Hundreds go home amid wreckage

LAC-MÉGANTIC — Denis Couture is going home. His neighbour isn’t. “He’s gone,” Couture said. Couture is one of 1,200 residents in Lac-Mégantic, Que., who went home Tuesday after a freight train carrying a shipment of crude oil derailed and exploded downtown three days earlier. So far, 15 bodies have been recovered and 50 people are missing and presumed dead in the remote town.

Serge Rouillard, Couture’s friend and neighbour, is almost certainly among the dead. He was receiving treatment for prostate cancer at the senior’s residence when the train blew up. The home was just a block away from the train tracks.

Couture, 50, was evacuated from his home, just 250 metres from the overturned oil tankers. He’s been living in the local high school since Saturday, sleeping on a cot alongside 160 of his neighbours.

But Couture was all smiles Monday, as he prepared to board the school bus that would take him back to his house. Except for a strong smell of sulphur, it wasn’t damaged.

Many of the displaced were allowed to briefly go back to their houses Monday to retrieve medicine, clothes and other belongings. Couture was glad to find his house intact but said the shock of seeing downtown was overwhelming.

“It’s one thing to see it in a newspaper,” he said. “Try living it.”

While the full extent of the damage isn’t known, at least 40 buildings were razed and a century-old park went up in flames. The area was popular for its turn-of-the century brick houses and storefronts, built when the Canadian Pacific Railway was one of the only employers in town.

“It’s tough but we’ll live through it, we’ll rebuild, there’ll be another Dollarama, there’ll be another Musi-Cafe bar, you just wait and see,” Couture said. “We’ll never replace what was there but we will rebuild and we’ll keep on living.”