The train engineer and two additional rail workers who faced charges for the deadly July 2013 oil train accident in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, were acquitted on Friday after the jury deliberated for nine days. If convicted of all charges, they potentially faced life in prison. 

The end of the trial of these three employees for their role in the Canadian oil train disaster that resulted in 47 deaths and the destruction of much of downtown Lac-Mégantic appears to have brought some closure to residents of the still-recovering town — although most are still waiting for justice.

As the trial began, the BBC reported the sentiments of Lac-Mégantic resident Jean Paradis, who lost three friends in the accident and thought the wrong people were on trial.

“It's clear to me the main shareholder, MMA, are not here. Transport Canada is not here. Transport Canada have let cheap companies run railroads in Canada with less money for more profit…” Paridis told the BBC. Transport Canada is the Canadian regulatory agency with rail oversight.

Another resident, Jean Clusiault, who lost his daughter in the disaster, told the CBC that after the decision, "I felt relieved because these are not the right people who should be there.”

The sentiment that these three men should not have been found guilty was even expressed by the former CEO of the rail company that operated the train that caused the disaster.

"I was happy when I heard the verdict. I think the jury made the right decision," Edward Burkhardt, former chairman of rail company Montreal, Maine and Atlantic (MMA), told Radio-Canada.

No rail executives, politicians, or regulators were ever charged with any crimes relating to the Lac-Mégantic disaster.

Based on the past four years of reporting on the literal and figurative boom in Bakken oil trains, I have written a book about the story of the bomb trains — from Lac-Mégantic to Trump — which addresses the question of who was to blame for the lethal accident in this small Quebec town and for the many oil train accidents across North America that followed.

The following is the first chapter of that book, detailing what happened in Lac-Mégantic on July 6, 2013.

Chapter 1: Lac-Mégantic

On the evening of July 5, 2013, Thomas Harding finished his shift for the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic (MMA) Railway driving a train full of Bakken crude oil across rural Canada. Harding parked the train on a track siding in Nantes, Quebec, and called to tell the dispatcher that the train was secure.

Harding then called another rail traffic controller in Bangor, Maine, and noted that there had been excessive smoke coming from the locomotive on his trip. He was advised not to worry about it and another engineer was scheduled to take the train in the morning from Nantes to its destination — an oil refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick. Nothing was done about the smoking engine, despite the fact that the train’s cargo was classified as a hazardous flammable material.

And so Harding followed these instructions. The train was left on a track siding in Nantes — running, unlocked, and unattended — as was standard practice and perfectly within regulations. The tracks run right alongside the rural road that connects Nantes to the town of Lac-Mégantic. Harding called a taxi and was taken to a nearby hotel in Lac-Mégantic for the night.

Investigations later revealed that Harding made a critical error that night. After applying manual hand brakes on the locomotives and two tank cars, he was supposed to turn off the air braking system and make sure that the hand brakes would hold the train on their own. He ran that test with the air brakes on, which combined with the hand brakes, provided sufficient braking force to keep the train in place.

At some point that evening after Harding had left, someone driving down the road noticed the locomotive was on fire and called the local fire department — which responded and put out the fire.

According to the accident report, “the firefighters moved the electrical breakers inside the cab to the off position, in keeping with railway instructions. They then met with an MMA employee, a track foreman who had been dispatched to the scene but who did not have a locomotive operations background.” 1

Turning off a locomotive that had been on fire seems like a reasonable thing to do, especially because no one on the scene had expertise in operating a locomotive.

Reasonable except for one fact. The braking system on this oil train was based on technology designed in the late 1800s — the same braking system used on most oil trains in North America — and requires constant air pressure to keep the train braked. Air brakes were revolutionary safety technology when introduced to the rail industry in the 1860s, but now,  understandably, are no longer state of the art.

As the firefighters drove away from the train that night, the air pressure in the braking system began to decrease. When they shut off the locomotive engine, they also unwittingly shut off the power that was maintaining the air pressure in the braking system.

Eventually the brake system’s air pressure decreased to a point where the train began to move down the hill towards Lac-Mégantic. Despite this obvious flaw in rail safety, at the time there were no regulations saying that a train full of flammable liquids parked on a hill above a residential area needed to also have a mechanical device placed on the track to make sure the train could not “run away.” Years later, there still is no such regulation, despite this being a cheap and effective safety measure.

And, so, the train began to roll towards Lac-Mégantic. The rail tracks and road next to it are essentially a straight shot downhill into the center of town. With no curves to navigate, the runaway train remained on the tracks, gaining speed on the six miles of track from Nantes to Lac-Mégantic.

When the train reached town, it was moving over 60 miles per hour. At this point the train passed Gilles Fluet, a local resident who had just left the popular nightspot the Musi-Cafe.

“It was moving at a hellish speed … no lights, no signals, nothing at all,” he said. “There was no warning. It was a black blob that came out of nowhere.” 2 

Once the train passed Fluet, it quickly arrived at a point where the tracks turned left. Here the train left the tracks and shot straight into the heart of downtown Lac-Mégantic and the Musi-Cafe that Gilles Fluet had just left.

