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People Missing and Buildings Destroyed in Canada Rail Blast
Train Blast Kills at Least One and Forces Evacuations in Canada
(about 4 hours later)
LAC-MÉGANTIC, Quebec — Several people were missing after four rail cars carrying petroleum products exploded early Saturday in a fiery blast in the middle of a small town in the Canadian province of Quebec, destroying dozens of buildings.
OTTAWA — A runaway train exploded Saturday, killing at least one person and forcing about 1,000 people to evacuate from a town in the province of Quebec, the police said. The 73-car train, which included tank cars carrying petroleum, destroyed much of downtown Lac Mégantic, a town of about 6,000, in a blaze that continued through the day.
The explosion occurred shortly after 1 a.m. when a freight train derailed in Lac-Mégantic, a picturesque lakeside town of about 6,000 people near the Maine border. Although the police said they could not yet get close enough to determine whether there were any casualties from the fires, an aerial photograph showed widespread devastation in the town’s center.
The evacuees ran from their homes in the early hours of Saturday as towering fireballs filled the sky over the town, which is in a popular tourism region about 150 miles east of Montreal.
The French-language broadcaster Radio-Canada said one building at the center of town was a bar popular with young people. A witness told the broadcaster that the town center had been crowded at the time of the derailment.
Bernard Demers, who owns a restaurant near the site of the explosion, told The Canadian Press news agency that the blast was “like an atomic bomb,” adding that the heat from the fire was very noticeable as he fled.
“Many parents are worried because they haven’t been able to communicate with a member of their family or an acquaintance,” Mayor Colette Roy-Laroche told Radio-Canada.
Lt. Michel Brunet of the Sûreté du Québec, Quebec’s provincial police, told reporters in the afternoon that the force had received several reports of missing people. But at an earlier news conference he said that it was unclear whether they were simply out of town at the time of the explosion, about 1 a.m.
“We can’t give out any information on what’s happening right now because the firemen haven’t been able to get close.”
Some residents told reporters that a bar in the blast zone was usually busy around that time. Officials said that the explosion involved four tank cars on the train and engulfed about 30 buildings.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said four pressurized tank cars blew up after the train, which had 73 cars in all, went off the rails. Pictures taken in the moments after the explosion showed a gigantic fireball rising high into the night sky. Residents told reporters they had heard five or six blasts.
The police said that it was too early to determine the cause of the explosion. Joseph R. McGonigle, a spokesman for the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway told The Gazette, a Montreal newspaper, that before the explosion, an engineer had parked the train near the town for the night, secured its brakes and checked into a hotel in Lac Mégantic. He said that it appeared that the freight cars became detached from the train’s locomotives and rolled into the town before derailing and exploding.
Nearly 10 hours after the derailment, one rail car was still burning.
“There are many fail-safe modes,” Mr. McGonigle told the newspaper. “How this happened is just beyond us.”
Fire officials said they feared more of the tanker cars were at risk of exploding. About 30 buildings in the town center were destroyed, some by the initial blast and others by the subsequent fire, they said.
Quebec’s Environment Ministry said in a statement that the rail cars were carrying crude oil.
The police imposed a half-mile security zone around the blast site and evacuated about 1,000 people from their homes.
There were unconfirmed reports that oil from the train had spread into nearby waterways.
“When you see the center of your town almost destroyed, you’ll understand that we’re asking ourselves how we are going to get through this event,” a tearful Ms. Roy-Laroche said at a televised news briefing.
Lac-Mégantic is part of the Eastern Townships region of Quebec, an area popular with tourists that is close to the Maine and Vermont borders.
Huge clouds of thick black smoke were still rising from the center of Lac-Mégantic several hours after the disaster.
Fire officials said they had asked for help from fire services in the United States. About 20 fire engines were fighting the blaze.
The police said some tanker cars had spilled their contents into the river that runs through the town.
“I can say absolutely nothing about victims,” said a police spokesman, Michel Brunet. “We’ve been told about people who are not answering their phones, but you have to understand that there are people who are out of town and on holiday.”
The train had been parked and the conductor was not aboard when “somehow, the train got released,” said Joseph McGonigle, a vice president of the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway.
“We’re not sure what happened, but the engineer did everything by the book,” Mr. McGonigle said. “He had parked the train and was waiting for his relief.”
