Saturday, September 13, 2008

9/11/08 Attack On Chunnel Train Between France and England? UPDATED


Fire started on lorry (1) just before 1500 BST on train from Folkestone to Calais. Lorry drivers heard series of explosions. They broke windows (2) to get out of amenity car. Altogether 32 people, including seven Britons, were evacuated into service tunnel (3).


UPDATED AT TOP: It looks to me as if parts of this story are, possibly, being disappeared. An anonymous commenter left me a quote from a CNN story which included the following sentence:
"“There was a burning lorry and a series of explosions — about 20 of them,” he told Le Parisien newspaper."

When I looked the story up on Google, here's what I found.

The story that Google linked to included no reference to explosions.

However, the original CNN story still exists here on a page called FindTarget/CNN. And, here's the story quoted:



Earlier on Friday truckers described their lucky escape from the blaze in which they had to smash windows to escape from the train after the doors jammed shut.
"There was a burning lorry and a series of explosions -- about 20 of them," Patrick Lejein, 50, from Bruges in Belgium, told Le Parisien newspaper.
"Everything was exploding around us -- tyres, fuel tanks, and then there was this smoke which prevented us from seeing and breathing properly."
Lejein added: "The door of our carriage was locked, impossible to open. We had to save ourselves by smashing a window with a hammer.
"We escaped from the train through this window. It was at that moment that we panicked the most. We imagined ourselves trapped there. We really were very lucky."



There have been so many questionable incidents recently that I think we must recap:

The other evening, I was sitting in a park with my daughter, and suddenly a fighter jet came roaring over our heads. It had been scrambled to fly a mission above Disneyland. I watched as it circled several times.

This was a regular occurrence in the couple years after 9/11. I got very used to the roar of fighter jets over Disneyland, over ballgames, and over my offices in Burbank near the movie studios.

I got used to being told to clear our of the office because there had been report of a possible attack.But, in recent years, things have, seemingly, calmed down, and I haven't heard the roar of fighter jets for quite some time.

But, have things really calmed down? No, they have not. Not in the least.

Just in the past few weeks, we have seen a homeless Muslim man check into a posh hotel with a pound of cyanide. For what purpose we will never know, because the guy ended up dead, thank God, before he could put his poison to use.

We have seen an Egyptian man build and test an unmanned drone, on Long Island, NY, capable of carrying a 600 lb. payload of chemical/biological weapons.We have seen men convicted in the UK for trying to kill the Queen and members of the Royal Family.

We have seen a man chanting Allah Akbar on a Philadelphia subway train, as he methodically showed his three year old boy how to kill Infidel pigs, by burying a hammer in the head of his victim.

And then, there were the unidentified men in St. Louis, who decided to go into work on their day off and play with the chemical nitroaniline. They ended up beoming poisoned, which caused them to turn blue. Over the next few hours, they began showing up at the hospital, causing two facilities to go on complete lockdown.

Additionally, as we know, Iran is speeding along to their goal; creating the Apocalypse so that the Mahdi (Isamic Messiah) will return to establish Islam througout the Earth.

So, we can not forget, because, while we have avoided another 9/11, it isn't for lack of trying on the part of the followers of Allah.

They would still like nothing better than to kill us, to sacrifice us to their bloodthirsty god.

We can not forget because they keep reminding us.



The rest of this post is from 9/12/08

Yesterday, (yes, on 9/11) I read of a fire that broke out on the "Chunnel" train which goes underneath the channel stretching between France and England.

A fire on 9/11, huh? I wondered if it could have been terror-related. However, the news as of yesterday was very spare on details. And so, I did not post on the story.

Now, we find that the drivers of the train report having heard multiple explosions. This bit of information seems to have driven officials to proclaim the incident

NOT TERROR-RELATED!

Got it. Thanks. Explosions = not terror-related.

Check.





It was carrying the chemical phenol, a toxic product used by the pharmaceutical industry.
Even more worrying, the overturned truck/lorry reportedly contained phenol, a deadly chemical that isn't allowed to be transported through the tunnel. The people who are reportedly in the hospital for smoke inhalation could have inhaled this chemical as it burned. According to Wikipedia, the toxic chemical was used in the Second World War at Auschwitz as a means of rapid execution. Seeing as the fire happened on September 11th, there are some obvious concerned about whether this was truly an accident.