More than half of the people who died that night were in the Musi-Cafe. One lucky survivor described what happened to The Globe and Mail.

“The entire bar went pitch black, then turned orange — brighter than the middle of the day, a blinding, lively orange … That was the last time I saw any of them.”3

The sounds of the accident woke Thomas Harding and much of Lac-Mégantic at around 1:15 a.m. At 1:47, Harding called a rail dispatcher and described the scene:4

“Everything is on fire — from the church all the way down to the Metro, from the river all the way to the railway tracks. From what I can see, RJ, the box cars have all burnt in the yard — the ties, everything. Whatever is in the yard, rolling stock, is now gone — completely.”

However, neither Harding nor the dispatcher, RJ, were yet aware it was their MMA train involved in the crash and fires.

RJ: What the f*** happened?

TH: I don’t know. I don’t know, but everything, everything … I woke up 20 minutes ago. Evacuate, evacuate, right away.

Harding reportedly helped firefighters move some of the full oil tank cars that were still on the tracks away from the fires. He then called the dispatcher again at 3:29 a.m., at which point he was informed it was his train.

RJ: It’s uh, it’s your train that rolled down.

TH: No!

RJ: Yes, sir.

TH: No, RJ.

RJ: Yes, sir.

TH: Holy f**k. F**k!

TH: She was f***ing secure. F**k!

RJ: That’s what, that’s what I got as news.

Another person awakened in downtown Lac-Mégantic that night was the local fire chief Denis Lauzon. When he opened his front door to see the disaster, his response was simply: “Ok, We’re in hell.” 5 

While firefighters worked to evacuate people, they were not equipped to deal with the fire, and as Chief Lauzon noted, there was no way to rescue the 47 people who died.

“The 47 people were at the wrong place at the wrong moment. They couldn’t survive that type of fire.”

Around 3:45 a.m., as the explosions stopped, the firefighters attempted to move in to deal with the fire — when another tank car exploded in front of them. The firefighters retreated and the fire would end up burning for three days.

The train was carrying Bakken crude oil in DOT-111 tank cars. For over 20 years, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) had warned against using the DOT-111 tank cars for moving flammable liquids like oil.6 These tank cars were known to easily puncture at speeds of under 20 miles per hour. At over 60 miles per hour there was no question what would happen. More than 60 of the 72 loaded oil tank cars derailed, spilling over one million gallons of oil.

The spilled oil ignited immediately, creating “rivers of fire” throughout downtown Lac-Mégantic, consuming much of the area and 47 people. Those rivers of fire traveled downhill from the tracks all the way to the river and destroyed almost everything in between.

When the reports of what went wrong were filed, it was clear that the oil and rail industries’ quest for profits over safety was to blame, along with lax regulatory oversight. Long before official accident reports detailed what led to the disaster, a columnist in The Guardian accurately described Lac-Mégantic as “a corporate crime scene.” 7

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada’s accident report for Lac-Mégantic found 18 discrete factors that contributed to the accident. It started with a cheap and improper repair to the locomotive that resulted in the engine fire but extended to lax regulatory oversight and a culture of cost-cutting at the expense of safety at the railroad.

Additionally, regulations allowed these oil trains to operate with only one person on board — another cost-saving measure. That meant Harding did not have anyone to double-check his work braking the train.

After reviewing all of the accident’s details, Wendy Tadros, head of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, had the following question.8

“Who was the guardian of public safety? That is the role of the government to provide checks and balances and oversight, yet this booming industry where unit trains were shipping more and more oil across Canada and across the border ran largely unchecked.”

So who was held accountable for this disaster? MMA only had a small amount of insurance and quickly declared bankruptcy. The owner of MMA was not charged. And later, as part of the bankruptcy hearing, one of the largest hedge funds in the world bought the rail company and resumed moving trains through Lac-Mégantic — something strongly opposed by the residents.

While there were no immediate answers to why the fires and explosions in Lac-Mégantic were so intense, oil companies continued to load the same Bakken oil into the same DOT-111 tank cars and ship it across North America through towns and cities as if nothing had happened.

Less than six months later, in November 2013, a Bakken oil train derailed in the wetlands of rural Alabama where it exploded like the train in Lac-Mégantic and spilled over 500,000 gallons of oil.

A month later, a Bakken train derailed in Casselton, North Dakota, resulting in more mushroom clouds of fire, an oil spill of 400,000 gallons, and the evacuation of the local town. And then another Bakken oil train derailed and exploded in Canada. As the evidence piled up about the dangers of these new Bakken oil trains, rail workers began calling them “bomb trains.”9

And people in Lac-Mégantic and across North America began demanding change.

In May of 2014, a tactical unit of the Quebec provincial police force, La Sûreté du Québec, the equivalent of a U.S. SWAT unit, arrived at Thomas Harding’s house where they found him in his backyard with his son and a friend. The three were thrown to the ground, and Harding was handcuffed, despite being cooperative throughout the investigation.

