Re: Lac-Megantic trial in Canada
Author: BOB2
Date: 11-24-2017 - 19:04
Even in Canada, the mob has gone wild, and a "show trial" befitting of Stalin is taking place, to pander the not unreasonably angered masses, for the multiple failures, from employee intimidation, failure to properly relieve the employee and send personnel to properly secure the train, to a non existent safety culture at this RR, to gross mismanagement, poor training on the part of the fire crew, and no meaningful emergency communications between the fire crew and the RR, and with the to a failure by Canada's own regulatory agencies to hold this operation accountable, despite repeated failures.
And so, justice cries out, that someone needs to be blamed.
I probably would have put up a bigger stink, but I had a real union back then, and real regulators, still able to be used to counter stupid like this, and I only met a few officials dumb enough to endanger the public like this on the SP in my career.
This happened on a third tier short line, with an autocratic and poorly staffed business model, run by someone with what not a few have called a less than stellar skill set, and performance issues, when it came to safety, and operations.
So, if you're that engineer, do you wait for your relief, that you know he is not sending, or do you set the air and get off, dead on the hours of service? In the "belief that your employer is sending qualified relief. And, not knowing, that local firemen will be called a short while later because of a stack fire, shut down the engine and do who really knows, from the report, what? And later, the train of flammable oil rolls merrily away killing all of those people......
It sure ain't a Murdoch mystery what went on here, so we'll see what kind of case they manage to make against this poor bastard.... As though he's really the one who was actually criminally negligent in this sordid and entirely avoidable tragedy?