{"id":22451,"date":"2017-01-11T16:54:57","date_gmt":"2017-01-11T21:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22451"},"modified":"2017-01-11T16:54:57","modified_gmt":"2017-01-11T21:54:57","slug":"what-have-we-learned-from-the-lac-megantic-oil-train-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22451","title":{"rendered":"What Have We Learned From the Lac-Megantic Oil Train Disaster?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What Have We Learned From the Lac-Megantic Oil Train Disaster?<\/a><\/h3>\n
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\"Lac-Megantic's<\/p>\n<\/header>\n

Brian Stevens first learned about the Lac-Megantic disaster \u2014 in which an\u00a0unattended oil train caught fire and exploded<\/a>, killing 47 people in the Quebec town \u2014 when he saw the news reports on\u00a0TV<\/span>.<\/div>\n
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Stevens is currently\u00a0National Rail Director for\u00a0Unifor<\/a>, Canada\u2019s largest private sector union, but he previously spent 16 years as an air-brake mechanic working on trains. At a\u00a0recent conference in Ottawa\u00a0examining lessons<\/a>\u00a0from the 2013 Lac-Megantic rail disaster,\u00a0he recounted his reaction to seeing those initial scenes of destruction.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>That ain\u2019t Canada, that can\u2019t happen in North America because our brake systems won\u2019t allow that,\u201d he said when he eventually learned the images he was seeing were from Canada.\u00a0\u201cMy heart sank \u2026 It was crushing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stevens went on to explain his opinion of the root cause of the problem, summing up the challenges in Canada with one simple statement:\u00a0\u201cThe railways write the\u00a0rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also placed blame on the deregulation of the Canadian rail industry that began more than three decades\u00a0ago.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>Lac Megantic started in 1984. It was destined to happen,\u201d said Stevens, referring to the start of that\u00a0deregulation.<\/p>\n

One example of the effects of\u00a0deregulation can be seen in the cuts to\u00a0the number of people conducting inspections, from\u00a0over 7,000 railway and rail car inspectors in 1984, down\u00a0to \u201cless than 2,000\u201d now,<\/a>\u00a0according to\u00a0Stevens.<\/p>\n

He didn’t mince words about what he’s seen change in the three years since Canada’s worst rail\u00a0accident.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe railway barons continue to exist and continue to drive the industry and the government,\u201d said\u00a0Stevens.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Lac-Megantic before and after the oil train explosion. Credit:<\/em>\u00a0Claude Grenier, Studio Num\u00e9ra,\u00a0Lac-M\u00e9gantic.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

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What Have We Learned From the Lac-Megantic Oil Train Disaster? Brian Stevens first learned about the Lac-Megantic disaster \u2014 in which an\u00a0unattended oil train caught fire and exploded, killing 47 people in the Quebec town \u2014 when he saw the news reports on\u00a0TV. Stevens is currently\u00a0National Rail Director for\u00a0Unifor, Canada\u2019s largest private sector union, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5317,11782,14659,588,14660,3644],"class_list":["post-22451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-desmog-blog","tag-justin-mikulka","tag-lac-megantic","tag-oil","tag-oil-train-disaster","tag-oil-transport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22452,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22451\/revisions\/22452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}