The official response to what was described as a “corporate crime scene” was to blame the lowest level employee involved and send in a SWAT team to arrest him at his home. Two other employees were arrested as well. Was Thomas Harding the one who had let the growth of these oil trains go “largely unchecked”?

A columnist for Canada’s National Post called the event “embarrassing” and a “politically motivated stunt.”10

There is one more fact about this accident that makes the arrest of Harding all that more outrageous. There were three braking systems on the train parked at Nantes. There are the hand brakes, as well as two air-brake systems: the independent brake on the locomotives, and the automatic brake, which holds the rest of the rail cars in place.

Harding set the independent brake and hand brakes but did not set the automatic brake, because he was following MMA’s corporate policy.

The brakes he did apply were sufficient to hold the train. But then the locomotive caught fire that night and the fire department cut power to the engine, which led to the loss of pressure in the independent brake and the train “running away” down the hill towards Lac-Mégantic.

It would have taken Harding 10 seconds to engage the automatic brake. If this had been done, the train most likely would have remained in place until it was scheduled to continue the next morning — even with the locomotive powered down. But company policy was to not engage the automatic brake even when parking a loaded train of explosive Bakken oil on a hill above a town. Why not?

Because while it takes only 10 seconds to engage the braking system, it takes between 15 minutes and an hour to disengage the system when the train is restarted the next day. And in the rail industry, time is money. So, in order to save that time, the company simply chose not to instruct its engineers to engage the automatic brakes and enshrined this in corporate policy, as was noted in the Transportation Safety Canada report on the accident, where it states:  

While MMA instructions did not allow the automatic brakes to be set following a proper hand brake effectiveness test, doing so would have acted as a temporary secondary defence, one that likely would have kept the train secured, even after the eventual release of the independent brakes.11 

Harding was simply following the rules.

The Globe and Mail first reported this situation in March of 2016 in an article titled, “Ten-second procedure might have averted Lac-Mégantic disaster.”

The publication asked the Canadian regulatory agency how this could be possible:

Asked why the railway was able to issue such an instruction to its staff, Transport Canada told The Globe that its role is “to monitor railway companies for compliance with rules, regulations and standards through audits and safety inspections.” However, the department added, “Transport Canada does not approve or enforce company instructions.”12

No SWAT teams have been sent to the offices of oil or rail company executives. And yet they knowingly still ship trains full of oil in unsafe tank cars throughout North America. In 2016 — three years after the Lac-Mégantic disaster — the head of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board warned that a “Lac-Mégantic” type accident could happen in an American city at any time.13

When Harding and two other rail employees were frog marched into court by the police after their arrest, Ghislain Champagne, the father of a woman who died in the Lac-Mégantic accident, yelled out, “It’s not them we want.”

This book is about the people Ghislain Champagne and many others would like to see held responsible for these corporate crimes. The ones who are responsible for the disaster in Lac-Mégantic and the rise of bomb trains in North America. The ones who make corporate policies that put profits over safety. And how the rise of the Bakken bomb trains in America illustrates just how badly broken the American regulatory and political system is — where corporate profits always trump the safety of citizens and the environment.

1. Transportation Safety Board of Canada, “Lac-Mégantic runaway train and derailment investigation summary,” October 28, 2014
2. David Crary and Sean Farrell, “In Lac-Mégantic, ‘the train from hell’”, Associated Press, July 14, 2013
3. Justin Giovannetti,”Last moments of Lac-Mégantic: Survivors share their stories,” The Globe and Mail, November 28, 2013
4. Alex Finnis, “Audio emerges of the panicked moment driver realised his train had derailed, killing 47 people,” DailyMail.com, August 22, 2014
5. Erik Atkins, “‘Okay, we’re in hell’: Lac-Mégantic fire chief recounts night of train explosion”, The Globe and Mail, October 16, 2014
6. Curtis Tate, “Railroad tank-car safety woes date decades before crude oil concerns,” McClatchy, January 27, 2014
7. Martin Lukacs, “Quebec's Lac-Mégantic oil train disaster not just tragedy, but corporate crime,” The Guardian, July 11, 2013
8. Rob Gillies, “Investigators release Quebec train disaster report,” Associated Press, August 19, 2014
9. James MacPherson and Matthew Brown, “Safety questions after ND oil train derailment,” Associated Press, December 3, 2013
10. Matt Gurney, “Arrest of Lac Mégantic engineer an embarrassing sideshow,” National Post, May 14, 2014
11. Transportation Safety Board of Canada, “Railway Investigation Report – R13D0054,” TSB.ca
12. Grant Robertson, “Ten-second procedure might have averted Lac-Mégantic disaster,” The Globe and Mail, March 7, 2016
13. Ashley Halsey III, “NTSB’s ‘10 Most Wanted’ list for 2016 underscores need for rail safety,” Washington Post, January 13, 2016

Main image: Lac-Mégantic after the oil train accident. Credit: Transportation Safety Board of Canada

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Either support new pipelines or your community will be incinerated by an oil-carrying train.

