It's like one of those horror movies where a nightmare repeats itself. One weekend evening this summer a runaway train carrying high volatility petroleum smashed into the town center of Lac Mégantic Québec, overturned, caught fire and exploded, releasing a sea of burning oil over the town center where people were celebrating the end of the work week in pubs, taverns, cafés. 47 were burnt beyond recognition and had to be identified by DNA.
Now it's happening all over again in Gainford, Alberta. Only, this time they were luckier! No one died but people were evacuated for several days - stressing! - and their land is now contaminated. Long term environmental damage has yet to be assessed. It's still early days..
internal blog links:
The following link itself contains several backlinks dealing with the blowback from radical, ideologically driven deregulation.
http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/08/beating-dead-horse-deregulation-why-it.html
When will we wake up and smell the coffee? Transport of petroleum products by rail has increased "exponentially" over the past decade. Meanwhile, meanwhile.. deregulation (driven by neoconservative ideology, NOT by actual need) has gutted regulatory mechanisms whose function was to maintain public security. In a pathetic attempt to win libertarian, anti-government support by penny pinching at the regulatory level, the rail industry was asked to self-regulate. Is that not a formula for disaster?
report_pins_blame_on_weak_government_regulation.
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