From the BBC:



Thousands of passengers hoping to travel through the Channel Tunnel face further disruption after a fire.

Both the tunnel operator Eurotunnel and Eurostar have said passengers with travel plans for Friday night and the weekend should find alternative routes.

The tunnel was closed after fire broke out on a freight train about seven miles from Calais on Thursday.

Thirty-two people on board were led to safety. Fourteen had suffered minor injuries, including smoke inhalation.

The 16-hour blaze was put out on Friday morning.

The source of the blaze has not yet been identified but French officials say a lorry carrying chemicals, which is understood to have overturned on the freight train, was close to the seat of the fire.

It was carrying the chemical phenol, a toxic product used by the pharmaceutical industry.

Eurotunnel chairman Jacque Gounon - who earlier said they hoped to return to half capacity during Friday - said the north tunnel, where the fire took place, would be closed for several weeks.

The BBC's Europe editor, Mark Mardell, said Mr Gounon would not speculate on the cause of the fire, saying only that nothing had been ruled out or in.

He added an investigation could only begin once the affected area had cooled down enough to enable the removal of the train.

France's transport minister Dominique Bussereau told French radio station Europe-1 the cause appeared to be "something accidental".

Exhausting conditions

The blaze broke out yesterday just before 1500 BST on a train carrying lorries from Folkestone to Calais.

Thirty-two people, including seven Britons, were evacuated to the service tunnel and a train ferried them to France. More than 300 French and British firefighters tackled the blaze overnight and some 27 vehicles were affected.

Chief Fire Officer Bill Feeley, of Kent Fire and Rescue Service, said a large crew had been needed because of the difficult and tiring conditions and would remain in place until the emergency services were satisfied the fire was completely extinguished.

A French police spokesman said the main seat of the fire was extinguished at 0700 BST after burning for more than 16 hours.

Firefighters then spent two hours smothering minor fires nearby, he said.

Kent Fire and Rescue Service has now said they were "scaling down" their efforts. Two fire engines were still at the scene with 12 firefighters and specialist crews, a spokeswoman said.

"The bi-national status of the operation was lifted at midday so it is now a French incident," she said.



More from the BBC:


More from William.

37 comments:

christian soldier said...

Terror related NAWWW..It is a ruse set up by the French government..

Isn't that what the French believe happened on 9/11/2001!!!?..the U.S. government bombed the WTC and Pentagon....Touche France.....

Anonymous said...

Quote: "The bi-national status of the operation was lifted at midday so it is now a French incident," she said.

Could be because the French have tighter restrictions than the Brits regarding their msm providing facts that could identify criminals by their race, religion, skin color etc.

IIRC, Fjordman had a post stating that the newspapers in France could no longer print the newborn's names in hospital birth listings to conceal the frequency of Aisha, Muhammad, Osama's being born.

Anonymous said...

I have felt us creeping back closer and closer to the Clinton Administration Doctrine regarding terrorism: Deny that it occurs, call terrorists acts accidents or isolated incidents or something else, and hope that this deprives terrorists of their glory and terrorism of its political power.

This method even kinda worked for a while, too. I mean, till 9/11.

Pastorius said...

Sonic Charmer,
You are a master of understatement. We are "creeping back closer and closer to the Clinton Administration Doctrine ..."

It seems to me we returned to that Docrtine with all the subtelty of La Cage Aux Folles.

Yeah, we came roaring out of the closet.

I don't know how else to explain calling the death of a homeless man - holed up in a $500 a night luxury hotel, with a pound of cyanide - a suicide.

Anonymous said...

Here on this side of the pond such obfuscation is possible because the 'brilliant'(spit) Condi and
New State Department lexicon forbids use of the words "jihad" or "jihadist"

The argument, of course, is the old Streusand/Guirard claim that by using the word jihad, we're validating the jihadist claim to be waging jihad. Of course, it's ridiculous to think that the U.S. State Department carries any validating authority within the Islamic world to determine what is Islam and what isn't. This would be the first time that unbelievers have set the meaning of Islamic theology for Muslims.

It's only jihad if the victim identifies it as such - which would undermine the WoT by validating jihad.

[ . . ]
=\o/=

Anonymous said...

IBA - you got mirror blog?