It sounds outrageous, but it’s been a foundational argument made by the pro-pipeline lobby ever since the horrific Lac-Mégantic disaster in 2013.

“This is almost like putting a gun to the head of communities, saying ‘well, if we don’t build our pipeline then we’re going to put more oil-by-rail traffic through your community,’ ” says Patrick DeRochie, program manager of Environmental Defence’s climate and energy program.

“I think that’s dishonest and the oil industry’s really manipulating legitimate public concerns about rail safety to push pipelines.”

On Dec. 20, 2016 — less than a month after the federal approvals of the Kinder Morgan TransMountain and Enbridge Line 3 pipelines — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau clearly stated that “putting in a pipeline is a way of preventing oil by rail, which is more dangerous and more expensive.”

The fact that it’s an oft-repeated sentiment shouldn’t overshadow the fact that this is a completely false binary.

Canada is hardly shipping any oil by rail. It never has.

And the only way that oil-by-rail shipments will seriously increase as predicted by the Canadian Energy Research Institute and National Energy Board is if Canada continues with its plan to allow for the massive expansion of Alberta’s oilsands in the coming decades, a move that will undermine calls for a moratorium on all new fossil fuel infrastructure in order to avoid the effects of catastrophic climate change.

Highest Amount Ever Exported by Rail Was Mere 178,000 Barrels Per Day

Here are the numbers on oil-by-rail.

In September 2016 — the most recent month reported by the National Energy Board on the subject — oil-by-rail exports to the United States were 69,292 barrels per day (bpd).

They had dipped as low as 43,205 bpd in June 2016.

This obviously reflects the extremely low per-barrel price that bitumen is fetching from American refineries, which is also why there’s currently around 400,000 bpd of spare capacity in the pipeline network.

Plus, oil-by-rail generally costs more than shipping oil by pipeline, making it an even less viable option in such economic times.

But rail shipments have never been particularly notable relative to total crude oil production.

In fact, oil-by-rail’s high point in recent years was in September 2014, when 178,989 bpd were transported to the U.S.

The same year, Canada was exporting a total of 2.85 million bpd. In other words, at its very peak, oil-by-rail accounted for a mere 6.28 per cent of total exports.

Newly Approved Pipelines Quadruple Capacity Historically Shipped by Rail

It should also be noted that not all oil transported by rail is exported to the States, with some simply transported to other parts of the country for storage or usage for purposes such as asphalt.

For instance, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers reports the oil-by-rail hit “almost 200,000 bpd by the end of 2013,” despite the NEB only reporting 166,570 bpd in rail exports during December 2013.

Domestic transport also helps explain why the Canadian Energy Research Institute reported in 2014 that about 35,000 bpd of oil-by-rail from Western Canada wasn’t exported to the United States (and thus not counted by the NEB).

Incredibly, nobody is keeping detailed, accurate numbers on oil-by-rail.

But we can assume — generously — that the highest oil-by-rail shipments have ever hit in Canada is 225,000 bpd (180,000 bpd in exports and another 45,000 bpd in cross-country transport).

The recent approvals of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain and Enbridge Line 3 pipelines will allow for the addition of 900,000 bpd in pipeline capacity from the oilsands, assuming a 15 per cent surplus for outages and maintenance.

That’s four times the amount of oil that has ever been shipped by rail, either for exports or domestic transport.

New pipelines are not about “displacing” oil currently being shipped by rail — there’s simply no evidence for that.

Instead, new pipelines are about preparing for a massive expansion of the oilsands by almost two million bpd between 2015 and 2040, and weaponizing people’s fears of oil-by-rail to do so.

How the Spectre of Oil Trains is Deceptively Used to Push Pipelines https://t.co/mWbMw5F4SK @james_m_wilt #cdnpoli #oilbyrail #propaganda

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 6, 2017

Oil-By-Rail Unsafe Because of Regulatory Lack

But there’s a second and related key problem with the pipeline versus rail debate, further undermining the argument for new pipelines.

Specifically, that there are technologies and regulations available to ensure that oil being shipped by rail is far safer than what the current rules mandate.

As a result, combined exports and domestic transport via rail could even rebound to 200,000 or 250,000 bpd and we’d never have to seriously worry about a Lac-Mégantic-like disaster again.

How?

Transport Canada could require rail companies to increase the number of inspectors and crew members on trains, reduce speed limits and require certain braking system protocols and better public disclosure.

The phase-out of the old CPC-1232 tank railcars and transition to new and safer TC-117 tank railcars could be accelerated. The federal environment minister could be required to order an environmental assessment of oil-by-rail projects, as recommended in September 2016 by NDP MP Linda Duncan.

‘Neatbit’ Would Reduce Risk of Explosions and Spills, But Initially Increase Costs

And then there’s the increasingly popular idea of “neatbit.”

Bitumen from the oilsands is current shipped in both pipeline and train in a form called “dilbit,” which requires about 30 per cent of diluent to allow it move. The diluent, usually made of a natural gas-based condensate, makes the mixture highly flammable, explosive and difficult to contain in spills.

