Real-life tragedy used to entertain
LAC-MÉGANTIC DISASTER CLIP REPURPOSED ON NETFLIX
Clouds of dense smoke billow into the night sky as a fire rages on, casting an eerie orange glow over a street lined with trees and buildings. For a split second, the shaky video footage shows what appears to be a train car, backlit by the flames.
The apocalyptic scene in the video depicts the lakeside town of Lac-mégantic in Quebec on July 6, 2013, when an unmanned runaway train carrying millions of litres of crude oil derailed, its contents igniting a blaze that would go on to claim 47 lives and destroy more than half the downtown area.
But recently, much to the dismay of Lac-mégantic officials and residents, the real footage of a tragedy considered to be one of Canada’s deadliest rail disasters has surfaced in an unexpected place: fictional Netflix original content.
Lac-mégantic Mayor Julie Morin told The Canadian Press there are at least two separate instances in which the popular streaming platform used images of the derailment “as fiction and entertainment.”
“We find that it’s really a lack of respect,” Morin said. “It’s hard enough for our citizens to see these images when they are used normally and respectfully on the news. Just imagine, to have them used as fiction, as if they were invented.”
In an episode of the most recent season of Netflix’s science-fiction series Travelers, the incident’s fiery aftermath can be seen as part of a newscast about a nuclear bomb going off in London. Though the images appeared for only a few seconds, they still caught the attention of Guillaume Bouchard.
“I said to myself, ‘It can’t be. They couldn’t have done that,’” Bouchard, a high-school ethics teacher, told Radio-canada.
On Monday, Peacock Alley Entertainment, the Toronto-based production company behind the series, issued an apology, adding that they would be “replacing the footage in the show.”
“We sincerely apologize and had no intention to dishonour the tragic events of 2013,” Carrie Mudd, president of Peacock Alley Entertainment, said in a statement. Mudd noted that the video clip in the episode was acquired from a stock- footage vendor and the company wasn’t “aware of its specific source.”
Though Morin praised the production company’s swift reaction, she accused Netflix on Tuesday of using the real video again, this time in its newly released thriller Bird Box, starring Sandra Bullock, The Canadian Press reported.
Early on in the film, Bullock’s character, Malorie, flips through various news channels reporting on a frightening wave of “unexplained mass suicides” sweeping across parts of the world. The news reports contain several scenes of doomsday mayhem, including one that bears a striking resemblance to the Lac-mégantic video shown in the Travelers episode. The footage, which also plays for only a couple of seconds, shows another darkened street, silhouetted against the backdrop of a blazing fire.
“We see the images (of Lac-mégantic) clearly,” said Morin, who viewed photos of the Bird Box scene posted to social media by one of the town’s citizens, The Canadian Press reported.
Netflix did not respond immediately to the Bird Box claims.
It is a common practice in TV production to license footage from stock libraries portraying what could be interpreted as news events, and Morin urged Netflix to review its offerings to ensure that video of the disaster does not appear elsewhere on the platform.
“I don’t know if this is happening all the time, but we are looking for assurances from Netflix that ... they are going to remove them,” Morin told The Canadian Press. “You can be sure we are going to follow up on this, and our citizens are on our side.”
Robert Bellefleur, a spokesman for a coalition of citizens advocating for rail safety in Lac-mégantic, echoed Morin’s concerns, telling Radio-canada that he found the use of the footage “troubling.”
“It brings us back to the pain,” Bellefleur said.
At around 1:15 a.m. local time, roughly 5½ years ago, life for the residents of Lac-mégantic changed forever.
Just 18 minutes earlier, a train with more than 70 cars carrying crude oil had broken loose and started hurtling downhill toward the small town. The train — operated by Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway — was travelling at 101 km/h when it derailed, spilling more than 5.6 million litres of oil, and engulfing the town’s centre and dozens of unsuspecting residents in a raging inferno.
While the deadly incident was initially blamed on an engineer who was accused of not setting the train’s brakes properly, an investigation by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada concluded that the railroad company’s “weak safety culture” led to the derailment. Three employees of the company who were charged with criminal negligence causing death were acquitted in 2018.
As of early Wednesday, the episode of Travelers containing the footage was still available on Netflix.
“I don’t know anyone who died in Lac-mégantic,” Bouchard told Radio-canada. “But if I was someone who lost someone close and I was home and I saw this, I don’t know how I would react. It wouldn’t be good.”