I've been watching the news coverage of the Lac Megantic aftermath...
Nobody could see it coming...
Guess we should move those rail tracks so that when trains full of hazardous goods inexplicably explode they don't do it in the downtown of a small town near you...
What I find baffling is that nobody so far in the mainstream media has drawn the parallels with the Weyauwega disaster almost twenty years ago.
An 82 car train loaded with hazardous materials and crewed by a single employee derails in the downtown of a small town...
Sound familiar?
Not only that, but the guy who called the shots at that railroad also called the shots at the railroad that owns the Lac Megantic disaster.
His name is Ed Burkhardt, and he thinks having more than one employee aboard an 80 car train carrying hazardous goods through a small town would be a gross violation of his right to maximize profits.
I think it's safe to say that there have been plenty of folks who have protested the single-operator policy that this management imposes, and all of them feared that this could happen.
We've seen this coming since 1996.
The solution isn't to move the railway tracks.
The solution is to remove management who put profits ahead of safety.
I'm actually astounded that someone else knows what Ed has done before in Wauewega and the 1 man show forprofit is bbrilliant isn't it. The moment that evil monsters hand touched our property I sensed danger. Also I quickly learned about stock markets...
ReplyDeleteEdward Burkhardt, CEO of Rail World Incorporated, was hailed 15 years ago as an Ayn Randian "achiever" in "A Better Way to Run a Railroad," originally published in the May 1998 issue of the Atlas Society's Navigator magazine.
ReplyDelete"in the small community of Weyauwega, Wisconsin, in March 1996. Thirty-five cars derailed, almost half of them containing liquefied petroleum gas. One car exploded, but the heroic efforts of the train’s conductor minimized the extent of the fire. No one was injured... Fines were levied against the railroad, primarily for nit-picking violations of regulations whose impact on safety was questionable. For example, Wisconsin Central had been experimenting with a one-man crew on certain trains..."
http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/2013/07/dagny-taggart-would-smile.html