The remains of a home lie in rubble as firefighters continue working on the scene of a train derailment in Lac Megantic, Quebec, yesterday.
LAC MEGANTIC, Canada/ Quebec: Officials in Canada said yesterday that they have located five bodies so far in their grim search for victims from the catastrophic derailment of an oil laden cargo train, and expect to find many more.
Ongoing fires meant police were still unable to conduct a full search of the charred wreckage at the disaster scene in the Quebec village of Lac-Megantic, where a runaway oil tanker train derailed and exploded.
The accident devastated the centre of this small town, 250km east of Montreal, and forced about 2,000 to flee their homes there.
Police spokesman Michel Brunet said after finding one body that they now have found four others and anticipate “many more” fatalities as a result of the disaster. He added that the official figure for missing people is 40.
Saturday’s crash of an oil-laden train and subsequent explosions decimated the centre of the village of Lac-Megantic, which has a population of just 6,000 people. One firefighter said that there had been at least 50 people in one bar that was consumed by the flames. “There is nothing left,” he said.
The explosion completely levelled more than four blocks of the town’s downtown area, and it took firefighters 18 hours to contain the inferno — and at least two oil-tanker cars continue to burn, firefighters said yesterday.
Brunet had said on Saturday that the fire was so intense investigators couldn’t go anywhere near the devastated neighbourhood.
Witnesses said they heard the train pass by at what seemed like a greater than usual speed, then careen off the rails and erupt into flames. Survivors of the explosion described a wall of flames as the fuel-laden cars left the tracks as dozens of people enjoyed a summer night in bars and on restaurant in the centre of town.
Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway said that the train had been transporting 72 carloads of crude oil when it derailed at around 1:20am (1720 GMT). A spokesman for the rail line, Christophe Journet, said the train had been stopped in the town of Nantes, around 13km west of Lac-Megantic, for a crew changeover.
For an unknown reason, Journet said, the train “started to advance, to move down the slope leading to Lac-Megantic,” even though the brakes were engaged. As a result, “there was no conductor on board” when the train crashed, he said.
Scores of firefighters from around the region and from the United States state of Maine were enlisted to battle the blaze, which was under investigation by Canada’s Transportation Safety Board. One witness, Nancy Cameron, posted a photo on social media websites showing one of the train’s locomotives spouting flames near Nantes.
Other witnesses were in Lac-Megantic when the train came barreling in. “When we came out, we saw cars arriving in the centre of town at full speed,” Yvon Rosa told Radio-Canada. AFP