Pastorius said...

Hi Anonymous,
No, that's not an IBA Mirror Blog. And, I don't blame the guy for cutting and pasting our post. This is pretty important information, and the media isn't reporting it as it really is, so thank God that guy is getting the story out.

Pastorius said...

By the way, I sent this info over to LGF, Jihad Watch, and Atlas, and thus far, no one else has posted on it.

So, that shows you how hard it is to get even the most obvious stories out there.

IBA is still viewed as a suspect and extreme blog. I don't think we are. The only way in which we are extreme is we are extremely critical of Islam.

But, Islam deserves the criticism we level at it. No ideology which calls for 3/4 of the people on the Earth to be converted, subjected (to continuous denigration), or killed, ought to be allowed any quarter in a reasonable world.

Additionally, as you know, Islam calls for gays, apostates, and female adultresses to be put to death.

Is that an ideology which deserves any respect whatsoever?

I don't think so.

Anonymous said...

Pastorius, re: "creeping"--

Well, it's all relative. We may indeed be back to the Clinton Ostrich Doctrine as you say. But this is a story out of Europe and hopefully we are still behind Europe - as they like to point out.

Pastorius said...

Well, let's see, we had a homeless Muslim guy in Denver found dead in a $600 a night hotel room with a lb. of Cyanide.

That was ruled a suicide, and most definately not terror-related.

We had eight unnamed men who entered their place of business and ended up in the hospital with chemical poisoning causing them to turn blue and two hospitals to be locked down in Tennesee. There was never any explanation for what the men were trying to do with those chemicals, however, we were assured it was not terror related.

Just a work accident.

We had a Muslim man on a Philadelphia subway use a clawhammer, that he pulled out of his 3 year old son's backpack, to bludgeon another man over the head. The whole time the Muslim man was calling out Allahu Akbar.

We were told this was not terror related. We were told the man was mentally ill.

We also had an "Egyptian man" building and testing an unmanned drone, designed to carry a 600 lb. payload of chemcical/biological weapons. He was testing the drone at an airport on Long Island in the middle of the night with no permission.

We were told that he was just an ambitious engineer, and that his actions were certainly not terror related.

That's all within the last three weeks.

Anonymous said...

Those are all perfectly run-of-the-mill incidents explainable in mundane ways. Who hasn't indulged in a little homemade drone night-flying now and then?

I think you're just being paranoid.

;-)

Pastorius said...

SC,
On my radio show, my co-host and I made that same point. We discussed how one time we had tickets to a big football game and we didn't want to pay $8 a beer. So, we developed our own homemade unmanned drone to fly a keg in and drop it near our seats.

My co-host and I and everyone in our row were in brew the whole game and only had to spend lik $55 bucks.

See, that's Infidel Ingenuity.

Maybe the 'Egyptian man' was working on the same kind of activity.

Can't fault him. A guy's gotta have his brew at the big game.

Anonymous said...

chemical poisoning causing them to turn blue and two hospitals to be locked down in Tennesee.


St. Louis
further discussion

[ . . ]
=\o/=

Pastorius said...

Thanks, Anonymouse.

I got the area wrong. Not Tennesee. It was St. Louis.

Ray Boyd said...

In my view the channel tunnel incident is more likely to be terrorist related. The authorities have speculated that the fire could have been started by "overheated brakes on a lorry". For fucks sake, how stupid do they think we are?

A lorry with overheated brakes would have had to boarded the train by driving down a long steep incline - like a mile long hill - and straight onto the train.

In reality the lorry would have driven to the ferry terminal along flat terrain, waited in line for at least 30 minutes and then driven onto the train.

Overheated brakes my arse!!! This pathetic attempt to fool the gullible is enough to make me suspicious. And another point: if phenol is banned would a legal consignment of this dangerous chemical be allowed through? No, it was an illegal load, deliberately chosen for the task in hand.

Anonymous said...

Ray Boyd . . . agreed. . .over heated brakes? But is the reference to the brakes from a previous incident - November 1996 chunnel fire (see second from last para)?


This fire started on a shuttle train carrying freight about 11 kilometers (7 miles) from the French end of the nearly 30 mile long tunnel.

The investigation should reveal where along that thirty mile span of tracks the fire actually took hold.

