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Empress of Ireland was the second of a pair of ocean liners ordered by Canadian Pacific Steamships during their early years in operation on the North Atlantic. In 1903, Canadian Pacific officially entered the market for trans-Atlantic passenger travel between the United Kingdom and Canada. In February of that year, they had purchased Elder Dempster & Co, through which they obtained three ships from Elder's subsidiary, the Beaver Line. These ships were Lake Champlain, Lake Erie and Lake Manitoba, with Lake Champlain being the first to sail on the company's established route between Liverpool, England and Montreal, Quebec, the following April. The line proved to be successful on the North Atlantic trade, as in that first year, thirty-three westbound crossings were completed by those three ships, on which a combined total of 23,400 passengers traveled in third class, most of them immigrants bound for Canada. There is excellent hunting opportunities and good timber value on the property.
For example, was Empress of Ireland sufficiently and efficiently officered and manned? (Q.4); after the vessels had sighted each other's lights did the atmosphere between them become foggy or misty, so that lights could no longer be seen? If so, did both vessels comply with SOLAS Articles 15 and 16, and did they respectively indicate on their steam whistles or sirens, the course or courses they were taking by the signals set out?
Career
In Quebec, MMA continued operation from Farnham with a skeleton staff after the derailment, having laid off 19 of its 75 workers without notice on July 19 and an additional five on July 30; these workers have not received severance and vacation pay owed. In Maine, 64 MMA employees were laid off as a result of the derailment. In a letter to Harper, U.S. President Barack Obama expressed condolences for the "devastating loss of life" and offered American help, if needed. French President François Hollande issued a statement expressing France's solidarity with victims and authorities. Pope Francis sent a special apostolic blessing from the Vatican to those touched by the tragedy, along with his sympathy to victims, their families, and emergency workers. The Maine Legislature passed a resolution on July 10 in support of the people of Lac-Mégantic; speaking in French, House majority leader Seth Berry said "Aujourd'hui, nous sommes tous des citoyens de Lac-Mégantic" ("Today, we are all citizens of Lac-Mégantic").
The CPR also erected several monuments in Quebec, e.g., Mount Hermon Cemetery and St. Patrick's Cemetery, both of which are located on the Sillery Heritage Site, at the formerly independent city of Sillery. Shortly after the disaster, a salvage operation began on Empress of Ireland to recover the purser's safe and the mail. This was deemed a plausible effort due to the wreck's relatively shallow depth at 130 feet. F. Klaveness & Co, the owners of Storstad, for C$2 million, which is the valuation of silver bullion stored aboard Empress of Ireland when she sank. The owners of Storstad entered an unsuccessful counterclaim against the CPR for $50,000 damages, contending that Empress of Ireland was at fault and alleging negligent navigation on her part. Storstad was seized at the request of the CPR and sold for $175,000 to Prudential Trust, an insurance company acting on behalf of AF Klaveness & Co.
Lac-Mégantic rail disaster
A hundred residents were not expected to return home until mid-2014 as the ground beneath their still-standing houses was contaminated with oil; some homes in the most-contaminated areas might never be habitable. All but 800 of the evacuated residents were allowed to return to their homes in the afternoon of the third day; all but 200 were able to return by the sixth day. Some homes had reportedly been broken into during their vacancies, although police deny that homes were looted. Around 150 firefighters were deployed to the scene, described as looking like a "war zone". Some were called in from as far away as the city of Sherbrooke, Quebec, and as many as eight trucks carrying 30 firefighters were dispatched from Franklin County, Maine, United States .
Identification of additional victims became increasingly difficult after the August 1 end of the on-site search and family members were asked to provide DNA samples of those missing, as well as dental records. It is possible that some of the missing people were vaporized by the explosions. As two of the three local notary offices were destroyed by fire , the last will and testament of some victims of the disaster were lost. The former CPR main line from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu to Brownville Junction was sold to Rail World Inc. in January 2003. Rail World formed the MMA as a subsidiary and engaged in aggressive cost cutting for freight train operations and continued to defer maintenance on the tracks to the point where much of the track is now in marginal condition. The Empress of Ireland domestic Permanent stamp was designed by Isabelle Toussaint, and is lithographed in seven colours.
