Lac-Mégantic settlement a fraction of town’s needs
MONTREAL — The funds earmarked for those affected by the Lac-Mégantic train disaster represent just a fraction of what’s needed, a town official said.
A $200-million US settlement was announced last week, with more than onehalf of the money going to various levels of government. As it stands, about $50 million is destined for relatives of the 47 people who died in the July 2013 disaster, although the amount could rise.
Given the magnitude of the tragedy, which also left the community’s downtown core a fire-ravaged mess, the town’s deputy mayor said what seems like a large sum of money isn’t very much. “Two hundred mil- lion can seem like a lot of money but in my opinion, it’s very little,” Richard Michaud said in a phone interview Monday.
“Much more than $200 million has been injected by the federal and provincial governments to decontaminate the devastated territory alone, and we’re not even talking about reconstruction.”
A runaway train hauling tanker cars loaded with volatile crude oil broke loose and barrelled into the town in the early morning hours of July 6, 2013, before derailing and exploding.
The families of the victims will share in the settlement money, which is “very little considering there are more than 20 orphans who must rebuild their lives,” Michaud said. “It will help the families and the governments — but it’s not an astronomical sum.”
The settlement involves the Montreal Maine and Atlantic Canada Co., its insurance carrier, rail-car manufacturers and some oil producers. Three major companies have declined to participate — World Fuel Services, Canadian Pacific Railway and Irving Oil.
U.S. bankruptcy trustee Robert Keach is hoping the $200 million amount rises considerably before final approval of the plan in U.S. and Canadian courts.
Keach, a court-appointed trustee in the defunct railroad’s bankruptcy case in Maine, said the draft sets aside about $50 million of the $200-million pool for wrongful death claims.