![]()
Emergency workers taking a break on an axle of a crude oil-carrying rail tanker in Lac Megantic, Quebec, Canada.
LAC-MEGANTIC, Quebec: Authorities in the severely damaged Quebec town of Lac-Megantic said some residents could start returning home, three days after a runaway train derailed and exploded, killing up to 50 people.
“I have excellent news to announce this morning,” Mayor Colette Roy-Laroche told reporters as she announced that around 1,200 of the 2,000 people who were evacuated due to the disaster could go home. The town has 6,000 people.
The mayor said 50 factories and businesses in the blast zone would remain shut. With the fires out and authorities able to get to the epicentre of the blasts, the death toll is expected to climb.
For the families of the dead and missing — around 50 people altogether — the recovery efforts will start to bring some closure, though it may take weeks or even months before all are identified.
“They know their loved ones were there, on the site. Most of them are now waiting for confirmation — because that makes it official,” said Steve Lemay, the parish priest of Lac-Megantic, who has been meeting with affected families. “It’s clear that they are not waiting for the missing to return.”
Quebec police said late on Monday they had recovered 13 bodies from the blackened rubble of what was once the historic downtown strip in the town, about 257km east of Montreal and near the border with Maine and Vermont.
The coroner’s office asked relatives of the missing to bring in brushes, combs and razors so specialists could extract DNA samples from strands of hair.
Police moved a large truck in front of the disaster area yesterday to block television cameras from filming the grisly images of the recovery effort. Canadian transport officials investigating the derailment were due to give a briefing at 10:15 am.
The train was parked in nearby Nantes on Friday night when one of its engines, which had been left running to ensure the air brakes had enough pressure, caught fire. Local firemen turned off the engine, put out the fire and went home. The train then started moving by itself and blew up in Lac-Megantic at 1am on Saturday. Reuters
