Vol. 79/No. 38      October 26, 2015

Militant/John Steele

“Never again!!!” reads sign at Oct. 11 march in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, where 2013 oil train derailment, explosion and fire killed 47. Protesters blamed rail bosses, government for disaster.

The demonstration was organized to press the authorities to bar the company, which took over the railroad last year, from transporting dangerous goods through the town until the tracks are repaired and rebuilt so trains can run safely on them.

On July 6, 2013, a runaway oil train parked at the town of Nantes rolled down a seven-mile incline in the early morning hours, derailed and exploded, killing 47 people and destroying Lac-Mégantic’s downtown area.

The train was parked there because the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway, the previous owner, had gotten special dispensation from Transport Canada, the federal government’s regulatory agency, to run with a one-man “crew.” When engineer Tom Harding completed his 12-hour shift, he followed instructions to park the train. He left the engine running, powering the air brakes, and set a number of hand brakes, to prevent the train from rolling.

But a fire broke out on the engine, the result of poor company maintenance. It was extinguished by a crew of volunteer firemen, who turned the engine off, not knowing what the result would be.

Woken up by the company and informed of the fire, Harding volunteered to go back to the train and make sure everything was OK, but the company told him not to worry about it, they had dispatched someone else to look things over. With the engine off, the air brakes bled out and the train began rolling down the incline.

The government has charged Harding and train controller Richard Labrie, both members of the United Steelworkers union, in an effort to frame them up for the disaster. They both face possible life in prison on 47 counts of criminal negligence causing death, along with Jean Demaître, then a manager with the now-defunct Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway.

Harding is viewed by most everyone in the town as a scapegoat for those really responsible for the disaster — the rail bosses and their compliant ally, Transport Canada.

“Railway workers have concern both for their own safety and the safety of others,” Thomas Walsh, attorney for Harding, told the rally to cheers. Walsh was one of the featured speakers. “They join in these demands with citizens here and environmentalists.”

Walsh introduced retired Amtrak locomotive engineer Fritz Edler from Washington, D.C., who had served as an official of the rail union SMART there.

Edler is also an executive member of Railroad Workers United, a cross-craft group that fights for rail safety. The organization adopted a resolution Oct. 7 detailing the dangerous working conditions imposed on railroad workers by the profit-hungry rail bosses and demanding the government drop all charges against Harding and Labrie.

“Our goal is not to stop the trains, or even to stop the transport of oil,” said André Blais, of the Citizens Coalition that called the action. “Our goal is to force the rail company and the government to take responsibility for what happened in 2013 and to force them to stop it from happening again.”

“I left the Musi-Café one minute before the explosion,” said Jean Paradis, a computer technician. Twenty-seven of those killed were in the café. “Twenty-five years ago you had a whole bunch of guys on a railway crew. Now it is down to one or two. It doesn’t make sense.”

One contingent was made up of women in white T-shirts with the names of relatives who were killed in the inferno. “My loved ones died. The reason this can’t happen again,” the shirts said on the back.

Jacques Breton, the mayor of Nantes, helped to marshal the demonstration. He recently drafted a resolution that was passed by the Nantes Municipal Council saying that the catastrophe “was the result of several breaches and negligence by the MMA company and to the non-rigorous surveillance by Transport Canada.”

The resolution was endorsed unanimously by a conference of delegates from 300 Quebec municipalities last month.

“Transport Canada has to act and change the regulations,” Breton said. “We need real inspection of the tracks here.”

‘July 6, 2013, Never again!’

Citizens Coalition spokespeople encouraged participants to attend a previously scheduled meeting at the Sports Centre for area candidates in the Oct. 19 federal election to debate issues posed by the disaster.

Some 300 people, many of them who had joined the march, attended the debate, which featured candidates from the ruling Conservative Party, the Greens, the New Democratic Party, the Liberal Party and the Bloc Québécois.

Things were pretty tame until the floor was opened to questions and comments. One speaker after another took the floor to blast the government and railroad officials.

As the chairperson tried to shut down the meeting, Danielle Champagne, one of those who marched with a white shirt, grabbed a microphone.

“The families of the victims are trying to rebuild our lives,” she said. “The government needs to remove our concerns about rail safety. This is a cry from the heart.”

She got a standing ovation.

“I was encouraged to see the turnout of 1,000 yesterday,” said Blais the day after the demonstration in a discussion that included André Lachapelle of the Sécu-Rail Committee, which has widely circulated photographs of the rotted tracks. “I think we should go to Harding’s next court hearing here to show support,” said Blais.

The Dec. 1 hearing in Lac-Mégantic will discuss proposals from the government to move the trial. Crown prosecutors argue that too many people in the area speak only French while Harding’s mother tongue is English. Their real concern is the widespread backing for the two framed-up rail workers.

“The companies try to do the most they can with the fewest workers possible,” Richard Bolduc, a member of Local 299 of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, told socialist workers introducing the Militant to workers in the neighborhood. He works at the Tafisa factory here, the largest particle-board plant in North America. “The top leaders are responsible for what happened here, not the two train workers charged. We can’t live without the railroad — but it has to be safe.”

Beverly Bernardo and Michel Prairie contributed to this article.
 
 
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