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CALGARY — As emergency crews scrambled to keep train cars full of petroleum liquid from falling off a broken bridge into Calgary’s swollen Bow River, the city’s mayor blasted Canadian Pacific Rail for letting it happen.

“Certainly once this crisis is over, I’ll be looking for a lot of answers from a lot of people,” Naheed Nenshi said Thursday at an update on the bridge collapse.

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“I’ll be very blunt. I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this. We’ve seen a lot of people lose their jobs at CP over the last year. How many bridge inspectors did they fire?”

At 3:30 a.m., a 102-car train travelling eastbound derailed on the Bonnybrook Bridge outside of Canadian Pacific’s Ogden yard. The bridge gave way after most of the train had crossed. Cars that were still on the tracks were pulled away from either end.

Of the six rail cars trapped on the bridge, five contain petroleum distillate, a liquid is used by oil sands companies to dilute peanut butter-like bitumen so it can flow in pipelines. The sixth is empty, according to CP.