“There was a burning lorry and a series of explosions — about 20 of them,”-said Patrick Lejein, 50, from Bruges in Belgium.he and other truckers had to smash windows to escape from the train after the doors jammed shut.

“There was a burning lorry and a series of explosions — about 20 of them,” he told Le Parisien newspaper.

“Everything was exploding around us — tyres, fuel tanks, and then there was this smoke which prevented us from seeing and breathing properly.”

Lejein added: “The door of our carriage was locked, impossible to open. We had to save ourselves by smashing a window with a hammer.

“We escaped from the train through this window. It was at that moment that we panicked the most. We imagined ourselves trapped there. We really were very lucky.”

Anonymous said...

Meanwhile, French authorities announced an inquiry in to the cause of the fire.

Eurotunnel CEO Jacques Gounon has rejected the possibility that brakes on a truck caught fire after overheating.

French Transport Secretary Dominique Bussereau described the fire as an "accident" on French radio.

Investigators are likely to examine the presence of a lorry carrying highly flammable carbolic acid, or phenol, which it is claimed overturned before the blast.

Anonymous said...

"The 30-car shuttle body" of attendants was carrying 32 people for the greatest part truck drivers accompanying their vehicles which time the fire erupted round seven miles from the French side.

Suddenly we heard an explosion. We went to the back and we saw flames through the window, and we immediately felt the heat, said Polish truck driver Andrzej Czapla.

He said he and a different driver forced open the doors and went into the tunnel.

A truck driver identified as Patrick Lejein on French TV said: The train chief was in a corner, panicking. We drivers broke the windows to reach out of the staff.

Eurotunnels Gounon said people suffered smoke inhalation injuries because they evacuated the train themselves before tunnel operators had ventilated away the smoke, as safety procedures call toward.

Always On Watch said...

The incidents of the past few weeks seem to many to be coincidence. The terrorists are ramping up.

Wasn't it back in March that Al Qaeda mentioned a change in tactics using maller attacks with limited numbers in the AQ cells. See my IBA post of August 24.

Anonymous said...

The source of the blaze has not yet been identified but French officials say a lorry carrying chemicals, which is understood to have overturned on the freight train, was close to the seat of the fire.
&
France’s transport minister Dominique Bussereau told French radio station Europe-1 the cause appeared to be “something accidental”.

Ray Boyd said...

For the first 24 hours of the incident the media was putting out statements that it was probably caused by "overheated brakes".

I see they are now refuting that.

Pastorius said...

Thanks to everyone who is giving us the additional reports.

I will be updating this post as new stuff comes in today.

Anonymous said...

Head-on, no-brakes-applied, fatal crash between Metrolink commuter train and Union Pacific freight on same track at dangerous blind curve north of Los Angeles at 4:30 pm PST and as of Saturday morning authorities state they are nowhere near knowing why? They do keep track of who directs trains where in California, don't they?

Of course, train wrecks happen all the time.

Just sayin'.

Pastorius said...

Hi Revere Rides Again,

I've also been paying attention to the LA train crash story. It was on the news here all night last night. A lot of our local stations did nothing but report on that crash.

Thing is, I haven't seen anything that points to terrorism in that case. It could have just been an accident.

Anonymous said...

Hi all. Probably was. Human idiocy traditionally ranks high in causes of train wrecks.

Anonymous said...

I haven't seen anything that points to terrorism - Pastorius

Not yet. . .but the facts remain:

1)two separate deadly train incidents

2)in two separate western nation's busiest transit hubs

3) took place within hours of each other

4) within hours of the anniversary of 9/11.

5) Each incident had the potential for massive casualties

These facts leave me with one eye on this too.

The Metrolink train left Union Station in downtown Los Angeles and was headed northwest to Moorpark in Ventura County. It was being pulled by its locomotive rather than being pushed. The push mode is controversial due to claims that it makes trains more vulnerable in accidents.

Was someone asleep at the wheel? I mean that rhetorically . . .who authorized this configuration? I assume trains are tracked by dispatchers, radio, GPS systems, SVG (scalable vector graphics)technology. Any of these responsiblities could be comprised by employees with dual or hostile loyalties.

Pastorius said...

Hi Anonymous,

Am I misunderstanding?

"It was being pulled by its locomotive rather than being pushed. The push mode is controversial due to claims that it makes trains more vulnerable in accidents."

