LAC-MEGANTIC -- The chairman of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Rail faced pointed questions from a throng of reporters in Lac-Megantic Wednesday.
Edward Burkhardt has taken criticism for waiting close to five days to travel to the town whose centre was blown apart by a derailed train that exploded early Saturday morning.
Fifteen unidentified bodies have been recovered in the wreckage; a total of 60 are considered missing.
Burkhardt issued an “abject apology” to the people of Lac Megantic, saying the hand brakes were probably not set on the train when it was parked for the night in Nantes, 13 kilometres uphill from Lac-Megantic.
He said train engineer Tom Harding has been suspended without pay pending a criminal investigation. "I don't think he'll be back working for us," said Burkhardt.
The railway boss said the reason he stayed in Chicago to deal with the crisis was that he was better able to communicate with insurers and officials in different places during what he described as 20-hour work days.
"Am I a compassionate person?" Burkhardt said. "I feel absolutely awful. I am devastated by what's happened."
Angry residents heckled Burkhardt when he arrived in the town.
One man on a bicycle repeatedly shouted and swore at Burkhardt, and Surete du Quebec officers blocked another person waving Canadian and American flags while trying to approach the MMA boss.
Burkhardt said he would team up with the Red Cross, insurers and governments to help fund humanitarian aid and reconstruction of homes.
"Our financial resources are going to be devoted to this," he said. "This comes first."
The Quebec government has announced a $60-million fund to help victims in Lac-Megantic. Premier Pauline Marois said Tuesday that the money will start flowing immediately, with an initial $1,000 to help people with emergencies.
The province will lower flags to half-mast.
Burkhardt also said he would meet with the victims of the town, but said his movements have been restricted and he would have to speak to the mayor about that.
He also said he could see his company’s trains running through the small town of 6,000 residents again.
"Later, we'll clean up all the wrecked cars and build track back and start to run trains through here again. Very carefully, I might tell you," he said.
Burkhardt was escorted from the media scrum to the police station where Surete du Quebec officers will question him.
The disaster site is now being considered a crime scene.
Burkhardt called it “a fine line between carelessness and criminal negligence,” said he was not a lawyer capable of determining that.
The company says the fire department shut off the engine, which affected the brakes. The fire department, however, says it was simply applying proper procedure.
A key question will be how the two sides communicated before leaving the scene. The train was left unattended, took off, and began rolling downhill with increasing speed on a destructive 20-minute journey to Lac-Megantic.
Burkhardt said the fire department was dealing with a company employee who was not familiar with diesel engines. Meanwhile, he said, the fire department was not familiar with train safety.
He said the train's hand brakes appeared not to have been properly applied.
Burkhardt said a company employee said he had set 11 handbrakes, but that the statement had been called into question.
The company has previously called Harding a hero for apparently rushing to the scene and managing to stop some of the ghost cars.
It is also being reported that Harding was the part of an investigation into another derailment in Saint-Hyacinthe last August. No one was injured, but Harding was questioned by authorities.
Burkhardt speculated that the tragedy would lead to changes in industry policy. He said his company has already stopped using one-man crews.
Several MMA employees have been in Lac-Megantic since Saturday's deadly train crash, including company president and CEO Robert Grindrod.
On Tuesday, Burkhardt commented that he may need to wear a bullet-proof vest during the visit.
Grindrod has told The Canadian Press that MMA likely shares some of the blame for the catastrophe.
"But we can't say how much blame. Typically major events like this are a combination of factors and we don't know what all the factors are yet," said Grindrod.
One of those factors is what happened after the train caught fire in Nantes around midnight.
Burkhardt said that firefighters turned off the locomotive engine while dealing with the fire but should have done more.
"The firemen should have roused the locomotive engineer who was in his hotel and taken him to the scene with them. It's easy to say what should have happened. We're dealing with what happened," Burkhardt said.
MMA has yet to conduct its own inspection of the crashed railcars, and will not be able to until police and the Transportation Safety Board complete their own investigations.
With files from The Canadian Press
