Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Disaster profiteering in full bloom at Lac-Megantic?

Here's a fascinating story from CBC about the clean-up after the Lac-Megantic train derailment.

The Mayor of the town claims that Ed Burkhardt, the CEO of the company that owned the train that exploded the town, has stopped paying the clean-up crews.

Furthermore, she tells us that the town has now stepped in and forwarded $4 million to the clean-up crews to keep them going.

Let's do some math. If the clean-up crews were on the scene within 24 hours (which they weren't) they would by the time of the Mayor's press conference have had 384 hours to clean up the wreckage, assuming they worked around the clock.

A big power shovel or mobile crane runs about $250/hour. Let's assume there are at least six on the site, which is more than we've seen in any photos of the clean-up. Let's assume those six machines have been running 24/7.

Let's assume there are another half-dozen small loaders or trucks taking away debris at roughly $125/hr.

We'll assume they have been working 24/7 for the past 22 days as well.

Let's assume that the boots-on-the-ground number a hundred people, which they don't, and each one is being paid $40/hr, which they're not, and they work 24/7 too.

That adds up to $2,400,000 cost to date for the clean-up.

So why was the Mayor forced to fork over $4 million to keep the clean-up crews on the job?



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