So then, that means they were doing it right?

So, what's the problem?

Anonymous said...

I provided the link for context in that comment.

Here's another link with more detailed information:

personal accounts

"What's the problem?" Not certain there is one . . .still digging .

Pastorius said...

Oh, my apologies. I misunderstand.

Anonymous said...

Whoa . . .that link "personal accounts" is NSFW or NSFC . .. ooooops!

Anonymous said...

Re: LA train accident


So what are the possible causes?

* An error by the dispatcher allowed both trains onto the single track section.
* A failure in the block signals which did not display a red signal when it should have.
* A failure by track switching equipment which routed a train onto the wrong track.
* A failure by one of the engineers to obey a block signal or dispatcher command.

The accident occurred just past a point where the double-track section becomes single-tracked. If I had to guess what went wrong, I would have to say that the Metrolink train was supposed to have held short of the single track until the freight train passed and then would have been cleared to head up the long single track section that runs through two tunnels as the trains move through the Santa Susana pass.


UPDATE: This statement from a retired Amtrak engineer would tend to confirm my suspicion about what happened:

Tom Dinger, a retired Amtrak engineer, said the common practice is for northbound passenger trains to effectively pull over onto a side track at the Chatsworth station until southbound freight trains have passed. Between Chatsworth and Simi Valley there is only one set of tracks because of narrow tunnels that trains use to go beneath the Santa Susanna Pass.

"We were always stopped at Chatsworth to wait for the heavy UP [Union Pacific Railroad] trains to get off the hill," said Dinger, 64, of Silver Lake. "The UP train was almost at the siding -- it was less than a mile away. It's a shame."

Dinger said locomotive operators go no faster than 40 mph around the curve where Friday's crash took place. He speculated that the freight train was going no faster than 25 or 30 mph.

Dinger said the Metrolink engineer should have seen a trackside signal that would have warned him that a freight train was approaching. But because of the late-afternoon time of the crash, the engineer might not have seen that signal light because of the sun, Dinger said.

"I hope and pray he didn't overlook the signal," he said.



Quote from an earler link confirms direction of train - " was headed northwest to Moorpark"

Pastorius said...

Yep.

Sounds like a simple mistake to me.

Of course, it could have been terrorism dressed up as a mistake, but that would not be in the style of Islamic terrorist organizations.

It could be a lone Jihadi, but even a lone Jihadi would want some kind of credit.

I think this was just human error.

Anonymous said...

via LGF: #71 Killian Bundy 9/13/08
On Fox they reported a few minutes ago that the most likely cause of yesterday's train crash is that the Metrolink engineer ran a red light. Also, he was a contractor filling in, not a Metrolink employee, and he was killed in the crash.

/which kind of makes one wonder . . . what if . . . what was his name?

Pastorius said...

Killian Bundy does pose a good question. The engineer died, as I understand it. So then, was this a suicide terror act?

Anonymous said...

It does have the earmarks of human error right down to sun glare blinding the engineer, though if his name turns out to be Mohammad...

I didn't know the push mode was controversial. All our commuter trains in the greater Boston area are push-in and pull-out. That actually saved lives in a tunnel crash about 15 years ago where a Amtrak train going about 70 mph hit a stopped commuter. The Amtraks are pull-in so the two engines acted as buffers and luckily there were no fatalities.

Anonymous said...

KCAL 9 video report

At 4:22 pm, one minute before the train accident, 15 year old train enthusiast Nick Williams received a text message from his mentor, the engineer on Metro Link 111, Robert Sanchez.

Pastorius said...

Thanks, Anonymous.

I read that this morning and thought about posting on it, as a way of putting closure on the subject.

However, it might not be the end of the story.

As far as I'm concerned, this isn't an IBA story unless their is a connection to Jihad.

I don't know if you read the same kind of report as I did, but the MetroLink people responded to this bit of information (which was told to the media by the kid, and thus bypassed MetroLink) by saying, "I can't believe a man operating a train would be texting."

You could hear the frustration and sense of tragedy in that remark.

One has to wonder what kind of man is involved with so many children, texting them and teaching them how to run trains.

Very odd.

My rule of thumb in parenting is any man who has such an exhorbitant interest in children is not a man I want around my children.