These characteristics are dangerously compounded in the case of train accidents.

Conversely, “neatbit” only requires one to two per cent of diluent.

The product thus has the consistency of peanut butter, meaning it won’t flow in the event of a spill. It also doesn’t catch fire or explode.

David Hughes, expert on unconventional fuels and author of multiple reports for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), says: “In effect, shipping raw bitumen by rail is likely a safer alternative than pipelines.”

Shipping bitumen as neatbit would arguably save companies money in the long term. But it would also require a bit of upfront capital, and policy direction from governments.

Heavy oil refineries don’t have the infrastructure to receive it. It would take longer to unload. Upstream companies would have to build diluent recovery units and invest in insulated tank railcars with heated coils to keep the bitumen somewhat soft during transport.

And unlike pipelines, oil-by-rail doesn’t result in a “carbon lock-in” given that many other commodities can be transported by rail.

Bruce Campbell of the CCPA has concluded the oil industry “is not in any hurry to make the transition because of the (relatively modest) upfront investment.”

Kai Nagata of the Dogwood Initiative agrees: “The oil companies don’t want to do anything that is inconvenient or that would require them to build new facilities or spend more money. So far, I don’t think there’s much interest in moving that inert form of bitumen in regular rail cars.”

‘It’s Purely Out of a Profit Motive That They Invoke the Comparison’

Not only is it deceptive to claim that new pipelines are needed to replace oil-by-rail, but it also ignores the fact that oil-by-rail can be made much safer than it is at the moment (although it will continue to be more carbon-intensive due to its current reliance on diesel as fuel).

Yet Lac-Mégantic continues to be subtly weaponized by corporate execs and politicians as if these two facts aren’t true, or even worthy of acknowledgement.

Oil-by-rail has never been a major player in Canada. It never will be if international climate commitments are honoured. And even if it is used as a way to offer some flexibility to producers, it can be done in a way that’s safer than current practices require.

Nagata suggests that such players are relying on people’s fears about a non-issue in order to force them to a point of compromise that would allow them to build pipeline expansion infrastructure.

“It’s purely out of a profit motive that they invoke the comparison,” he says. “Not out of any sense of concern for the safety of communities along the route.”

DeRochie agrees: “It’s a legitimate concern. And I think the oil industry grasped onto that and used it as a scare tactic to push pipelines.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Brian Stevens first learned about the Lac-Megantic disaster — in which an unattended oil train caught fire and exploded, killing 47 people in the Quebec town — when he saw the news reports on TV.

Stevens is currently National Rail Director for Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union, but he previously spent 16 years as an air-brake mechanic working on trains. At a recent conference in Ottawa examining lessons from the 2013 Lac-Megantic rail disaster, he recounted his reaction to seeing those initial scenes of destruction.  

“That ain’t Canada, that can’t happen in North America because our brake systems won’t allow that,” he said when he eventually learned the images he was seeing were from Canada. “My heart sank … It was crushing.”  

Stevens went on to explain his opinion of the root cause of the problem, summing up the challenges in Canada with one simple statement: “The railways write the rules.” 

He also placed blame on the deregulation of the Canadian rail industry that began more than three decades ago.

“Lac Megantic started in 1984. It was destined to happen,” said Stevens, referring to the start of that deregulation.

One example of the effects of deregulation can be seen in the cuts to the number of people conducting inspections, from over 7,000 railway and rail car inspectors in 1984, down to “less than 2,000” now, according to Stevens. 

He didn't mince words about what he's seen change in the three years since Canada's worst rail accident.

"The railway barons continue to exist and continue to drive the industry and the government," said Stevens.

Lac-Megantic before and after the oil train explosion. Credit: Claude Grenier, Studio Numéra, Lac-Mégantic.

The Railroad Rule That Allowed Lac-Megantic 

Stevens' initial reaction to the images from Lac-Megantic was based on the idea that the braking systems on North American trains would prevent the kind of brake failure and derailment seen in the devestated Quebec town. Which by all accounts is true — if those braking systems are properly applied.

In this case, they were not — as part of company policy, which goes back to Stevens' assertion that the “railways write the rules.”  

There are three components of the braking system on a train like the one which rolled into and destroyed Lac-Megantic. There are the hand brakes and two air-brake systems: the independent brake on the locomotives, and the automatic brake, which holds the rest of the rail cars in place.

Thomas Harding, the person who parked the train that caused the accident in Lac-Megantic, has been blamed for not setting enough handbrakes on the train that night.

What has been overlooked is the corporate policy of not engaging the “automatic brake” when leaving a train on the tracks. Harding set the independent brake and handbrakes but did not set the automatic brake because that was corporate policy.  

The brakes he did apply were sufficient to hold the train. But then the locomotive caught fire that night and the fire department cut power to the locomotive, which led to the loss of pressure in the independent brake and the train “running away” down the hill towards Lac-Megantic. 

