? Million dollar question I suppose.

[nkalanaga]

Even if they didn't carry skates, there are other ways of blocking the wheels.  In steam days it wasn't uncommon to loop a length of chain around one or both rails as a wheelstop.

[trainforfun]

I think it all comes to a human fact . There was only one guy aboard , he parked his trains around 11 at night , pitch black outside . The guy was probably tired of his run .
The other team was supposed to arrive shortly . He let the loco running like he did many times before .
He probably did not feel to walk in the dark to set up hand brakes on 12 or 14 cars ( about a 1,000 feet walk each way ) .
After setting up the hand brakes he was supposed to come back in the loco to try to pull the train , if the locos can still move the train he is supposed to walk another 1,000 feet back and forth to set up more hand brakes .
I am not trying to excuse the guy , not at all , it's a combination of many factors that cause that tragedy .
No matter what the train was carrying , a paper or wood train would have cause quite a mess , for sure .