Firefighters disabled brakes of runaway Canadian train
When volunteer firemen turned off engines of locomotive to douse a blaze, air brakes lost pressure and fuel train rolled off without driver
The Quebec train disaster occurred because volunteer firefighters inadvertently shut down its air brakes as they dealt with an earlier fire, the head of the railway that operated the train said.
The death toll in the disaster reached 13 on Monday and could reach 50, with 37 people listed as missing and residents doubting any of those will be found alive.
The runaway train of oil tankers derailed in Lac-Megantic shortly after 1am on Saturday, exploding and destroying the centre of the town of 6,000. It had been parked at a siding on a slope near the town of Nantes, 12 kilometres west of Lac-Megantic.
The Nantes volunteer fire service was called out late on Friday night to deal with an engine fire on one of the train's locomotives. Nantes Fire Chief Patrick Lambert said the crew had switched off the engine as they extinguished a "good-sized" blaze in the engine, probably caused by a broken fuel or oil pipe.
The engine had been left on by the train's engineer to maintain pressure in the air brakes, Ed Burkhardt, chairman of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway (MMA), said. As the pressure gradually "leaked off", the air brakes failed and the train began to roll downhill, he said.
The fire service contacted a local MMA dispatcher in Farnham, Quebec, after the blaze was out. "We told them what we did and how we did it," Lambert said.
Asked whether there had been any discussion about the brakes, he replied: "There was no discussion of the brakes at that time. We were there for the train fire. As for the inspection of the train after the fact, that was up to them."
Video: Canada train disaster: residents wait to return home
It was not immediately clear what the MMA dispatcher did after speaking with the fire service. Burkhardt said the fire service should have also tried to contact the train's operator, who was staying at a nearby hotel. "If the engine was shut off, someone should have made a report to the local railroad about that," he said.
Given the devastation in the town centre, few residents expect any of the missing to be found alive. The coroner's office asked relatives to bring in personal items belonging to the missing so specialists could extract DNA samples for identification.
If the death toll reaches 50, it would be Canada's deadliest accident since 229 people died in 1998 when a Swissair jet crashed into the sea off eastern Canada.
Asked when the missing people would be declared dead, police spokesman Benoit Richard said: "When we find the bodies."
Andre Gendron, 38, who lives on a wooded property next to the rail yard in Nantes, said he was tending a campfire outside his trailer on Friday night when he heard the fire trucks.
"About five minutes after the firemen left, I felt the vibration of a train moving down the track. I then saw the train move by without its lights on," Gendron said.
"I found it strange its lights weren't on and thought it was an electrical problem on board. It wasn't long after that I heard the explosion. I could see the light from the fires in Lac-Megantic."
Federal Transport Minister Denis Lebel said inspectors from his department had examined the locomotive on July 5, the day before the disaster, and found nothing wrong.
Canadian crash investigators say they will look at the two sets of brakes on the train: the air brakes and the handbrakes.
Burkhardt said that after the pressure leaked out of the air brakes, the handbrakes would not have been strong enough to keep the train in place.
During the course of the day police relaxed the security perimeter around the centre of Lac-Megantic, a lakeside town near the border with the US state of Maine. Authorities said about 1,500 of the 2,000 people evacuated would be allowed to return home over the next few days.