It would have taken Harding 10 seconds to engage the automatic brake. If this had been done, the train most likely would have remained in place until it was scheduled to continue the next morning. But company policy was to not engage the automatic brake even when parking a loaded train of explosive Bakken oil on a hill above a town. Why not?

Because while it only takes 10 seconds to engage the braking system, it takes between 15 minutes to an hour to disengage the system when the train is restarted the next day. And in the rail industry, time is money.

So, in order to save that time, the company simply chooses not to engage the automatic brakes. 

The Globe and Mail first reported this situation in March of this year. They asked the Canadian regulatory agency how this could be possible and the response echoes what Stevens made clear: 

Asked why the railway was able to issue such an instruction to its staff, Transport Canada told The Globe that its role is “to monitor railway companies for compliance with rules, regulations and standards through audits and safety inspections.” However, the department added, “Transport Canada does not approve or enforce company instructions.”

What Have We Learned From the Lac-Megantic Oil Train Disaster? https://t.co/2zMOijE0DQ #cdnpoli #oilbyrail

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) December 23, 2016

“The Government is Kneeling in Front of the Oil and Rail Companies”

At the conference I attended earlier this month, people from Lac-Megantic were there to share their stories and comment on topics raised throughout the day.

One woman said the problem was that “the government is kneeling in front of the oil and rail companies.” Several commenters said the government was “in cahoots” with the railroads. Another said that by failing to hold the rail companies accountable and putting the blame solely on Thomas Harding that apparently “the government thinks we are idiots.” 

Their anger and frustration is not hard to understand. Not only is downtown Lac-Megantic still a large expanse of vacant land three and a half years after the accident, but the government has been non-responsive to their requests and has chosen not to conduct a public inquiry of the accident. 

Throughout the day’s discussion it was repeatedly stressed that a public inquiry should take place. But the government has so far denied the residents of Lac-Megantic this opportunity. A public inquiry would allow for people to be called as witnesses and to be questioned publicly. This would mean the CEO of Montreal Maine and Atlantic Railway would likely have to explain to the residents of Lac-Megantic why it was company policy not to set the automatic brake system that might have avoided the deaths and devastation. 

Lessons Learned? Nothing Has Changed

Very little has changed with oil-by-rail operations since Lac-Megantic. The trains are still pulling hundreds of thousands of inadequate tank cars each year, filled with highly volatile Bakken crude oil. The last oil train that derailed, in Mosier, Oregon, exploded and burned just like the many before it. 

We know the railroads are fighting modern braking systems that would have prevented an accident like Lac-Megantic. We know the American Petroleum Institute will fight any regulations to address the volatility of the oil. We know that even the newer CPC-1232 tank cars are inadequate, and the industry is fighting required upgrades.

There are no regulations on how long the trains carrying this volatile cargo can be. And evidence shows the weight of the trains is likely increasing instances of derailment. 

So what are the lessons that have been learned since Lac-Megantic?

The biggest lesson is that, on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border, “Nothing has changed. The railway barons are still there. And stronger than ever,” according to Stevens.

Main Image Credit: Claude Grenier, Studio Numéra, Lac-Mégantic.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Since the tragic Bakken oil train accident that extinguished 47 lives in Lac-Megantic, Quebec in July 2013, seven more Bakken oil trains have derailed, resulting in accidents involving large fires and explosions. We now know that oil produced in North Dakota's Bakken Shale formation is extremely volatile due to its high natural gas liquid content — resulting in the “bomb train” phenomenon.

DeSmog’s new investigative video, written and produced by Justin Mikulka, details a coordinated effort by the oil industry, members of the U.S. Congress, regulators and the Department of Energy to challenge the known science of crude oil characteristics with the goal of delaying or avoiding any regulatory changes requiring Bakken crude oil stabilization, a safety measure that would protect the millions of people currently living in bomb train blast zones.

Stabilization is the process that removes the volatile natural gas liquids from the crude oil, resulting in a “stable” petroleum product with greatly reduced volatility and flammability.

DeSmog has reported extensively on the oil-by-rail policy battle, including an investigation that revealed the direct role of the White House in working with North Dakota regulators to avoid any requirements for oil stabilization for the Bakken crude. 

The success of their misdirection campaign is evident — the mainstream media is largely overlooking this critical issue when the public needs referees to ask the tough questions on this vulnerability in our crude oil by rail protocols. Yet a Wall Street Journal article this week on how to make oil safe to transport didn’t even mention stabilization.

The video uses archival information from American Petroleum Institute videos, Congressional hearing testimony, news clips and more to reveal how the oil industry has avoided regulation in order to continue transporting dangerous Bakken crude by rail at maximum profit.

Warning: This video contains science, humor and political theater all in one — a volatile mix indeed!

WATCH: DeSmogCAST: The Science of Bomb Trains

Image credit: Oil train passing through Seattle, by Brendan DeMelle

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When a CN train carrying crude oil derailed and caught fire last weekend near Gogama, Ontario, it became the fifth loaded oil train to leave the tracks in North America in the past two months — and it's raising new questions about the volatility of diluted bitumen from Alberta's oilsands.

