Search warrant lists earlier train problems
MMA collision in Maine began similarly to events that led to fiery disaster
MMA locomotives rolled down a track four years ago after being left on a slope without hand brakes deployed; and flames had been seen in one engine, according to an SQ warrant.
The July 6 derailment in LacMégantic wasn’t the first time that Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway had problems with its locomotives, according to a search-warrant application filed by the Sûreté du Québec.
Four years ago, the company had an incident in which its locomotives were left on a hill without hand brakes applied — similar to what happened in the LacMégantic tragedy. In that case, which occurred in Brownville Junction, Maine, in February 2010, the three locomotives then rolled down the hill, and collided with another MMA vehicle on the tracks.
And an MMA employee told SQ investigators that he had previously seen flames coming from a locomotive chimney, mainly when it was ascending a slope and the engine was working hard.
That information is contained in a search-warrant application, filed by the SQ on July 24, 2013, in Sherbrooke. The provincial police force was seeking permission to search MMA’s offices in Farnham as part of its investigation into charges of criminal negligence causing death related to the Lac-Mégantic derailment.
The Gazette obtained a copy of the 33-page application, which was heavily edited. It was signed by Sgt. Mathieu Bouchard, an investigator with the SQ’s crimes against persons division in Montreal.
The warrant application also says MMA employees who went to Lac-Mégantic to respond to calls about a fire in the train yard early in the morning of July 6 didn’t realize at first that it was the company’s own oil train that was burning.
The search-warrant application provides some new information about what happened in the hours before the train derailed. On July 5 about 11:30 p.m., a fire broke out in a locomotive chimney on an unattended MMA train that was parked on the company’s tracks at Nantes, a village about nine kilometres uphill from Lac-Mégantic.
According to the Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the accident, an insufficient number of brakes were applied to the 72-car train after the fire was extinguished.
The train then rolled down the hill, picking up speed before crashing and derailing in Lac-Mégantic, about 90 minutes after the locomotive fire had been reported. The accident killed 47 people, destroyed part of downtown Lac-Mégantic and spilled six million litres of crude oil into the environment.
In Nantes, the local fire department responded to the fire, and shut down the lead locomotive by pushing the emergency-fuel control button and shutting off its fuses, according to the SQ’s warrant application.
The part of the warrant that summarizes the SQ’s interview with train engineer Tom Harding, who was in charge of the train that night, was completely blacked out. But later in the document, the SQ says that Harding had reported “abnormal smoke” leaking from the head of the train that was parked in Nantes.
A taxi driver who picked up Harding in Nantes that evening told the SQ that he noticed the locomotive was emitting more smoke than usual, and later told investigators that he saw oil coming from the locomotive’s chimney and falling like mist.
A second MMA employee, Jean Noël Busque, the company’s track-maintenance foreman, told the SQ his boss asked him to go to Nantes, where he checked the locomotive with one of the local firefighters, the warrant application said.
Busque told the SQ he got to Nantes about 12:40 a.m., looked around the site with a flashlight and saw there was no longer a fire. But, he said, he did not go inside the locomotive.
According to the warrant, in a heavily-edited section, a third MMA employee was going to apply the hand brakes on the train.
When MMA employees began to get calls about a fire in the Lac-Mégantic train yard around 1:30 a.m. on July 6, they told the SQ investigators the didn’t realize at first it was one of the company’s trains.
Busque was sent to LacMégantic by his boss to check out reports of a fire in the train yards there. When he saw the size of the fire, the SQ document says, Busque went back to Nantes, where he saw that the company’s oil train was no longer there.
The SQ’s warrant application was approved, and the agency searched MMA’s Farnham offices beginning July 25. They seized dozens of documents there, including employee files, training information, copies of collective agreements, inspection reports, time sheets, safety manuals and emergency-response plans.
A taxi driver … saw oil coming from the locomotive’s chimney and falling like mist.