Peggy Curran, Postmedia News
LAC-MÉGANTIC, Que. — As the confirmed death toll climbed here Monday, the head of the company whose runaway train was at the centre of this tragedy says he is certain a locomotive was tampered with.
“We have evidence of this,” said Ed Burkhardt, chairman of The Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway.
“But this is an item that needs further investigation. We need to talk to some people we believe have knowledge of this.”
A probe by the Transportation Safety Board is underway to determine what caused the company’s parked, unattended train, which included five locomotives and 72 tanker cars, to roll toward the town of 6,000 early Saturday with its load of crude oil and derail in the city centre.
The ensuing crash and explosions destroyed a stunning swath of the downtown and are now being blamed for 13 confirmed deaths.
With the number of people missing estimated at 50, that death toll is expected to climb in the coming days.
TSB investigators have inspected several of the locomotives involved, and have obtained two black boxes that contain data about the train’s brakes, throttle position and speed at the time of the incident.
So far, the majority of the questions surrounding the cause of the accident have focused on a fire that occurred on one of locomotives in Nantes, 11 kilometres outside Lac-Mégantic. The fire apparently started after the train’s conductor parked, applied the brakes and retired from his 12-hour shift.
But according to Rob Smith, National Legislative Director with Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, the possibility of vandals releasing the manual brakes is slim.
“It’s not as easy as it might seem. You would have to know what you’re doing,” he said.
Burkhardt maintains all operating rules were complied with, and said his company has launched its own internal investigation, which has been limited by rescue efforts and parallel investigations underway since Saturday. He said he does not believe that the event was malicious or an act of terrorism.
As firefighters give investigators increasing access to the scene, police said, they have been discovering more remains. Parts of the blast site remain too dangerous for investigators to probe, but authorities said Monday they anticipate finding more bodies as they get closer to the centre of the crash.
A forensics bone specialist has also been called in to help with the investigation. Only three bodies have been identified.
Richard Vaillancourt said that 25 social workers were available in Lac-Mégantic, and that the challenge for survivors of the explosion is a lack of closure about the missing and the dead.
“Without any closure their grief is in a state of suspension,” said Vaillancourt. “They won’t truly begin the grieving process until they know for sure their loved ones are dead. This could take a long time.”
For their part, residents Jean Barrett and Lynn Beaudoin say they don’t really believe they’ll be going home any time soon.
Barrett, 84, was in remarkably good spirits for someone still wearing the flowered blouse, pink velour slacks and pink slippers she had on as she watched an episode of Criminal Minds early Saturday morning.
“We are just lucky we keep late hours.”
Sitting in a wheelchair, with a cardigan perched on her shoulders, a banana and a bun wrapped for later in her lap, Barrett waited for her son-in-law, Raymond, to wheel her back to the car and the motel where they’ve been staying since they fled the family homestead as flames engulfed the houses and trees around them.
Her daughter Lynn was having a harder time holding it together. The memory of their terrifying flight is too sharp. She said she’s worried about where they’ll live until they are allowed to return to the house where her mother grew up. She said she can’t help fretting about a beloved cat named Mama they lost along the way.
Mayor Colette Roy-Laroche said town officials and provincial experts expect to unveil a plan today that should allow as many as 1,500 of the 2,500 residents forced from their homes by the fire and explosion to return within a matter of days.
On Sunday, the mayor had hoped people who live in the outer edges of the danger zone would have started going home by Monday. But at an afternoon news conference, authorities cited unspecified concerns that compelled them to push the return back a little longer.
As the workweek began, there were a few weak signs that the community has begun to claw its way back from the weekend’s devastation.
A handful of businesses destroyed in the commercial centre of town — including the Caisse Populaire, the Jean Coutu pharmacy and the local newspaper — have already set up temporary offices outside the disaster area. The National Bank has installed automatic teller machines outside the high school, which now serves as a temporary shelter for the minority of people who haven’t been able to bunk in with family or friends.
First thing Monday morning, an insurance investigator from Montreal, acting on behalf of both residential and commercial clients, could be found taking pictures and inspecting rail cars loaded with crude oil still parked on the tracks in nearby Nantes, the scene of a fire late Friday night, little more than an hour before the train derailment in Lac Mégantic.
But the vision of plumes of water once again soaring from firefighters’ hoses signalled the fragility of the town’s comeback. Officials were unable to say the spray was strictly precautionary or the result of another flare up in the area where 72 rail cars hauling crude oil set the early morning sky ablaze.
