Rail safety vs pipeline

I usually keep an eye on Canadian Mrs Gay Caswell's blog, because she is an ex politician and a Metis who lives in an indigenous area in western Canada and many of the social problems she discusses (and the problems against a corrupt political establishment) are very similar to what I had to cope with in Minnesota.

But this post made me sit up and say WTF:

On July 06,2013 Death was riding the rails from Nantes, Quebec, Canada . No crew, no mechanical controls were giving its direction.. A runaway train hauling 72 tankers filled with crude oil derailed as they approached the centre of Lac Megantic. The tank cars exploded and the oil caught fire killing 47 people and destroying many buildings in the town. The train was from North Dakota, U.S.A.

I never heard about that disaster. Did it get headlines, or did it happen when we were offline and not following the news? (a common problem here). 

Wikipedia has a very long discussion of the Lac-Megantic rail disaster.

If the disaster sounded familiar, because we watched the film Unstoppable which has the plot of a similar run away train: a 2010 movie that was filmed in Lolo's old stomping grounds of western Pennsylvania.

In that film, the heroes Denzel Washington and Chris Pine managed to stop the train before it took out the center of a fictional town.

but the plot was based on a very real near disaster:

Unstoppable was inspired by the 2001 CSX 8888 incident, in which a runaway train ultimately traveled 66 miles (106 km) through northwest Ohio.

Wikipedia discusses that incident here, which ended after a similar chase.

Knowlton and Forson successfully coupled onto the rear car, and slowed the train by applying the dynamic brakes on the chase locomotive. Once the runaway had slowed to 11 miles per hour (18 km/h), CSX trainmaster Jon Hosfeld ran alongside the train, climbed aboard, and shut down the engine.

Alas, in the Lac-Megantic, the cabin had had a fire which had to be put out, but no one noticed the train no longer had brakes nor did anyone notice it started to go downhill on it's own, without an engineer. No one noticed until a fire fighter who had fought the original fire saw the train go by without lights and too fast: ten minutes before the derailment.

in other words, despite the fact that both a previous disaster and a major Hollywood film outlined the case what happens when there is only one engineer on a train, and when something happens that causes the air breaks to fail, no one seemed to be worried about safety, hence the the train was disaster waiting to occur.

As I said: not my area of expertise, nor do I have knowledge about pipelines.

But Mrs C. does have an opinion:

she questions two things about the disaster: Why was the oil from the USA being transported via Canada on inferior rail lines by a company that had a poor safety record, and a company that ignored the rule about two engineers per train.

The second question is why do the environmentalist oppose pipelines which are in rural area and a rupture would not cause a major loss of life... and she questions why these activists use indigenous "leaders" to push their (i.e. white environmentalists) agenda.

well that sounds familiar: often the MSM can't tell the difference between an activist who parrots the progressive agenda and the actual tribal leaders who are elected by the actual tribal members. Every time I read such propaganda, all I can do is shake my head at the MSM ignorance of AmerIndian politics.

Heck, the press hasn't even notice Elizabeth Warren got a job as a "minority" without showing a CDIB  card, which is the proof of your tribal connections (yes, many Americans have AmerIndian ancestors, but the affirmative action is for those living traditional ways, often in poverty from very real discrimination, not a white person living a middle class main stream life with few social disadvantages and little or no knowledge of tribal customs or tribal customs).

the poverty on the reservations is very real, and as a physician, I had to cope with the understaffed and underfunded hospital/clinic, (a bit improved now that the tribes have taken over their health care and are using the casino money to improve the facilities and hire staff in a more efficient way).

But working there we had to cope with real problems like alcoholism and drug abuse from the stress of poverty and stress of living in two cultures and the collapse of the family often due to substance abuse, and too often the do gooders trying to help treat  you like a child instead of a warrior.

As for progressive "green" groups hiring professional "indigenous" activists to push the "green agenda":

Do any of them notice if these ideas were implemented it would be a disaster for rural dwellers of all races.

As Mrs. Caswell writes:

Being in the North- West without a truck is like being in the Wild West without a horse. Trucks are run by fossil fuel usually called gas. No one gets to a medical appointment by dragon boat , not even a canoe. We get there by air ambulance filled with fossil fuel, a fifteen passenger van or a personal truck filled with fossil fuel.

yup. Been there, done that: when I worked in northern Minnesota, our nearest referral hospital was 35 miles away, but for specialty care (e.g. major trauma) we had to air evac them 200 miles, usually by helicopter but if the weather was bad, by fixed wing from the airport 30 miles away.

Until you get "safe nukes" or efficient alternative energy that is cheap, ordinary folks will have to rely on fossil fuel for transportation. Yes, electric cars are the future, but what happens when the electric company turns off your current, as is now happening in California due to the fire hazard?

At least here in the Philippines, most middle class folk have a generator, and we have our own well which was lifesaving when we were hit by a typhoon and flooding that contaminated the city water supply.

Ah, but what would happen if we couldn't get diesel? Presumably we'd be able to cope with biodiesel from coconut oil, but that might take time. Oh well: we still own one waterbuffalo to pull a cart so we could get rice to eat from our farm....

but cities rely on fossil fuel, and there are lots of disaster movies about what happens when the infrastructure collapses.

but in the meanwhile, finding oil, fracking, and transporting petroleum will be a logistical imperative if you don't want civilization to collapse.

and that means you need an infrastructure to drill/frack, and to refine the product, and a way to transport the petroleum to the refinery and then to the local gas stations etc.

So as Mrs. Caswell reminds one:

Fossil fuel needs development of oil patches and pipe lines. Pipe lines do not go through towns and cities like Lac Megantic. They don’t need tankers, box cars and rail roads that are often old and need repair.

Once the pipe line is in place there is less need for work crews and staff...There is a 43 per cent increase in rail road workers testing positive for drugs.

Pipe lines don’t toke up . A lot of railroad workers do.

On the other hand, self righteous social justice warriors are more likely to sabotage pipelines.

because oil evil, don't cha know.

at least it's "evil" to all those affluent white kids in the US and Europe who never had to confront poverty or reality of the modern world.

Could they cope with the logistics of the modern world, be it growing and transporting rice to the market (as our family does), air evacuating a patient by a helicopter (as my son in law does), or as ordinary people risking their lives to cope with a potential disaster: