A viral video showed a crew of CN rail workers surrounded by flames in Armstrong, Ontario. One worker can be heard saying, “This [the fire] could potentially overtake us here. This is getting a little scary.”
The rail workers handled the situation courageously and were evacuated safely. Their union, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) denounced CN for knowingly sending workers into the region for the sake of “operational efficiency” and “supply chain fluidity.”
The TCRC said that “CN should never have sent a train down those lines. The company knows exactly how bad the situation is in that region. That fire has been raging for five weeks.” It called on CN to stop running trains through active wildfire zones, emphasizing that “no shipment is worth a human life.” The Canadian National Railway Company has yet to respond to the union’s statement or comment on the incident.
The workers on that train were forced to abandon it and flee on foot. Good thing none of them were, say, asthmatic, or they might not have made it.
Last I heard, the train itself was still sitting there on the tracks, and whether it’s still in good enough shape to be towed away when the fires die down (assuming the rails haven’t buckled), or reduced to a lump of slag, nobody knows.
What would be cool is a water train with auto cannon sprayers getting sent down the line an dousing either side heavily, repeatedly. They could be remote operated.
