Deadly train crash in Quebec tied to technical failure

Officials in Canada say a recent deadly train disaster in Quebec possibly happened due to an engineer’s failure to set a series of hand brakes.

Quebec provincial police inspector Michel Forget said Wednesday that the July 6 explosive train crash killed 20 people and left 30 people unaccounted for with small hope of being found alive.

He added all the 30 people were “missing and most probably dead in this tragedy,” nothing that authorities had met with their families.

The freight train that was carrying oil crashed on July 6 after it began to roll downhill without a conductor towards the town of Lac-Megantic, around 250 kilometers (155 miles) east of Montreal, near the US border and the state of Maine.

It caused a huge blaze that tore through part of Lac-Megantic and forced around 2,000 people to flee their homes.

On Wednesday, chairman of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, Edward Burkhardt said an engineer had failed to set brakes properly on the train.

“Adequate hand brakes were not set on this train and it was the engineer’s responsibility to set them,” Burkhardt said during his visit to the scene, adding, “We wouldn’t have had this incident,” if the hand brakes been properly applied.

Burkhardt had previously put the blame on firefighters in the town of Nantes, where train had been stopped for a crew change, saying they unwittingly released the train’s brakes when they turned off the main locomotive’s engines to extinguish a small fire several hours before the disastrous incident.

However, he said on Wednesday that “The fact that when the air brakes released on the locomotive the train ran away would indicate that the hand brakes were not properly applied.”

He also revealed that the train’s engineer has been suspended without pay. “I don’t think he’ll be back working for us. That is my personal opinion,” Burkhardt said.

“It’s hard to explain why someone didn’t do something. We think he applied some hand brakes but the question is: did he apply enough of them?” he added.