Derailment and explosion
Freight trains operated by MMA were allowed (not "permitted", see below) by regulators in Canada and the United States to have Single Person Train Operation status . Transport Canada and the MMA entered into a negotiation process at the culmination of which, sometime before the second week of July 2012, the government allowed MMA to reduce their manpower to SPTO. An average of eighty tank cars per train was carried on the Lac-Mégantic route under the supervision of one person only. The Maine regulator had already allowed SPTO status before the first week of April 2012.
Travelling with no signals, the train jumped the track, sending a river of burning oil into the lake. Empress of Ireland lurched heavily to starboard and began settling by the stern. Water entered through open portholes, some only a few feet above the water line, and inundated passageways and cabins. Most of the passengers and crew located in the lower decks drowned quickly. Those berthed in the upper decks were awakened by the collision and immediately boarded lifeboats on the boat deck.
Canadian federal impact
The new road was to be constructed in October 2013 using federal and provincial infrastructure funding, although insurance coverage for local companies to abandon contaminated sites remained uncertain. The city prohibited all access to the downtown (including Frontenac, Thibodeau, Durand Streets and the boulevard des Vétérans) until June 2014 to permit a massive decontamination effort. Soil decontamination was expected to take until December 2014 to complete, although the water table appeared to be uncontaminated. Some buildings that were still standing, such as the local post office in Lac-Mégantic, were a total loss due to oil contamination. It may take up to five years to decontaminate some sites where homes formerly stood, forcing householders to rebuild elsewhere.
Ministry of Transport senior inspector Marc Grignon opined, “When the shipper is based outside Canada, the importer becomes the shipper.” Irving Oil Commercial G.P. 3,830 rail cars of Bakken crude were shipped by 67 trains in the nine-month period preceding the derailment. The Federal Railroad Administration is investigating multiple safety issues with crude oil shipments, which are the fastest-growing hazardous material shipments by rail. On July 29, the FRA requested American Petroleum Institute members provide data on content of their crude shipments and crude oil loading practices and proposed to do its own testing if the data were not made available. The U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration launched a 'Bakken blitz' of inspections of North Dakota oil trains in August 2013, citing ongoing concerns about improper identification of the chemical composition and flash point of flammable cargo. A ministerial emergency directive remains in effect for six months, although it can be renewed.
Damage sustained by Storstad after its collision with Empress of Ireland. Formal portrait of Captain Henry Kendall, the final captain of Empress of Ireland. S length was 570 ft overall and 548.9 ft (167.3 m) between perpendiculars.
It also recommended carriers perform route planning and analysis and advocated mandated emergency response plans. While TSB set no clear deadlines, Irving Oil plans to replace the remainder of its own fleet of DOT-111's by the end of April 2014 and ask its suppliers to modernise by the year's end. Quebec City mayor Régis Labeaume has offered that city's continued support for the reconstruction effort (the city already has emergency workers on-site) and called for the immediate construction of 1–2 km of new track to reconnect Lac-Mégantic's industrial park to the rails, bypassing the damaged downtown. Quebec City has also sent an expert from its museum of civilisation to identify artefacts in the wreckage which should be preserved for inclusion in a future monument, memorial park or exhibit. The SQ investigated the MMA railway offices in Farnham, Quebec, on July 25, with a warrant and planned to seize evidence about the fatal event. ] whether the SQ has plans to broaden the scope of their investigation to include, for example, the broker at World Fuel Services who chose to employ deficient DOT-111 tank cars.
On August 22, 2013, the Canadian Transportation Agency ordered CPR to reinstate delivery to MMA, a move CPR (as one of multiple firms ordered by Quebec's government to pay for the costly cleanup of oil spilled by MMA at Lac-Mégantic) considered an unacceptable safety risk. On August 13, 2013, the Canadian Transportation Agency suspended the railway's Certificate of Fitness effective August 20 because of its failure to obtain adequate insurance coverage, shutting down the line. It later extended this deadline to conditionally allow operation until October 18. While the amount of liability insurance is not listed on the federal Certificate of Fitness for reasons unknown, MMA's bankruptcy petition disclosed an insurance policy valued at $25 million and an estimated cleanup cost, which excludes damages in tort, of $200 million. MMA's Certificate of Fitness was last modified in 2005, to reflect the use of the line by Orford Express .
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