In the March 7th accident, several cars slid into the Mattagami River and ignited, leading local officials to issue a drinking water warning for the Mattagami First Nation.

The accident comes less than a month after another CN tanker train carrying crude derailed in the same region, about 200 kilometres north of Sudbury, spilling an estimated more than one million litres of diluted bitumen into local waterways. Twenty-nine cars left the tracks, causing an explosion that left fires burning for six days.

Officials are still scrambling to clean up the oil, which has spilled into a nearby creek, pond and section of Kasasway Lake, before spring thaw.

Gogama Village Inn owner Roxanne Veronneau told the Toronto Star, “People here are on pins and needles. The tracks run right through town … I’m sure that there’s going to be a lot of talk afterward that this shouldn’t be in the middle of our town.”

“It’s frightening and nerve-wracking, especially after what happened in Quebec.” 

The recent accident near Gogama is the third CN Rail derailment in Ontario in the last month and the fifth tanker train derailment continent-wide.

CN Rail experienced another tanker train derailment on March 5 near Horneypayne, Ontario. No oil spilled as a result of the derailment.

On February 16, a tanker train carrying fracked shale oil from North Dakota derailed in West Virginia, causing a spectacular explosion and forcing the evacuation of two towns. At least one of the derailed cars fell into the Kanawha River, a source of drinking water for two counties.

On March 6 a BNSF train carrying Bakken crude oil derailed south of Galena, Illinois. Twenty-one cars left the tracks and five cars ignited causing a large fireball and plumes of black smoke. Emergency responders spent three days working to bring that fire under control.

Growing Concern Over Volatility of Diluted Bitumen

The spate of recent tanker train explosions in Canada has raised concerns about the volatility of diluted bitumen, which contains highly flammable light hydrocarbons. Although the explosive qualities of Bakken oil — which was central to the tanker train disaster in Lac-Mégantic that left 47 dead — is well-documented, similar attention has not been paid to diluted bitumen, as DeSmogBlog recently reported.

As Railway Age reports, “before CN’s first Gogama wreck Feb. 14, there was a widespread and comforting belief among railroaders, regulators and, yes, even railroad reporters, that tar sands bitumen was much safer for transport by rail than light or conventional crude oils.”

“We now know, thanks to Gogama 1 and Gogama 2, that neither dilbit nor synbit, the synthetically diluted variant of tar sands oil, are safer than untreated Bakken crude.”

The hazardousness of crude oil blends is determined by its ignitability, which is determined by the blend’s most volatile component, Railway Age reports. Thus for diluted bitumen, the volatility of light hydrocarbons used as diluents is a critical factor in determining how fuel will respond in a tanker car accident.

Oil Change International recently calculated an average of 100,000 to 150,000 barrels of dilbit is loaded onto tanker trains at Alberta terminals each day.

“As it takes on average around nine days for a train to reach its destination, this means that at any given time there are between 18 and 27 trains carrying dilbit through the continent loaded with some 900,000 to 1.4 million barrels of dilbit,” Oil Change International’s Andy Rowell reports.

“Together with the roughly one million barrels per day of light, tight crude oil loaded in the Bakken and elsewhere around the continent the threat is enormous.”

Lessons Learned in Lac-Mégantic Not Enough

After the disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Transport Canada ordered all Class 111 tanker cars be upgraded to new standards. The new CPC-1232 standards required cars to be enhanced with half-head shields, fitting protections and normalized steel.

The enhanced cars were meant to prevent another accident like Lac-Mégantic from occurring.

However, as the Toronto Star reported, the Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the first derailment near Gogama showed the new CPC-1232 cars “performed similarly to those involved in the Lac-Mégantic accident.”

The cars exploded upon impact even though they were travelling at nearly half the speed of the cars involved in the Lac-Mégantic incident.

“The TSB has warned (Transport Canada) that this standard was not sufficient and that more needed to be done to provide an adequate level of protection,” the board’s investigation update states.

“Preliminary assessment of the CPC-1232-compliant tank cars involved in (the first Gogama derailment) demonstrates the inadequacy of this standard given the tank cars' similar performance to the legacy Class 111 tanks cars involved in the Lac-Mégantic accident.”

Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner Keith Stewart told the Toronto Star he’s worried more deaths will occur before the federal government revisits the tanker standards.

“The safety authorities have been warning that even the newer cars are not safe, and we have to wonder where the federal government is in this,” he said.

Image Credit: Transportation Safety Board of Canada

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“We’re seeing strong growth. We’re seeing some large accounts come back. The future is bright.”

According to the Portland Press Herald, that was the assessment of the future by Ryan Ratledge, the current chief operating officer for Central Maine and Quebec Railway, the railroad that runs through Lac-Megantic, Quebec.

Central Maine and Quebec Railway is the new name of the railroad that was operating the train that caused the oil train disaster in Lac Megantic in July 2013 that resulted in the death of 47 people. As DeSmogBlog reported previously, cost cutting measures by the railroad were directly linked to the cause of the accident. 

