Railway CEO Faulted by Union for Blaming Engineer in Fatal Wreck
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The head of the railroad in the crash and fatal explosion in Quebec last week is ducking responsibility and prematurely blaming the train engineer for the disaster, a union official in Canada said.
Edward Burkhardt, chief executive officer of Rail World Inc., owner of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway Ltd., told reporters yesterday that the engineer failed to apply hand brakes before leaving the train on July 6. The engineer, identified by a union official as Tom Harding, parked the 72-car train hauling oil tankers overnight in Nantes, near the devastated Quebec town of Lac-Megantic.