Runaway freight train demolishes town centre in spectacular explosion
A fast-moving, driverless train, hauling tankers of crude oil, derailed and exploded into a sky-high fireball in the middle of a small Canadian town yesterday, destroying dozens of buildings and killing several people.
The disaster took place soon after 1am (local time) when the runaway freight train with 72 cars and five locomotives hurtled into Lac-Megantic, a lakeside town of about 6000 in the province of Quebec, and left the tracks.
Police spokesman Guy Lapointe said one person had died, and that toll would rise, but he declined to comment on media reports that anywhere between 40 and 80 people were missing.
‘‘We have already confirmed one death and we expect there will be others,’’ he said. ‘‘We also expect that the number of people reported missing will be greater than the final death toll.’’
Crude oil shipments by rail have become increasingly popular in North America as pipelines fill to capacity and
Smoke pours from the wreckage of a train that derailed and exploded in the centre of Lac-Megantic, in Quebec province, yesterday. Photo: Reuters more and more oil is produced in western regions like Alberta and North Dakota. But accidents on such a scale are rare.
Four of the cars – which each carried 30,000 gallons (113,500 litres) of North Dakotan crude oil – caught fire and blew up in a fireball that mushroomed hundreds of metres into the air.
It destroyed dozens of buildings, many of them totally flattened, including stores, a library and the popular MusiCafe music bar, eyewitnesses said.
The town centre was crowded with weekend partygoers at the time.
Lapointe said it was hard to calculate the number of possible victims because the area was still too dangerous for police to examine properly.
Some people had been reported missing more than once and some were nowhere near the town. The blast ruptured a water main, creating a shortage of drinking water, forcing the town to bring in special tankers.
The centre of town remained blocked off but, from the air, it was clear that many buildings had been reduced to little more than piles of bricks and wood.
Residents’ photos showed the burntout hulks of cars next to smashed houses. After the blast, burning crude spilled into the storm sewers and rose up through street manholes, setting buildings on fire, the head of the rail company that ran the train said.
Edward Burkhardt, chairman of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, said an engineer parked the train some distance from the town a few hours before the disaster.
‘‘He claims he set the brakes on all five of the engines. He also claims he set the brakes on a sufficient number of cars on the train,’’ he said.
Officials said they had few reports of injured victims, suggesting that people caught up in the blast either died on the spot or managed to escape. One woman told Radio-Canada that she had been unable to contact about 15 of her friends.
Stunned town residents cried in the streets as the impact of the blast sank in. Some hugged each other for comfort. The rail tracks pass next to the MusiCafe, which is popular with young people. Eyewitness Yvon Rosa said he had just left when he saw the train speeding into the middle of the town.
‘‘I have never seen a train travelling that quickly into the centre of LacMegantic,’’ he told Radio-Canada, saying he watched as the train careened around a bend. ‘‘I saw the wagons come off the tracks . . . everything exploded.
‘‘In just one minute the centre of the town was covered in fire.’’
Residents said they had heard five or six large blasts. More than 21 hours after the derailment, one car was still burning and firefighters, some of them from the United States, were still spraying cold water from the lake on five unexploded tanker cars they said posed a particular danger.