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Two-Hundred Years Proves Railroads Will Never Prioritize Our Safety Over Their Profits
By Robert Bellefluer - La Coalition of Citizens and Organizations Committed to Rail Safety, April 29, 2023
On Saturday, April 29, 2023, prior to the screening of Academy Award-nominated director Philippe Falardeau (“The Good Lie”) and co-producer Nancy Guerin’s four-episode documentary series, Lac-Megantic: This Is Not an Accident, a press conference is scheduled at 2:00 P.M. Eastern in the Alterna Savings Room on the ground floor of the Centre for Social Innovation,192 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, ON M5T 2C2, Canada. Residents of Lac-Mégantic along with members of Railroad Workers United and the Sierra Club are among a lineup of those who are demanding railroad safety now.
A tragedy that should have been prevented, Lac-Mégantic’s Citizens Coalition for Railroad Safety member Gilbert Carett recalls, “Years before July 6, 2013, residents reported the industry for rolling poorly maintained, longer and heavier convoys carrying more crude oil, propane, and other chemicals on worn-out rails.” He cites a conflict of interest when, “security inspections are made by the companies themselves and are approved by their own authorities.”
No train derailment in our railroading history showcases the systemic failure of private railroad industry more comprehensively than the tragedy of Lac-Mégantic in Quebec, Canada, when a runaway train disaster sparked a series of events revealing an abyss of corporate greed, regulatory capture, disregard for human life, and scapegoating embedded in daily private corporate operations. “We call out for a public investigation of the July 6, 2013 destruction of our downtown,” insists Carett.
From the decimation of Lac-Mégantic to a recent intentional release and burn in East Palestine, OH that ignited a chemical so deadly its use as a weapon was banned in warfare after WWI, North America can only draw upon a single conclusion: “These events reveal completely that after 200 years of North American railroading, private ownership of this industry can never possibly work. It never has, and it never will,” affirms Karl ‘Fritz’ Edler, Special Representative of Railroad Workers United, Washington D.C.
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