After the accident, the railway declared bankruptcy and the assets were purchased by Fortress Investment Group, which currently manages over $66 billion in assets.

The oil trains will start rolling through downtown Lac-Megantic again by 2016. Other “dangerous goods” are already being shipped on the railway.

While many see the tragedy in Lac-Megantic as a dire warning about what happens when the lust for profit goes unregulated with no regard for the environment or safety, for the multi-billion-dollar hedge fund Fortress, it is just another success story. Every crisis is an opportunity. Disaster capitalism works. 

Meanwhile in Lac-Megantic, the future isn’t quite so bright. The oil that spilled there contaminated much of downtown. And while the train tracks have been rebuilt, downtown has not. 

Rebuilt tracks in downtown Lac-Megantic in blast zone. Photo by Justin Mikulka.

The reopening of the Musi-Cafe, where many of the victims of the accident were that night, was announced this month. But the cafe isn’t reopening in the downtown area where it had been located. While the cafe was being built this year in a new commercial strip mall development above the town where businesses have relocated, the cafe’s original location was still a fenced-off work site where contaminated soil was being removed by the truck load.

Musi-Cafe being rebuilt in new location. Photo by Justin Mikulka.

And while the Musi-Cafe is opening, owner Yannick Gagne is still very much impacted by what happened on July 6, 2013. Gagne told the International Business Times that there are still some people who will look away from him when they see him on the street. "I know it's normal, but it puts a lot of pressure … I'm not the devil, I didn't put the train inside the Musi-Café."

He also didn’t put the oil into the Chaudiere River, a beautiful river that flows out of Lac-Megantic and is popular with fisherman. This year, on the one-year anniversary of the accident, the people of Lac Megantic released 5,000 new trout into the lake, but cleaning up oil spills takes more than just putting new fish in the water. 

Steve St-Pierre has been fishing the Chaudiere River his whole life and the river he knew no longer exists.

“No one comes down here anymore, and why would they?” St-Pierre told the Montreal Gazette. “Last year I led tourists on fishing trips all the time and that hasn’t happened yet this year. People still fish the lake but the river is pretty dead.”

100,000 liters of oil contaminated at least 30 kilometers of Chaudiere River. Photo by Justin Mikulka.

As the town recovers, the lawsuits also continue. The deadline for filings in the bankruptcy case is January 15, 2015. The goal was to get $500 million in compensation. So far the expected amount is $200 million.

So the oil trains will be back in Lac-Megantic by 2016 running on the same dangerous route as always. Residents had proposed rerouting the tracks around the town but that would have cost Fortress Investment Group money they weren’t willing to spend.

And there isn’t much hope for a town the size of Lac-Megantic to make this happen when the mayor of Toronto is not having any luck keeping the oil trains out of his major city.

While the U.S. is supposed to release new oil-by-rail regulations as soon as January 15, 2015, it remains to be seen when they will go into effect. And as reviewed on DeSmogBlog earlier this year, the regulations do very little to make the people living in the bomb train blast zones any safer.

There were two critical safety items that would have avoided or greatly reduced the damage in Lac-Megantic, from the train and oil that originated in the U.S.—properly securing the train so it didn’t roll down the hill into town, and not having explosive oil in the tank cars.

In September, the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration announced a Proposed Rule to Prevent Unintended Movement of Trains. Something as simple as making sure trains full of explosive oil have to be secured is still in the proposed rule stage.

That means it will not be part of the new regulations that are supposed to be out on January 15. It also means that lobbyists will be able to schedule private meetings with the regulators at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for the next several months to influence any final new regulations on securing trains, just like they did this year when they worked against any new oil-by-rail regulations.

One other safety factor not addressed in the new regulations is the actual oil and how it is more explosive than traditional crude oil.

After the Lac-Megantic disaster tests showed that the oil—which was from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota—was as explosive as gasoline, something that is not true about most crude oils but that is a characteristic of oil obtained by fracking tight shale formations like the Bakken. And that explained why downtown Lac-Megantic was consumed by explosions and fire.

After the new proposed federal regulations completely failed to address the issue of the Bakken oil’s volatility, there was still hope that North Dakota regulators would require the oil to be stabilized prior to shipment in rail cars.

Those hopes were dashed last month when North Dakota regulators released new “standards” allowing oil significantly more volatile and dangerous than the oil involved in the Lac-Megantic accident.

So when the oil trains return to Lac-Megantic in 2016, they can still carry the same dangerous oil they did in 2013—in the same unsafe rail cars. No executives of any rail or oil corporation will have been charged with any wrongdoing.

Just as BP is currently promoting that it’s “back to work in the Gulf of Mexico”, the future is indeed bright for the oil and rail companies who will be running oil trains through Lac-Megantic.

The same can’t be said for the 25 million people who, like the people of Lac-Megantic, continue to live in the blast zones of the bomb trains.

Photo credits: Justin Mikulka.

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