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.