Phantom train explosion in Lac Mégantic

[Malthus]

Yeah, a subpar number of handbreaks is likely good enough when the airbreaks are engaged. However, in this case you had the unusual circumstances of the firefighters shutting down the train, which meant the airbreaks would eventually give out. So years of half-assing it finally caught up with him. 

But if it's years of half-assing by the driver, it's the company's responsibility.
One fluke, you can't predict it.  But regular "half-assing", the company should have procedures to identify this and to correct it.

Depends on whether you are talking civil or criminal responsibility. There is an ongoing criminal investigation.

Civilly, the company would be on the hook for damages based on the notion of vicarious liability (I am assuming that is true under Civil Law) - that is, where an employee commits a tort in the course of his or her employment in doing what is clearly part of his of her job, the company is liable for those acts for damages. Really, the question is whether it is covered by the company's insurer. There is no need to prove that the company was at fault directly, as all acts within the sphere of what an employee is supposed to be doing as part of his or her job are imputed to the company.

Criminally, it is a different story. There, there are likely to be charges based on criminal negligence. I don't know how those would apply, but I suspect they cannot apply vicariously; that is, I assume the individuals and entities must be held directly responsible.

The difficulty in this case is that the railways went from having two crew members to having one. This guy was a person with many years of experience. If he was 'half-assing', no doubt he knew exactly how to get away with it on a routine basis. 

[Malthus]

Seeing those pics of the town, I'm shocked at the before and after pics of the town center! Huge destruction of buildings for two or three streets into the center of town!   

Yeah, it's like the place went through a bombing raid in WW2. 

[Malthus]

One thing to note is that the driver was never told his locomotive was on fire.  The CEO of Railword (owner of MMA) claims it was the firefighters responsibility to find him and bring him on site.
We know that someone from MMA was there, we know they were informed of the fire.  The employee present was not an engineer, it was not the train's driver. 

This sounds to me like the driver wasn't likely responsible, if this is as reported, then he had nothing to do with securing the train after the fire. Why wouldn't the company find him? How would the fire fighters know who to contact? I would think the company can call or page the engineer.

The problem alleged is that the hand-brakes were not set sufficiently. Each car in the train has hand brakes. A certain amount need to be set - manually - by climbing into each car and physically turning the wheel.

A possible scenario is that everyone on the scene assumed that the driver set the hand brakes correctly before he checked in for the night. However, perhaps he'd gotten slack, and didn't bother, at the end of a long shift, to set as many of them as he was supposed to - knowing that the air brakes would be on also. With the fire, the air brakes were shut down. The people on the scene didn't attach any importance to that, because of course the hand brakes would keep the train in place; if they had contacted the driver, he may have realized 'oh shit, I didn't actually secure those brakes properly - better do that now!', but they didn't.

In that scenario, both the driver and the guys on the scene were guilty of negligence - the driver for not setting the brakes properly, and the guys on the scene, for not asking the driver if he did. But of the two, the driver was more at fault. 

[Malthus]

By the way, has any news emerged as to what started the fire on the locomotive in the first place?

[viper37]

By the way, has any news emerged as to what started the fire on the locomotive in the first place?

Yes, it was an oil leak according to the taxi driver who came to get the engineer.  Oil was sprinkling.

The Nantes firefighter were at their fourth extinguished fire on MMA trains since 2006.